The hills are alive

I've never really been much of a mountain person; I like the beach. Mountains have snakes and steep inclines and other such unpleasantness. But I have discovered that I REALLY like the Bavarian and Austrian Alps. Part of this might be linked my childhood love of 'The Sound of Music', which I indulged yesterday.

My sometimes travel buddy Dave (who I met in Berlin, and saw for drinks in Barcelona) managed to get to Salzburg the day before I was due to leave for Berlin, so I planned my daytrip to Salzburg to coincide, so that we could do the Sound of Music tour together. This is a cheesy bus trip, in which you visit a number of sites where filming took place, and where the real Von Trapp family live. There was also enforced group singing and tacky photo taking, and extremely funny jokes from our dead pan, liederhosen-clad tour guide, Gunter. It was SO MUCH FUN! Although I did scrape my legs climbing trees to pose for photos- those trees have grown a lot taller in the last forty years.

Salzburg itself was kind of whacky. Overlooked by the biggest fortress in Europe, it harbors weird gnome statues in its main gardens, and last night was hosting the Night of Milk, a festival displaying modern performance art. Entrance was free if you wore all white, so there were ghost people all over town, which was disconcerting until you learned the reason.

This whole area has kooky things going on. I think it's all the beer. Here are a few beer fuelled stories from Munich's past.

The opera house in Munich was made with a concave roof, with the intention to collect water to be used in case of fire. Unfortunately, the opera house caught fire in January, when the water was all frozen, so the people thought of the liquid they had in greatest abundance; beer. They dashed to the Hofbrauhaus, the nearest beer hall, and advised the drunken Bavarians within that they would form a chain of buckets from the Hofbrauhaus to the opera house. Strangely, the buckets, full at the brewery, were always half empty by the time they reached the opera house. One for the opera house, one for me. The opera house burned down.

Germany has a long history of maypoles, but there's also a history of maypole theft. Other towns would steal a rival town's pole and hold it for ransom- for beer, of course. In the 90s, the maypole at Munich airport was stolen in the middle of the night, a huge ten metre tale pole. Concerned about the implications of this theft for the quality of airport security, the airport decided to keep the issue on the quiet, and called the police to report the theft *hush hush*. The police, however, were laughing their heads off; it had actually been the Munch police force who had stolen the pole. As tradition demanded, they held the pole to ransom, and the airport security had to pay the Munich police force in beer.

Speaking of the police, crime is very low in Munich, so the police get bored and thus enforce a lot of odd rules. There are specific places dogs must be parked outside stores. There is a 50euro fine for spitting (but it's only 40 euroes if spitting out gum). It's an offence to vomit in the Hofbrauhaus. And there are a plethora of offences related to bikes, including a 10euro fine for not having a bell (yet you don't have to wear a helmet).

I can see why Munich wants to remember their traditional past, rather than their WWII history. Munich is a really friendly, interesting place, and I am excited to see how it compares with Berlin, my next stop.