Well, last week I (Scotte) ended up in Bavaria.
I travelled to The Netherlands for the EurOmnis computer conference in Arnhem with Doug and Dave, my boss and a co-worker from Arts Management Systems. After the conference, the plan was to spend a week in Europe traveling and having some team-building time.
Before the conference we flew into Amsterdam and spent a couple days there recovering from jet lag. The canals and old buildings were beautiful. We also went to the Anne Frank House.
We really don’t have that much history in the New World, compared to the Old World. There were probably very few buildings in Amsterdam that were younger than any building in Spokane where I live, where the first white settlers only arrived in 1871.
After the conference, we went to the Airborne Museum in Arnhem. You may remember the story from the movie “One Bridge Too Far.”
Next we went to Brassigaume, the International Festival of Small Breweries in Marbehan, Belgium. That was for Doug and Dave (they’re Canadian), as I don’t drink. But I had a really great local potato and cheese dish in the food tent.
After than, the plan had been to go through Luxembourg and down the Rhine River to see some castles. As I was looking at where we were going to go, I realized that just a little further and we could make it to Bavaria and Castle Neuschwanstein and Castle HohenschwangauI checked with the other two guys and they thought that sounded like a great idea. So after a 6 hour drive, we were in Bavaria.
I’ve got to tell you that I was genuinely surprised. I had always figured that Leavenworth was kind of an idealized Bavaria. I was really surprised how well Leavenworth had nailed the essence of Bavaria. The only real difference was that in Leavenworth, the stores are closer together.
Of course Leavenworth doesn’t have castles on the surrounding hills, and everything in Bavaria has a red clay roof (which would be very expensive to do here), but the buildings in Bavaria have murals on the outside, and flowerboxes and painted shutters, just like Leavenworth.
After touring the two castles in Schwangau, we traveled to München (Munich) and went through the tour of the BMW factory. (No, no free samples.) The most amazing thing was watching what we called the “robot dance.” In one area of the factory we watched 10 robots in an intricate dance as they pulled in parts of doors and welded them together, each robot ducking under the arms of others swinging by and moving the next piece into place. As all three of us are programmers, we were all thinking the same thing… “Wow! What did it take to program that!?” I know, we’re geeks.
From there, we spent the day in Dachau, the concentration camp. Such a sobering experience to see the results of man’s fallen nature apart from God. We must always be vigilant.
Finally, we headed back to Amsterdam to fly out and head back to Spokane and Calgary.
Next time to Bavaria, I hope Renae can be with me. I know how much she’ll enjoy it.
