Europe Archives - Page 6 of 7

Lufthansa First Class Terminal – Good for Toddlers?

Jul 17 2014

Bavarian Summer: Observations After a Week in Germany

Trip reports can get long, and while I’m enjoying “live reporting” this trip, I recognize not everyone is interested. It also is a bit tiring to type for an hour every night Doogie Howser style. But what I’m sure everyone is interested in is my thoughts and observations about this wonderful country, Germany, after a week here! /sarcasm.

Couldn’t help it, sorry

Still, this family travels because it wants to experience different cultures, and blogging about it helps me process what I see, so please bear with me. Or, you know, ignore this post. Also, apologies for two list-type posts in a row – I should be better than that. But I’ve also been drinking a lot of Weissbier and Riesling, so…

1. Unsurprisingly, Germans speak English pretty well

It never ceases to impress me how well Europeans speak other languages, and Germans are no exception. In Brazil, it was pretty difficult getting around not knowing any Portugese (in fact I felt more helpless there than in any other country I’ve visited besides Japan). But here in Germany, even the people who say they only speak “a little” English speak more than enough to get their point across.

Finally got to try that monk brewed beer - not bad! — Finally got to try that monk brewed beer – not bad!

Example, bought a Riesling, was told “Drink cold.” This Riesling is cold and it is good. I can neither say the word “drink” or “cold” in German. Anyway, it’s a shame how on average Americans are not as adept with foreign languages as our European counterparts. I don’t remember anything I learned language wise in high school (OK, I took Latin, yes I’m a loser, but Gallia est omnia divisa in partes tres okay?). The only languages I know are from family use – Mandarin and Cantonese. Ooh I did learn one new German phrase. Everytime Germans see M passed out they smile and say “kaput”. Heh.

2. Germans take their hiking seriously

Somehow, I did not know this before I got here. I blame this on the toddler. The Bavarian Alps are all about hiking and everyone here is serious about it. I’ve seen people from the age of 6 to 60+ hiking these trails, and I’m talking the ones at the top not the easy trails at the bottom. One hike we took the other day even had stops for kids where they could read about a “mountain giant” – almost like an intro to hiking type thing.

Hiking up to AlspiX — Hiking through the fog feels like I’m in Lord of the Rings. Though to be fair, any excuse I get to reference LOTR…

There are also walking sticks to “borrow” at the top of most of the funiculars (gondolas) – I love the friendly hiking culture here.

Proof my wife takes better pictures than me

Every single trail here is also very well marked. I’m more of a “hike on vacation” kind of guy, so I’ve never appreciated how most of the hikes I’ve done in the States are like, “hey, follow the white crosses on the trees even though there is no arrow!”. What can I say, I’m a n00b. Every single fork in the road I’ve seen here has explicit, clear signage and often has hike times as well. No ribbons stapled to trees. I am a fan.

3. Bavaria is a great place for families

Jess and I were remarking today that we could spend our full two and a half weeks here in Garmish-Partenkirchen and not run out of things to do. Aside from all the hiking that’s possible, there is so much to do within a one hour radius of almost anywhere you stay. You can visit Munich, you can visit a million little towns (each with something unique to offer), you can take walks around lakes, you can go boating on said lakes, etc. etc.

Alpsee (lake) near Neuschwanstein Castle — Eibsee near Zugspitze

I wish M were older so I could force her to hike – I see so many families hiking with their six, ten, and sixteen year olds. Or you could come here in the winter, see the Christmas markets, and ski in amazing surrounds. The pace is nice and easy, perfect for families, and there are little to no mosquitos. If there were wineries close by, this place would be…one step greater than what I just described. But I’ll just settle for Weissbier.

M is starting to get the hang of this walking business

4. Everything shuts down early here

One thing that differentiates this area from much of the rest of Europe (that we’ve visited) is all the stores close by 6 PM. If you walk down one of the main streets in Garmisch-Partenkirchen after 6 PM nothing is open except for the restaurants.

This includes tourist attractions; everything shuts down before 6. Kind of weird that everything is closed but the sun doesn’t set until after 9 PM. It’s a bit unfortunate that the funiculars shut down at around 530 PM because it’d be nice to experience dusk up on the summits – but I think the reason things shut down so early is…

5. Germans know how to relax

Somehow I had the impression that Germans, due to their extreme efficiency, probably weren’t good at relaxing. Obviously that was stupid since Germans take their beers so seriously but I’ve never claimed to be full of common sense. The reality is, after 5 PM or so, everyone is chillin’ around here.

Outside Garmisch's biergarten — Outside Garmisch’s biergarten

I walked into a store thinking it was open, they were just smoking cigars, drinking beer, and eating some grub. Meanwhile Germans and tourists were sitting on picnic benches outside a restaurant drinking, eating, and listening to an accordion player. Cool vibe. So the stores and tourist attractions might close early, but the beer gardens and restaurants are still there for your enjoyment.

6. (Bonus) Austria is serious about their traffic violations

Couple things about driving in Austria.

1) You can’t drive on Austria motorways without buying a vignette sticker. Don’t get caught without one it’s like a 100 Euro fine.

2) They take their speed limits seriously. I’ve only seen one police car in seven days in Germany – I saw three in one hour driving through Austria. There was a literal speed trap where the speed limit dropped from 100 to 70 to 30 in what felt like 100 meters, with a cop on the end. Careful!

Final Thoughts

We’ve been having a great time in Germany thus far. I’m starting to really get a feel for the culture around here, at least I think I am! I’m almost disappointed we need to leave Garmisch-Partenkirchen soon, but I’m sure there are many more adventures ahead! Tomorrow I hope to write about what we’ve been doing the past few days – we’ve seen some pretty amazing sights!

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Lufthansa First Class Terminal – Good for Toddlers?

Jul 09 2014

Bavarian Summer: Introduction

After spending what felt like an eternity writing my Bora Bora trip report, I’ve decided to go more “running diary” for my trips. We’ll see how it works out. Anyway when this posts hopefully we’ll be over the Atlantic in Lufthansa first for our summer trip to Germany and Austria! Also, today marks a big milestone for the blog – I am upgrading Baby M to Little M – this girl ain’t a baby anymore. Why did she have to learn the word “no” three weeks before we left!?

Little M's "presents" for distractions: ready to go! Thanks, Jess! — Little M’s “presents” for distractions: ready to go! Thanks, Jess!

Now, full disclosure, we would probably be taking a trip this summer without points and miles – it’s just something we as a family believe in and value. Before I got into this madness, we would take trips every summer but it would either a) cost more than we spend now or b) cost the same but be less comfortable. So I just wanted to lay out some of the strategies we used to book this trip and how it saved us some money.

Flights

Most of you know by now, but United completely hacked their award chart when it comes to partner airline premium cabins. When they announced this, I thought I would never get to fly Lufthansa First Class again (Jess and I flew it for two legs when she was pregnant BOS-MUC-PEK). I couldn’t justify shelling out 110,000 miles each way (the current price), and Lufthansa typically only releases first class space 7-10 days out and with a kid we’re just not that flexible anymore (for the record, there seems to be some space available in LH F for the next two weeks from Boston to Frankfurt). So I had given up the dream.

Lufthansa new first class cabin — Jess in Lufthansa first class in 2012

But sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good. Last fall, Lufthansa for some reason opened up a bunch of first class space on their new Toronto to Munich route – before the United devaluation. This was a brass ring opportunity, I didn’t hesitate. It pays to be decisive in this game. I not only booked Jess and myself in LH F for today’s flight, but my parents as well (with their own miles). Jess and I are returning in LH F on our own since my parents are leaving earlier, but to get LH F roundtrip was a real coup.

So in the end, Jess and I spent 270,000 United miles (mostly from Chase Ultimate Rewards) and about $250. Little M’s infant ticket cost $269.10 due to the best United agent in the world (IMO). So it cost us $500 out of pocket plus the value of the miles. I don’t have time to do any serious math, so I’ll keep it simple – if we take into consideration the fact that I can convert Ultimate Rewards points to cash back for 1 cent per point, one could say that these flights cost us about $3200. Though Airfare Watchdog has been posting some pretty sweet $700 RT Europe deals, all of those have been last minute deals for summer – deals we can’t wait for when making plans. If we weren’t using miles, I would have budgeted about $1300 each for airfare, plus M’s infant ticket which would have been around $130 (10% of adult fare).

The current roundtrip cost of a first class ticket to Germany is around $14,000, but it’s stupid to say I saved $12,000 per person. Here’s a more accurate breakdown of the cost.

Current first class prices for our dates (click to enlarge)

So, our estimated cost for the flights we booked are $3200, we would have spent around $2700 to get to Germany anyway. I think of it at worst as a $500 upgrade from economy to first class. So we didn’t necessarily save money here, but it’s worth it to me. Hopefully it’s worth it to Jess too, she’s the one who likes caviar. Also, as of this writing, the other four seats in our cabin are empty which means it could just be Jess, my parents, M, and me in the cabin. That’d be pretty sweet.

OH! I didn’t even count the cost of the FREE PAJAMAS we get! So yeah – maximum savings!

Check out those free pajamas from 2012, yo. Still wearing them. Not joking.

Hotels

So in the past, I’ve budgeted around 80 Euros a night for lodging. Now that we have M, I’ve kinda upped that to 100-120 Euros/night because a lot of rooms in Europe are double occupancy only and they are sticklers for that.

Here’s where we are staying:

Airbnb in Garmisch-Partenkirchen at 110 Euro/night (per family)

Hilton Munich City at 109 Euro/night

Hilton Vienna Plaza at 40,000 HHonors points/night

Intercontinental Berchtesgaden at 35,000 IHG points/night

Crowne Plaza Salzburg at 30,000 IHG points/night

We'll be checking out Hitler's final hideout while we're in Berchtesgaden — We’ll be checking out Hitler’s final hideout while we’re in Berchtesgaden

I had enough points in my Hilton account to pay for both ours and my parents rooms in Vienna, and enough points to cover our stays in the IHG resorts. I ended up buying IHG points at 0.7 cents each to cover the second room in IHG, which is over my daily budget (180 and 130 Euro/night respectively), but I think of it more as a wash since we had all those IHG points lying around. Again, we haven’t necessarily saved money with our hotel stays, we just are getting more for our dollar (in my opinion).

Intra-Europe Travel and Activities

I rented a car and we also still need to book a train from Vienna to Munich. It’s tough to really save money on stuff like that, though I’ll probably use my Barclaycard Arrival Plus World MasterCard® to get reimbursed for the train tickets. I am planning on cancelling that card soon and I haven’t “zapped” any travel purchases yet so hopefully this will cover most of it.

In terms of activities, there’s no real way to save money using miles and points – we just need to make good decisions. The areas we will be in feature lots of hikes and scenery gazing which is generally cheaper anyway. Although Sound of Music tours probably aren’t cheap – I’m pretty sure we’re gonna have to hit at least one of those.

Final Thoughts

The day will come, possibly quite soon, when we’ll likely only be able to afford economy tickets on points and miles, and that’s okay. Points and miles are just tools by which we can offset the costs of travel we would be doing anyway. Still, while Little M can still go as a lap infant, it’s nice to use them to make life a little more comfortable – which is how we’re using them on this trip. Did we save a ton of money? No – there’s always an opportunity cost (we could have flown to Europe twice in economy with the number of miles we used). But this is how I’ve chosen to use our miles, and I’m looking forward to this adventure. Hope you enjoy my ramblings for the next few weeks!

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Lufthansa First Class Terminal – Good for Toddlers?

Jul 07 2014

Bavarian Summer: Final Preparations for the Little One

As I’m typing this, I currently have seven child travel related tabs open in Google Chrome. Baby M has turned the corner on her illness giving me the confidence that she’ll be ready to leave later this week – so now it’s time to plan. We’ve got a one hour domestic leg, two hour layover, and then a seven hour transatlantic segment to get ready for. Let’s do this.

Conveniently, awty just wrote up a nice little packing guide (so make that eight tabs, ask my wife if you think I’m exaggerating). I wish I was that organized, but I’m not. Instead, I just wanted to share some of my thought process about packing and getting ready for Little M to make her second trip to Europe. I’ve been running through different ideas in my mind so I think putting them down in writing will help me sort them out – plus I’d love to hear people’s opinions (no flaming!).

Contents of Little M’s Carry On Bag of Distractions

Yes, we will be bringing a diaper bag with diapers, wipes, two changes of clothes, and a changing pad. But that’s not the stressful part – the stressful part is what to put in THE bag. AKA, what are we going to bring to distract her and prevent a meltdown. As a little aside, our travel habits unfortunately don’t give us enough practice to come up with any tried and true methods (not that there is even such a thing). Our trip to Italy was super smooth, but we haven’t been on a flight for more than two hours since. No matter how she does on this flight – she’s going to be totally different by the time we’d be able to apply any of the lessons learned from this one. Such is life. So not only do I have no idea what I’m talking about, but I never even get to apply lessons learned. Hopefully my thought process is helpful to some of you, but I’ll never claim to be a Mommy Points or Trips with Tykes or Have Baby Will Travel or if I continue to list my open tabs this will never end. But hey, at least I’m a dad operating in this space. Oh wait.

Our preliminary staging area. Note: Irish Spring not for baby :P — Our preliminary staging area. Note: Irish Spring not for baby 😛

Anyway, here’s what we’re thinking of bringing to distract M:

Comestibles: String cheese, crackers, Cheerios, milk, water

Toys: Legos, stacking cups, wrapping paper

Other Distractions: Drawing (scribbling) supplies, airplane amenity kits, stickers, books, pictures of family (printed)

911: Tablet, Lufthansa in-flight entertainment

Writing down that list, I’m not even sure it’s enough! But we still have a few days. Anyway, we just “practiced” unwrapping things with Little M to try the “give presents for good behavior on planes” trick. I don’t think she gets it, whenever she unwraps something she just gives it back to us to wrap again… She’s a big fan of legos (duplos) although that generally consists of building the longest row of blocks she can make; I sense lost legos in our near future. She is pretty good at getting distracted for long periods of time – the key is having the right distractions; like, she can take a spoon and pretend to move liquids from one cup to another for like ten minutes straight. Mental note: bring some spoons.

I'm not even sure we put a present in there... — I’m not even sure we put a present in there…

Anyway, she hasn’t really watched TV before so I’m not even sure how she will react if we show her some stuff. She sees me on my computer headset all the time so whenever she puts headphones on she starts talking…don’t think she totally gets the concept yet. But at the very least I think she will enjoy looking at pictures on the tablet and on our phones.

What to do about food?

Our first departure is at 1:05 PM for a short flight. This could be great or it could be a disaster. Our current plan is to bring lunch for M to the airport, feed her there, and hope she naps on the flight (it falls right into her daily naptime). Of course, if she’s still a bit under the weather, all bets are off. Our next flight takes off right around dinnertime, so I’m thinking of bringing a second meal just in case she rejects everything on the plane. Honestly, she is not a picky eater at all – except when sick. So best to have a back up plan I think.

Dr Brown's 8 oz bottles — Thought we were long done with these, but they do the trick for milk storage

Milkwise, according to my rudimentary knowledge of calculus, we need to bring approximately 10 gallons of milk for the 12 hours of travel. OK, I’m probably going to round that down to like 24 ounces. Three weeks ago it would have been 16 but she has been on a milk binge lately. Aside from that, I think we’ll just need to bring a bunch of crackers as snacks, maybe animal crackers if we are at Defcon 2. I think we should be fine because there should be a near limitless supply of bread in our cabin. Like any good toddler, M loves her some bread!

What about the stupid carseat?

Ack. Largest source of stress BAR NONE. Life was so easy when we had a carseat + caddy. Take it into the terminal, gate check both, continue your regularly scheduled programming. Now we have a separate carseat and stroller, and I can’t decide what to do!

If only she was a little bit shorter... — If only she was a little bit shorter…

Admittedly, I’ve gone a little loco about this entire situation. First, I bought one of these bad boys. I was like, hey, we’ll just check the stroller in, or maybe bring both and try to gate check both, and wheel M through the terminal with this like COOL PEOPLE.

Now I’m waffling – if I could guarantee that we could gate check both I’d do that, but there are no guarantees since that technically violates the rules. We are bringing our super cheap umbrella stroller though, so I think if necessary I’m more comfortable checking that in with regular luggage (in a garbage bag maybe?). Throw some diapers in that bad boy too. (A week from now I will write a post titled “My garbage bag ripped and we are now diaperless.”) But yeah, I’m still leaning towards dragging it through the airport on that thing. I can throw M in our Beco if she doesn’t want to ride shotgun.

Final Thoughts

Thanks for listening to my ramblings. The reality is, I know everything will be fine, and, oh yeah, my parents are coming so I’m not complaining. Still, this is why we never get to plan our trips anymore – prepping to bring Little M takes up way too much processing power! Better get to packing…

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