Munich, Germany

On a very blizzardy and cold day we arrived at our last city of the trip, München, Deutschland. We spent 4 nights here and we were so fortunate to have visited some really incredible sights. Our first day began with yet again, a lunch suggestion by our hostel...They sent us on a nice little walk in the rain (without an umbrella, of course mine broke in Budapest, the 2nd day of the trip) and we found ourselves at the Augustiner Brewery, a very warm and cozy beer hall inhabited by mostly locals. My lunch was the best bratwurst I´ve ever eaten and just to note, I did not like sauerkraut before this meal...


The rest of the day was very relaxing, I actually didn´t feel very well later on in the afternoon and I think the previous 8 days were finally catching up to us, because we were exhausted too..So we relaxed in our hostel, watched a little German dubbed television and had a late dinner at a restaurant just around the corner. We saw a little of the city the first day so here are some pictures!

Theatinerkirche
(Adam makes fun of me for looking up the name of this building, but I was just curious!)

This is sort of an entry into the center of the city or Marienplatz, a very touristy plaza in el centro...Such a cool building though, huh?

We climbed a lot of staircases in a neighboring church to get this awesome view of the Glockenspiel in Marienplatz and the city behind it

Another view of Munich from above!

I´m not sure if I mentioned this already, but this is how we passed the time on train rides and downtime.. we played an extended version of Rummy 500, which by the end of the trip was somewhere around Rummy 6000...This is the train ride to a little town, 2 hoursish outside of Munich, called Füssen.. This a day trip we took to go see the Neuschwanstein Castle which was the inspiration of the Disney castle!! The train ride took us through cute little Bavarian towns, with rolling hills covered in snow and again, there were some pretty epic clouds. The scenery was very beautiful, but it honestly did not compare to the view of the Castle that we had been anticipating the whole trip...

This was another castle that we got to see on our hike up to the Neuschwanstein.. It is the Hohenschwangau Castle which means, "Castle of the High Swan Country"

Then we hiked up a huge hill to get to the Neuschwanstein...Adam and I chose not to buy tickets to go inside, we just wanted that incredible view that we had heard about.. We were walking around the outside of the castle when Adam pointed out a bridge across the mountain and we looked closely enough to see that there were people on it! So our next adventure was attempting to find that bridge through the snow covered mountains.

It ended up being a 30 minute walk up basically this...It was very tranquil for the most part, not really crowded with people...Adam did make friends with a group of three 12 year old German kids, who challenged him to a snowball fight...I got some of it on tape, and you can see for yourself, but I´d say the kids dominated Adam =).... unfortunately we had worn our tennies so our feet were a little wet from the walk, but it was totally worth it because this was our reward....

Photo taken by Adam... This is Swan Lake and runs right behind the Castle... In order to get a photo of the lake and the castle, you have apparently have to be a professional mountain climber and be a lot higher then the bridge allowed us.. either way, we still got an awesome view...

There it is! The Neuschwantsein Castle, can you see the resemblence with the Disney castle?? It´s there!

After asking about 5 different people, we finally got a shot of us with the castle in the background... Being on the icy bridge was making me really naucious so I was ready to make the descent back down the hill.

The next day in Munich was definitely not as uplifting as the Neuschwanstein Castle...We made a visit to the Dachau Concentration Camp, the first one built in Germany during WWII... When we first got to Munich, we weren´t sure if we were going to be up to it, because, like most people who have been to a WWII/Holocaust memorial know, it is depressing and almost just puts a damper on the day... but then realizing how important it is to be able to experience something that is part of our history, and somethign we´ve been learning about since we were little, we decided to go. The town of Dachau is very quiet and almost sort of eery, it probably didn´t help that we went on a very overcast and ugly day. The camp is extremely large and we self toured ourselves around the courtyards where they used to do roll call, the old living quarters, and we also walked through the crematorium/execution building. The signs direct you into the first room, where the prisoners were told was the waiting room for the showers.. Then the next room is where they were told to undress because they were going to have a huge group shower... The next room has holes in the ceiling and drains on the floor that could resemble a shower, however, in actuality it was the gas chamber where they executed a certain amount of prisoners at a time. It was hard walking through these rooms, my body was covered in chills and I could not spend much time observing the ovens where thousands of bodies were cremated. Although it is not easy for anyone, I am glad we made the trip, because it is so important to be awar and understand our world history in order to make sure our world moves in the right direction towards peace.

Entrance to the Memorial: "Work Brings Freedom"

A Memorial for the prisoners/victims of Dachau Concentration Camp

Another memorial

As I am writing this I am making myself more confused on what day we did certain things, I may have left some things out, but on to the last day..... I woke up extremely exhausted this day, and as a result of walking so much for 10 days straight my feet and legs were aching like crazy. The sun was out though, so Adam convinced me to take another walk with him to Olympic Park... On the map, Olympic Park was not so far from our hostel, DEFINITELY walking distance.. in reality, and perhaps we took the longest route possible, but we probably walked a good 4 miles to finally end up at the park.. it was a very strange park, lots of hills, weird, old-modern(that doesnt make sense but..) buildings with weird roofs and spaces.. It didn´t seem large enough to accomodate the mass number of people involved in the Olympic games, but, somehow they did it. There was no baseball field, and as Dave informed me, the reason is because baseball was not an official game of the Olympics until ´92 (I th ink). Either way, it was a beautiful day and Adam took an AMAZING foto of the olympic needle..LOOK!

So cool!

Old-Modern buildings, does it make sense now? Me in Olympic Park

After our adventures in Olympic park and confusion in trying to take the U-bahn (metro....the only metro ride we took in 4 cities) we decided we were up for one more walking site visit.. The Nyphenburg Palace. It was originally built as a hunting lodge, and it was expanded greatly with a HUUUUUGE backyard that you could honestly get lost in...so we did.

Front of the Palace

One night in Munich we went to the largest beer hall in Germany,(maybe in Europe and maybe in the world too...) We met our friends Derek and Leila there and tried to enjoy the 1 liters of Hofbrauhaus special beers.. We girlies got the light regular flava, but the boys got the dark brew. It was fun, there were A LOT of people, but it was very touristy and the service was not so friendly...but I guess I wouldnt be either if I had to wear uncomfortable leiderhosen and serve beer to loud drunk tourists..

HB, Hofbrauhaus!

Those are 1 liter glasses, but they start with almost half of it as foam, Germans like a good head on their beer, as we learned.

PROST!
It was such an amazing 12 days, Adam and I were able to see things at our own pace, which was a lot nicer then having to please lots of different people, and we just saw some incredible things. I´ve never gotten to travel like this before, so I have to say thanks to mother and father for fuding the trip, I am so fortunate to have gone to the places I did. Hopefully you will all be able to visit one day too!! DONT FORGET, go to Adam´s blog and watch the videos! They are all completed and posted and very entertaining!
CLICK HERE!!

auf weiderssain!!