Just...One...More...Turn

I don't delve into stories about video games very often for many reasons.  First, it means having to admit that I am over 40 years old and still playing the heck of video games.  Second, I don't have a wide range of experience of video games. Really.  

My first video game system was the PlayStation 2 when I was in my late 20's. Ok, technically our family had the very first Pong game, but I am not counting that, because I am either spiteful or indignant this evening.   

I yearned for an Atari system, I would figure way to get myself invited over to neighbor kids house to play. Two problems with this situation.  First, they were pretty bored with Atari games after playing the games for 19,000 hours so by the time I would get invited into the house they were not really into working the seven or eight steps it took to get the game up and running.  Second, if we did play, we would play games against each other and with the number of hours of getting beat by their older brothers built up enough rage that they took this out on me trying to figure out how to even hold the joystick.

Anyway, somewhere I was trying to get to a point about not having a vast knowledge of video games.  Knowing I buy just a few video games a year.  I just get absorbed into them and enjoy them until they about wear out.  For many of serial games like Madden and such, there is very little about them that gets upgraded beyond the rosters very often, that I don't bother updating. (Still playing Madden 08 on Xbox).  Like many people that are considering spending the money, I like to know about new games and whether I can justify in my mind shelling about $50 for a game.  I have been intrigued for years with the PC based game Civilization.  The turn-based strategy game has been around for several versions and it's most recent reviews with the release Civilization 5 finally got me to do something about it.   One of the issues with many of the reviews is they are based on people that have played it before, the majority of the readers, I would reckon. However, without having played the previous versions I was not sure if it was worth getting.  I am glad I did.

The game is based on starting with very few characters and building a vast empire by building cities up, expanding and exploring new territory, making decisions about what kind of empire you want to develop.  If you spend time on only building a military empire, you suffer in the long run by having ignored cultural, economic, and scientific advancement.  The same goes with any of those factors.  You move through the game one turn at time, determining what each city you develop with build, such as schools or temples,etc.  As you wait for the city to build, you direct people to explore the new world, you send workers out to build farms and roads.  The problem comes with having to remember to go to bed in evening.  Every turn is a new decision and your opponents make decisions too, that impact the decisions you made. It is sooooo hard to stop playing.  I have already lost many hours to this game and am looking forward to many more.

 Games are so much more interactive with being able to play online. Also, games like these are very advanced and I no longer yearn for the Atari system that all my friend owned. Sure, I still would not mind a few rounds of Combat, but it would have to be with modern controllers. Just simple pure fun. 

Wrapping this all up

The last three days of the trip we spent it all in Germany and listening to the ship crew deal with the enormous amount of rain pouring into the Danube.  As the river continued to rise, we were at risk of not getting under some bridges. So as we planned to stop at Passau but were redirected to another city where they bussed us back to Passau.  The needed to get to just before the bridge that was in question if we could pass under it.  So while we were prancing about the town, the crew dismantled the top deck, removing all the chairs, tables and railings. More on that later.

So we got to Passau after a short bus trip and entered the town.  We joined another tour that day.  The area is the town of three rivers that all merge at this point.  They have a history of regular flooding and you can see how the town is built and how people live to prepare for their bouts of flooding.  We spent most of the time looking at St Stephan church during the tour.

 We did stop in a couple of other areas to see some art exhibits of art work of local artist, but the appeal of the art was sadly lost on me.

So, we left the tour as we figured out we wanted to see parts of the town they were not going to visit.  We walked down to point of town where all the rivers meet and took in the view.  After that we explored other parts including yet another coffee shop, which was excellent and headed back to the ship to get ready for our big adventure to see if we would get under the bridge.

It was close and the ship made it with about 10 cm to spare!  So, we sailed on towards Regensburg.  It was interesting sailing from that point on for the day.  We had a guest lecture on the history of Danube and what happened along the points we were sailing.  One interesting place in the middle of - what appeared to be nowhere was a large memorial.

After we ended up Regensburg by the next day, we decided to skip the tour and explored the city on our own.

 We basically just wandered around town all day.  They plan was for the ship to leave around 1:00 that day and end up Nuremberg, but when we got back to the ship, we were stuck because of the high waters, so we had the rest of the day to more exploring, so we did.

 So we walked into different shops, different churches and got lost several times and even watched a group training to river rescues.

 We all ended up having the big farewell dinner with some fancy treats and ending with a group picture with each alumni group.

  The appetizer and dessert.

Hey, they make wine here

The Danube river upstream from Vienna held a quite a few castle remains.  I don't know what else to call them, but they were basically castles that were built along the river that were no longer being used and thus had fallen apart a couple hundred years ago.  To see them they warned us to get up early, so it was an early start but fun to sit up on the deck as the day started.  We also noted the number of vineyards we sailed past.  Quite the region with the hills and great views, though we had mostly rain the entire day.

As the morning wore, more and more of the passengers kept running up to the deck to check out the range of castle structures.  One of the interesting things about the Danube trip was there are markers along the river to tell you at which kilometer marker you are at and it helped as we had guide books that told us which castle was which in comparison to the marker.

After docked in a village across the river from Melk, we jumped on a bus that took us to the Melk Abbey.  The tour of the abbey was fascinating. It is used as a school now, but the students were out for the summer so we missed some of that view, but we were also able to see most of the abbey and it is set-up nicely for tours.  The restoration is very beautiful and the history is quite engaging.  We had a brief tour of the gardens, which Kathy and I both felt we wished it was not pouring out so we could see more of it.  I think we would love to go back to the town.

This is a view from back of the abbey overlooking the town.

The abbey is the main source of employment for the town and it fits in centrally to what goes on in that town.  Our guide for the city (which was different than the guide we had for the abbey) was born in the town and grew up and lived there her whole life.  She talked about life growing up there and going to school at the abbey. It was a nice perspective.

After seeing the abbey and what not we wandered through the town and bought some gifts and had more coffee and pastries.  Yum.   It was another nice night on the ship and as we sailed we saw past other cities we saw some interest light shows the buildings displayed.  We had a fun evening on the ship with a talent show and games in the lounge.

Vienna as in not the sausage

So, as we left early from Bratislava to get Vienna by the evening, we lucky enough got into town in time to see a brilliant sunset.  There was a contingent that went to town as soon as we arrived, as I assume they were looking forward to getting to Vienna as much as we were.  Kathy and I stayed and enjoyed the evening with our new friends on the ship and got ready for the next day.

The next day started for us with a quick bus trip to see some of the highlights in a quick glance as we quickly whizzed by in a bus, kind of funny.  Our first guide was very funny and he went through the different views of the city's history. After about 45 minutes of this, we stopped at the famous Saint Peter Square.  Just so you do not miss out on any of the details when you go there, I will not spoil the details they told us about.  So much to see in the architecture!

We then walked around the town and learned about the different historical buildings, the music traditions and the government structure.  Quite a show our guide put on.  We then had a few hours to explore and have lunch on our own.  Being simple folks (most others went to some restaurants and two couple actually went back to the ship for lunch) we found a cafe and sat in the shade with our lunch and coffee.   It was a very hot day so we kept to the shaded parts of the streets and just wandered.  We found so many neat buildings that are not pictured here, so you will have to come over and see the rest.

 But after a few hours we caught with the tour and went to see the Schonbrunn Palace, where  the peak heat of the day met with a tour of a large building without any breezes.  It was pretty nice, but we really were stuck with the tour and I we would of liked to look at the gardens instead of the rooms where people ate their meals and crap like that.  Funny enough it was the only day that was warm on the trip.  Little did we know that the rest of the trip was going to be cold and raining.  

As the tour ended before we passed out, we jumped on a bus that took us back to the ship where we met our fellow travelers.  The night was fun with the ships crew entertaining us by wearing Mozart wigs and having fun with that.

On a quiet Sunday morning

This is some sort of space tower bridge.

Our ship arrived at our next stop early in the morning.  It was a beautiful sunny day and we got up early to take in the sites of Bratislava, the capital city of Slovakia.  

The city was quiet, being a Sunday morning and we started our tour with a short bus trip to an old castle that overlooked the city. We stopped outside the gates and we walked through a number of courtyards.  The castle was founded long ago around the 11th century, though the current version was built in the 17th century, but did not have cable tv during that time.  
We climbed to one of overviews of the city and the guide pointed out that while looking over the river, you could see the development during the communist era.  It was very industrial and very boxy looking.  After digging through the nooks and crannies of the castle, we took a walking tour of the town.

We saw several of the towns museums, including a interesting tour of the wine making history of the area.  Another stop was a tour of a collection of  Francis Cleyn tapestries.  The story was interesting on how they acquired them.  Apparently they were hidden in the walls for centuries and when the build was sold, the new owners, the government found them and now have them on display much to the chagrin of the previous owners who had no idea they were there.

We only had few hours to see everything, so Kathy and I left the tour and did some walking around by ourselves and headed back to the ship.  We had a short stay and had to leave by noon to head on over to Vienna.

The dinner that night was a celebration for MN Alumni group, where we sang a stirring rendition of the rouser.  As we headed up the river, we dined with our new alumni friends and got ready for a long day in Vienna.

A little Buda and a little Pest

So we were up at for our day of touring in Budapest.  We started our ship life with a nice little breakfast and a little coffee up on the deck of the ship.  The ship we were on is certainly smaller than your traditional ocean cruise ships.  It holds around 170 people.

Anyway, we walked off the boat and on to our bus and headed to our first stop at Hero's square on the Pest side of the town.  Oh, I did not know this, but the city is divided on two sides of the river, the Buda side and Pest side, sort of like East and West De Pere.  The towns merged long ago in 1867.  So anyway Hero's square has an interesting history and serves as central location to quite a few local sightseeing spots.  What was interesting was having natives at all of our stops be our guides.  The impact the communist had on Hungry and what the liberation means to the citizens is still evident today. Our guide told us a touching story about after the liberation the story of the funeral for the leader of the resistance and reburial.

We then drove around the city and saw a number of the highlights and heard the stories about the resurgence and the rebirth of the city that was still coming to life after the end of communism in 1989. This is a beautiful city.  We headed over to the Buda side of the river and got out and went to Castle Hill, where we toured Matthias Church, and we looked over the famous Fisherman Bastion.  After the touring we figured we could wander around the Castle Hill area and we explored some parts of the old castle areas and the former castle that is now an art museum. After a few hours of this we headed back to the ship and hung out.

The ship set sail around four and we hung out on the top of the ship as we sailed past the sites.  It was a nice evening for it.  Even after dinner we headed up to the top to take in the sights and talk with our new friends about what everyone did that day.  We figured out we missed the best stop by not going to the farmers market where you could get some great paprika.  Well, I guess that will be next time.

Let's Get Moving

An early morning after a late night, but we were greeted with a wonderful breakfast of sausage and pastries, so what really could you say. Plus the coffee was super yummy and strong at the hotel. One of the couples we met talked about the coffee at each meal we had. They had traveled around and had some experience and warned us about the strong way it is brewed in Germany, I say more to love. Anyway, after we had our bags loaded on some guys truck, we jumped onto our bus and headed to Salzburg.

The rain returned for our 2 hour bus trip. It was comforting to look out at the fields and towns that we passed by. We

did stop at a rest stop about half way, but overall the trip was pretty smooth. Our guide from the last few days was with us on the trip that day and she gave us some highlights about the things we were seeing.

Once we got to Salzburg, we started our walking tour as we meandered towards our lunch spot.

As it was raining pretty hard the entire time, the tour was rushed a bit. Apparently, everyone was anxious to get us to our lunch time exactly on time.

The lunch we had was at apparently the oldest restaurant in Europe, the stiftskiller st. peter. This was the first time the entire group on the trip was in one place and we all had lunch together. This was Kathy's favorite meal of the trip. It was a nice fine dining, with Schnitzel, some potatoes and for dessert, yum some strudel.

We, in theory, had more time for the walking tour on the way back to the bus that was to take us to our train station. However, the rain really started pouring and none of the guides were in the mood to give much of a tour. We tried to convince them that we needed to stop at a famous chocolate shop, but they were having none of that. So, we did see a vendor that was selling these "famous" Mozart chocolates and ran from our walking tour, bought the chocolates and ran back to the line. The nice thing about being with an older group, no one is going to rush them. They just wouldn't put up with it.

So we walked through the streets with a brief look at the famous sites of the places Mozart lived and we got to the bus to the train station. The group took over two train cars as we headed to Budapest, a five hour train ride. The train ride was nice and kind of relaxing. Well, it was more relaxing for much of the group as they headed to the Bistro Car to get some drinks. It only took about 3 hours for the group to completely clean out the bar of alcohol. It went like this, the groups kept walking past us to Bistro Car and getting lots of bottles of wine. After an hour or so, they were telling people, "Hey, they out of wine." So they moved to beer, then that was gone, so started buying all the champagne. So, they group had to hold out for the last two hours without any more.

We arrived in Budapest, Hungry about 9:30 that night. We were able to see the city lit up at night, which was very lovely. We arrived at our ship and found our room quickly and went to find our dinner. We had a nice dinner and waited for that guy in the truck we left our luggage with early that morning to show up. He did arrive about an hour after us, so once got our luggage

and did some minor unpacking. Since we were not going anywhere that night we spend sometime on the deck walking around looking at the sites from the top of the ship.

Next, a visit to the city and traveling down river!

Big Trip - Start yourself Bavria

So about 10 years ago, a few weeks after we got engaged, Kath and her father went to on a Reformation tour, ending up at the Passion Play in Oberammergau, Germany. She came back and declared we had to go again in 2010. Hence, 2010 -we go. Actually it wasn't as simple as that, we looked into how to get more of the trip and looked lots of tours. It is tough to get tickets. Each year they sell about 500,000 tickets, this year over 1 million requests for tickets were received. They do reserve 150,000 tickets for Americans. The key is to book with a hotel in town and they get a package with the room that includes the tickets. To do this, we ran into a promotion with my undergrad degree at the University of Minnesota alum group and hooked up with them.

So we flew to Munich. The flight is long and boring especially when the inflight entertainment system was broken. We had to actually entertain ourselves for the most of it. We got there and met much of the group we would be traveling with on the tour at the airport. Being a small town, we were broken up into several groups. Some people stayed in Oberammergau while some people like us, stayed about 10 minutes away in Garmisher, Germany.

So we got int

o Garmisher and to our hotel and tried to figure o

ut how to stay awake. Our hotel was nice and we had our own balcony. The photo on the left is from our balcony

.

We hung out for that afternoon, trying to figure ways to stay awake. It was our hope to be awake until after dinner that night.

We figured we could easily walk around the town for awhile. So we just started roaming and looking at people and shops and what not.

We ended up stopping at a coffee shop and getting a few things. We were able to use our intensive Italian language training to order two cappuccinos. The town and areas around where we were staying were lovely.

We walked around enough to get lost for a little while, but we managed to get back to the hotel and bothered each enough to stay awake for dinner where we met some of our other tour companions at our hotel. I will say this now and several more times, just some of the nicest folks you will ever met - and darn funny too. But enough of other people, let's focus on us. After dinner, we collapsed and had a great nights sleep.

So, the next day we headed to the play. The play started at 2 in the afternoon, so we h

ad we got to town early around 9 or 10 and did a walking tour of the town. Though it was raining, we

walked through the town and saw some amazing murals. The town is certainly geared for this event every ten years. They h

ad some wonderful shops all ready to go, a

pparently we were

told they have long tradition of woodworking around the area, so the shops had many things to look at and buy.

So after our tour, we had some free time to wander and shop and stuff. We all met up around noon to catch a local bus to get some lunch at another hotel, Hotel Anika for lunch before the play

.

After lunch we headed to the play and we wish we could share some of the sites from the play, but they were not joking around about no pictures. So here is one borrowed from the internet.

You can click on it and make it larger. You can see the choir and the cast the setting for the play. It was all in German, but you know the play and they give you the translation to follow along. The music and singing is pretty awesome. Periodically, the play used still life images, where actors would stage a still life of image from a story in the bible, like this one, (again borrowed)

The people in town make up the cast and musicians. You used to have to have been born in the town to be in it, but they now allow people that are married to someone that was born in town. Plus, the donkey is not from the town, so they are really expanding their tolerance.

There has been quite a bit of acknowledgement about the controversy around the staging of the play. The show has been modified to take into account of the sensitivities of other citizens and their beliefs.

We took a dinner break after the first three hours back at the Hotel Anika, where we dined and enjoyed our evening. We had some time to hang out before heading back

for the last three hours of the play. The end of the play ended around 11:30 pm so we when we got to the hotel, we knew we had a short turn around as we were headed out early the next morning to a couple hour bus ride to Salsburg. More on that in the next post.