München und Füssen

     We just got back from Germany this morning, and it was amazing. We took a tour of Dachau, hung out in a bar/restaurant in Munich, hopped a train to Füssen, and toured the castle Neuschwanstein. I decided I'm going to give Dachau its own post because I think it will be long and more serious than this post. For know I'll just talk about the rest of the weekend.

     We left GTL at about 7:30 Friday night, and got to Munich at 5 or 5:30am Saturday morning. I didn't sleep at all, and no one slept for very long, so we were all pretty tired.  Our tour of Dachau wouldn't be until 10, so we decided to just walk around and explore Munich.  After all, a guest speaker in our GTL seminar told us the best way to explore a city is to get lost. Turns out that advice is actually quite terrible. After a couple hours of walking around, here's my impression of Germany so far.

Beautiful Fountain outside of a train station.

Great empty lot, with plenty of room for walking and dirt.

Elevator on the sidewalk. It lead to some sketch underground tunnels.

Good luck finding this in the dictionary.

    By this point we're beginning to wonder why we haven't stumbled upon anything great. Spoiler Alert: We should have gone left instead of right out of the train station. We did end up seeing a few picture-worthy things while wandering, though.

St. Paul's Cathedral. Unfortunately we couldn't go inside, and there wasn't a good point from which to take a picture.

Paul's holding two swords. I don't remember him mentioning them in his letters, but I'm sure he's got his reasons for having them.

I don't remember what this statue is for, but it's looks cool.

     After going back to the train station and looking at some maps, we had about an hour before we had to be back for our tour. We decided to explore in the other direction. It was a much more successful journey.

I found a fountain.

There were two cathedrals near each other. One of them is St. Peter's and the other is unknown to me. 

This cathedral is huge. And it's kind of like a giant cuckoo clock. People crowded together in front of it to watch the display.

     At this time we went back to the train station and met our tour guide for Dachau. We got back to downtown Munich at about 4:30, and our train to Füssen would leave at seven. We went in search of the Hofbräuhaus, a beer hall recommended by the same guy that told us to get lost in a foreign country. Even with my ability to ask for directions in German, this place took quite a while to find, but we eventually made it.

     Unfortunately, it was extremely packed due to a huge soccer game that day, and we didn't think we'd have time to get a table and have a meal there, so we went to a smaller bar/restaurant and had our first full German meal. We'd been living on pastries all day. The food was fantastic. In my opinion, German food wins on cost and taste of the places we've been so far. I had the wiener schnitzel. The next day I had a bratwurst and a curry-wurst. I was very surprised to find that the curry-wurst tasted great. Why was I surprised? Once again, the guy who told us to get LOST IN A FOREIGN COUNTRY (why did we listen to this guy?) also went on a five minute rant about how terrible curry-wursts were. 

     After eating in Munich, we got on the train to Füssen and went to the hostel as soon as we got there. We were all pretty exhausted. We got up early the next morning to go see Neuschwanstein, the castle that the Disney castle is based on.

Every lake I've seen in Germany and Switzerland has been extremely clear.

View from the smaller castle near Neuschwanstein.

I'm on a rock.

Now I'm a lion.

I'm unsure of the exact translation, but it's something along the lines of "Drink and eat, should you not forget God."  I probably butchered it, but that's the best I can do.  I think some of the words are archaic because google translate couldn't even get them.

Neuschwanstein. It was about a 20 minute hike up a mountain.

We could have ridden a carriage up the hill, but we decided to just walk.

I guess this is my castle face.

I got on the ground to get a couple of pictures, and another guy thought it was hilarious. I couldn't communicate with him because he was Asian and spoke no English. Once I realized he was laughing at me, I was a good sport about it and posed for him to take a picture of me. I told him to put it on Facebook, so hopefully I'll have a new profile pic soon.

Everyone else decided to go to Neuschwanstein the same day as us.

We took a tour inside the castle, but we couldn't take pictures of the inside. We were, however, allowed to take pictures out the windows.

      I had to put my backpack in a locker for the tour, and of course I forgot about it until I was already back down the mountain. None of my "friends" wanted to go get it for me, so I had to walk 15 minutes back up to the castle to get it. When I got back, it was time walk back to the train station, get some dinner, and head back to Metz.

I saw a portable CD player for the first time in ten years. Get with the times, Germany!

     We had a sleeper car from about midnight to 5. The mattress was similar in quality to stale bread, but that was good enough for me. I slept the whole time, and even took a two hour nap this morning before class. 

     I think I'll post later this week about the Dachau tour. Until then, auf Wiedersehen!