Ciao, everybody!
Again, I have got A LOT to write about. We spent the last two days exploring Munich, Germany. I gotta say, Berlin didn’t rub me the right way but Munich definitely redeemed Germany for me. So we arrived in Munich from Berlin on Sunday night. The train was having some complications, so it took us 8 hours to get there instead of 6. It’s funny, I probably know 3 words of German, but when the conductor made certain announcements, I was seeing a lot of unhappy faces and people were groaning and their faces were saying, “why is this happening to me??”. Haha so I had a feeling something was wrong, but thankfully the women I was sitting with spoke English so they translated for me. They were returning from an international garden convention in Hamburg and they seemed so happy to be out on the tracks with time to talk about the convention I guess.. They were speaking German so I have no clue. Strangely, I kind of like long train rides because it forces me to sit still and rest and gives me time to read and write and think. On that train ride, I read a lot of my book, “Shadow of the Hegemon” (definitely recommend it for fans of “Ender’s Game), slept, and ate a strawberry parfait I got at the train station as well as some stroopwafel. I’m really makin this stroopwafel last and it’s still delicious! So, yes the train ride was long, but we still arrived in Munich that night so no complaints. It was pretty shocking to see some of the flooded parts of the country. We were up on elevated tracks, so our route wasn’t compromised as far as i know. Can I just say that having a Eurail pass is amazing, by the way? All you have to do is find out when your train is, jump on, and go. When the ticket guy comes around to check tickets, we just give him our passes, he scans them, and we’re good to go. It’s convenient, quick, easy, and has already saved me a boatload of money. So Munich…
We got to our hostel pretty late on Sunday night so we went right up to the room and went to bed. I stayed up really late talking to Tyler because it had been a couple of days since we talked in real time. So for another night, I got by with about 6 hours of sleep. This would normally be a huge issue for me, but getting up isn’t bad at all when I know I have a fun, adventurous, school-free day ahead of me. So Rusti Anne had had big plans to go to this castle in Füssen, a semi-nearby town. So we grabbed some snacks (from a Turkish supermarket) for a train and got some sandwiches (from a Turkish shop) for breakfast. I didn’t like the sandwich very much, but I ate about half of it just for the energy. Munich and Berlin both had a huge Turkish presence. i don’t know if it was the neighborhoods we were in or what but it was strange. So we hopped on the train and we were on our way to Füssen, Germany to check out Neuschwanstein Castle! The trains were pretty empty, it being a Monday, so we had no problem getting there. We chatted and ate our snacks and of course Christian fell asleep because he always falls asleep. I had these chocolate covered biscuit sticks called Biscolata which were delicious. And only 68 cents!
Needless to say, it was a pretty good train ride. The German countryside was interesting. It was a lot of grassy, hilly land, but it looked like every few miles there would be a village in the distance. Each village had a bunch of houses the same size and one tall church towering over the rest of it. It was pretty different. So after a two hour journey we make it to Füssen, then we have to take a bus from the train station to the castle village. It was cold and drizzly and I just wanted to be inside, so I waited around in the gift shop while the other guys went looking for the shuttle up to the castle. Even from down in the village, the castle looked awesome standing on the mountainside. There were also clouds looming right over it so it looked kind of magical. Before catching the shuttle up to the castle, we had some time to get bratwurst on semmel bread, which was much tastier than I expected.
Ok on to the good part.. Taking the shuttle up to the castle kind of freaked me out to be honest. There were 3 ways to get to the castle:
1. Shuttle (€1,80)
2. Horse and buggy (€6,00)
3. Walk (free, but freezing and wet)
So of course we took the shuttle bus, which had its own special route up the mountain on thin, winding roads. The driver had probably done that route 30 times that day, which was my reasoning for him going so fast. I was afraid we were going to fall off the mountainside for a few minutes there! So we make it up to the castle area and have to walk for a couple of minutes until we reach this beautiful view of the valley, two lakes, and another mountain castle. So naturally, we stopped and took pictures even though we were cutting it close to our tour time. The castle tour was good. It turned out the castle was being built for King Somebody ( I forgot his name, so let’s just call this guy Somebody). So Somebody wants 3 castles, and Neuschwanstein was his third and final creation. While the castle was being built, Somebody mysteriously ends up dead in a river with his psychiatrist. It was speculated that Somebody’s psychiatrist was on the verge of exposing Somebody as mentally unstable, and therefore unfit to continue his rule as King. So Somebody invites his psychiatrist out for a walk in the woods and kills him, then kills himself. So after he died, construction was halted and so only 16 rooms of the 70 planned rooms were completed. They were pretty cool rooms, but they were just so ornate they looked kind of tacky to me. Also, Somebody had a fascination with swans, so there were pictures and statues of swans everywhere. Somebody had an interesting sense of style, but more power to him because apparently he had the money to blow. When we were in the castle we noticed a cool bridge that connected two mountainsides so after getting some pictures in front of the castle, we went over to it. It was an old wood (and steel I guess?) bridge so I was nervous at first but it ended up being fine.
[sidenote: I was writing that story on the night train from Munich to Venice and I fell asleep while typing it. I’m now sitting by the pool at our campsite in Venice with a few German women we met at the shuttle station. I will post a picture of this place, it really feels like vacation! I’ll continue storytelling, I just think its awesome how far I could go so quickly]
So yes we went to the bridge and took pictures and then we started to head back home with plans to find some authentic Bavarian food in Munich. We went back to our hostel and asked the girl at the front desk and she recommended a place right around the corner so there we went! It was definitely a local joint because people were kind of looking at us when we walked in like, “what are these tourists doing here??” Haha. The waitress spoke English so that helped us out a lot. When we walked in she said “we only have chicken and beer” and so we all looked at each other and of course said ok, no problem! I got the “classic Bavarian beer”, which was surprisingly tasteless. Probably not the best place to go for good German beer but it was an experience. We got little rotisserie chickens, potato salad, and garden salad. With the beer, it was 13 euros, not too shabby! We were all pretty nervous because there was no menu so we didn’t know what the price would be like. After dinner, we went back to the hostel and did a load of laundry. I was planning on blogging and talking to Tyler again, but the internet wasn’t working so I was pretty upset. We played pool, cards, and drank more beer while our laundry was going and that made me forget about it. There’s a really good lemonade beer in Germany that seriously tastes just like lemonade to me. I love that stuff. After laundry, we all went to bed. The next day, we had to carry our packs around so that was rough. What’s more is that we found this really great deal on 3.25L jugs of water. 2 jugs for €2,50! So good, we couldn’t pass it up. So I spent the day carrying my backpack, my purse, and a giant jug of water. I was actually a lot more organized about it than I expected but my back was really starting to hurt. We walked around Marienplatz, the city’s main plaza, for a while and found a Starbucks with wifi and rested there for a little while. Then we decided to take the train to Dachau concentration camp memorial. We did audio tours and that place was just depressing. It didn’t help that it was a cloudy day. I don’t want to write in detail about it because I’d go on a rant which I don’t have time for. On the way back from Dachau we met a fellow American and got to talking to him. We invited him to dinner with us, where I finally got to try veil schnitzel which was delicious. We then went to Hofbrauhaus to get beers then took a night train to Venice and voila, here I am! I gotta jet though because I’m meeting the other guys in Venice and I need to get ready to go. Chilled by the pool for a while, now I’m ready to see the city! Ciao!