Burghausen – A Long Trip To A Long Castle

Nine hours on public transport. My heart sank when the Deutsche Bahn lady printed out our itinerary replete with bus and train changes. This had been my Mum’s idea, this trip to Burghausen, an end-of-train-line town near the Austrian border, overlooked by “The world’s longest castle”. The world’s longest schlep more like.

In the end, despite all the platform hopping, it turned into a great day out.

Burghausen’s Coat of Arms

Part of the castle that goes on forever

 

Inside the castle complex:

Not canon balls, but catapult missiles, in case you’re wondering

Will they pass Mum’s inspection…?

I sat on that one…

 

 

 

 

 

 

A few pictures of the town of Burghausen:

No cake. There was an ice cream… but the forces of greed got the better of me on this occasion and pulled my fingers faster towards the spoon than to the click button.

 

 

 

 

 

Dachau Palace Gardens… and CAKE!

I’ve already prepared you in the last post that the objective of our family trip to Dachau a couple of weekends ago had less to do with enjoying the (unashamedly pretty) historic town, and everything to do with gluttony.

Dachau Palace, which overlooks the town, harbours a cracking café that attracts audiences from far and wide with the most delectable cakes imaginable.

First though, let’s take a quick stroll through the beautiful palace gardens, resplendent not only with magnificent flowers, but also laden with sumptuous fruit at this time of year.

This wedding cake was being wheeled about when we arrived at the café. Afterwards, as we strolled through the town centre, we spotted a wedding party emerging from the local church. For all appearances, the groom was a local boy, and the bride Chinese. The cake, which is quite obviously theirs, seems to confirm this 🙂

One of the ‘wedding tables’

Unfortunately, cakes never photograph well through the glass display counters, and these pics are the only ones that turned out (sort of) OK. There were so many more delicious creations… sigh.

Our Bavarian Town Quest Continues: Dachau

Dachau is a beautiful Bavarian town with cobbled streets and pretty houses. It’s only a 15 minute drive from my village along scenic country roads, and last Saturday afternoon, bro took me and our mum there for a little outing. I hadn’t been to Dachau in absolutely ages!

I love that window for being so typically Bavarian in a town that’s not particularly touristy. But the comma in that notice (“Free beer tomorrow”), which totally shouldn’t be there, irks me! I am a stickler…

“Beware of the CONSCIENTIOUS dog”.

 

The fair was in town 🙂

Now, the real reason for the Dachau trip was to get stuck into some good cake… more on that in the next post 🙂

Rainy Regensburg. And Skewered Sausages.

Last Wednesday, mum and I took a trip to Regensburg, another very old and splendid Bavarian town. Things didn’t look very promising when we set off. According to the weather forecast, Regensburg would live up to its name: “Regen” means “rain” in German. (Regen is also the name of a river that flows through the town, which is how it got its name).

In the end, the weather wasn’t too bad, although you’ll notice a distinct lack of blue sky in the photos.

The flowers held up pretty well

Perfect weather for snails 🙂

…and man-eating fish

Time for a food break 🙂 Question: What do you do when you can’t decide which kind of sausage to have..?

Answer: You order them ALL! On a skewer, so they can’t get away.

 

“Sauerbraten” – Beef (which has been marinated overnight), potato dumplings and red cabbage. It’s a traditional Bavarian dish, and this incarnation was just PERFECT.

 

A pretty café

Love the daisies 🙂

 

Regensburg’s Gothic Cathedral is world famous. You can’t miss the spires poking out from behind the town houses. I didn’t like it much from the inside, far too dark and dingy, although the painted glass windows are amazing, admittedly.

These next few pictures are from the Church of St Emmeram, which looks fairly unassuming from the outside.

From the inside, however…!

Painted wooden ceiling, which came out very dark, so I lightened it and enhanced the colours slightly.

Acupuncture – already popular in the dark ages…

OK, that’s it.

Wait… something’s missing… what could that be…? Oh oh, I remember – CAKE!

Poppy seed strudel!!!
Actually, I scoffed that before we ever got to Regensburg. Due to a 5-minute delay in our train connection, we saw our train pull out of the station just as we arrived. So we consoled ourselves with coffee & cake while waiting for the next one 🙂

Look Up, Look Down: Trausnitz Castle, Landshut

Yesterday, I posted a bunch of pictures of the beautiful Bavarian city of Landshut (click here if you’ve missed them), so most of you will already be well prepared for what’s coming today: We’re schlepping up the hill to gawp at (and down from) the castle, Burg Trausnitz.

This thing was built in 1204. The Wittelsbach dynasty, which ruled Bavaria for hundreds of years, had its main seat in Landshut for a while, so Castle Trausnitz was ramshackle full of medieval splendour, art and culture. “Was” is the operative word here, because, unfortunately, there was a fire in 1961, which destroyed most of the building and its contents. Cause: faulty electrical wiring. Oh, the (sad) irony…

Anyway, the (rebuilt) place is still pretty impressive, and makes a worthy entry for travelwithintent’s weekly Look Up, Look Down photo challenge 🙂

We took a guided tour. Although the rooms were relatively bare (except for the chapel), there were some pretty pieces on show. We weren’t allowed to take photos, but I managed this sneaky shot of the “Narrentreppe” (staircase of fools).

The Martinskirche through a Trausnitz Castle window.

The Martinskirche steeple is Bavaria’s highest church steeple.

Pretty Bavaria: Landshut

On Tuesday, mum and I made another foray into Lower Bavaria. This time our destination was the splendid city of Landshut,  50 minutes east of Munich by train.

Landshut was founded in 1204. It was a seat of government, before Bavaria was eventually united and Munich became the official capital.

Apparently, Landshut is one of Bavaria’s richest cities. And it certainly is very pretty. I’ll let the pics do the talking…

You were waiting for that cake break, weren’t you…?! 😉
Mum had the strawberry cake, and I the Mohnschnecke. I guess you’d call it a poppy seed Danish. BTW, I RESENT having to call this heavenly family of baked goods “Danish(es)”, because they are very much a Central European thing and have nothing whatsoever to do with bloody Denmark!

The Martinskirche on the left there, sports Bavaria’s highest church steeple, and the highest red brick steeple in the world, at just over 130 metres tall. Building works commenced in 1385. And I Iove the cyclist in the stripey T-shirt balancing his parcel… 😉

Inside the Martinskirche

One of the entrance doors (interior view)

In an upcoming post, we’ll be visiting the castle 🙂

The Quirky Streets Of Passau. And The Food!

After yesterday’s bird’s eye perspective of the beautiful Bavarian city of Passau, today’s mission is to get down to street level. AND, most important of all, to show my food-adoring audience what we gorged ourselves on. If you can’t wait even a second longer – the cake’s at the very end 🙂

But let’s start with a bit of glamour. Passau has it:

The streets may not be paved with gold, but the dogs certainly make up for it.

How about a touch of the exotic? Taken inside a spice shop.

Or maybe something (im)practical? This giant rucksack will accommodate three four-year-olds stacked on top of each other, plus a kitchen sink.

Now here’s an original shoe shop display 🙂

There’s some wicked witches about. My little brother there on the left doesn’t stand a chance…

I think this is my favourite photo, the pink church makes the perfect backdrop 🙂

One of the spires of Passau cathedral

A glimpse of Passau Cathedral’s splendid ceiling

More Passau Cathedral – a side portal

Statue of writer and poet Emerenz Meier, born 1874 near Passau, died 1928 in Chicago. There was a touching poem on the plaque below, which made the point that, had she not been lumbered with female domestic responsibilities, she would probably have been as famous as Goethe or Schiller.

My brother Martin on the right

OK. You’ve made it to this point, so you’ve earned yourself a hearty meal. And CAKE!

Pork in a creamy mushroom sauce with Spätzle.

 

Some kind of vegetable bake with parmesan shavings. Very tasty, my mother said.

What we’ve all been waiting for: DESSERT!

Raspberry cake

Apricot-quark strudel

Everyone satisfied…?

 

Look Up Look Down: Passau “Toy Town”

On Wednesday, my mum, my brother and I went on a little outing to Passau, a city in Eastern Lower Bavaria, about two hours drive away. The settlement that would eventually become Passau has been in existence since the 2nd century BC, and it makes the perfect entry for travelwithintent’s weekly Look Up Look Down photo challenge.

Passau is known as the “city of the three rivers”, because it’s where the Ilz and the Inn join one of Europe’s greatest rivers, the Danube. At the point where the rivers unite, the water is two different colours, because one carries much more sediment than the others:

The Danube is much darker than the Inn

Does it look like this in “real life”, we wondered, or just on the “official” board put up for tourists? It was hard to tell at ground level, so we decided to make our way all the way up to the fortification and take a good look from above.

You can definitely tell!

The lower part of the fortification, rivers in the background

From our lofty vantage point, Passau did look like a toy town.

The building with the three domes is Passau Cathedral

This shot, for me, epitomises the Bavarian countryside

There’ll be more on Passau, and on its FOOD in subsequent posts 🙂