München fun--Germany part 1

Germany...

Christmas Day, we arrived in Munich, or München. We checked into our hostel before going to the city center to explore—with it being Christmas Day, virtually nothing was open. There was an ice rink with food vendors by the McDonald’s in Karlsplatz, so we ate lunch there and continued on our way exploring the city—we didn’t actually go in any museums or churches, which in hindsight was kind of lame. We took trams and the metro as much as possible to stay in from the cold. We sought refuge in a coffee shop and the McDonald’s too. We ended up back at Karlsplatz and went ice skating! It was fun, and very Christmas-y. It was nice, as I was kind of having a hard time not being at home on that day, and the persistent gliding of my skates over the ice (and around the small children) was wonderful. We went back to the hostel to warm up, and then headed out to dinner. We ate at the famous Hofbrauhaus. It was fun, the food was fine, the beer was almost okay—I ordered a Radler so it was mixed with sprite “lemonade,” but I was only able to finish like a quarter of it anyways. I unfortunately deleted nearly all of the photos from Munich—I thought I had uploaded them to my hard drive, and was thus deleting them one at a time while at my friend Megan’s concert, only to realize I had two copies of the Austria photos and zero copies of the Germany ones. I am SO MAD at myself!!!
But, I digress. The beer guy was cute, the pretzel girls were not, and it was once again strange to be in places people from my past had been, but I had my own fun—and was able to get my own souvenirs!

So, we did the mandatory Hofbrauhaus beer experience, and then booked our trip to Neuschwanstein for the morning. We got up early and ate our overpriced hostel breakfast and hit the metro to the train station—but our metro was diverted to the next stop because of police activity? We were a bit stressed out but got to our tour guide in time—the tour was cheaper than the train ticket and entrance fee, and we didn’t have to wait in lines or get lost on our own (which actually rang true throughout the trip). It was 2 hours by train to Hohenschwangau, the little village nestled in the Bavarian Alps that is the home of King Ludwig III’s fantasy castle. It was very pretty, even though it was only 1/3 finished when he died. They opened it to tourists a month after he died to help pay the bills. More spectacular than the castle were the incredible landscapes and views around the castle. Hohenschwangau castle, (King Ludwig’s childhood home) was also pretty from the outside, but we didn’t go inside because the tour guide it said it was nothing spectacular—just your average European castle. (Gosh, how snobbish does that sound?!?!?!) The train ride back was miserable—one very overcrowded train for an hour and ten minutes, standing the whole way because the insane asian tourists are so good at pushing onto trains... By the time we got back to Munich it was dark, so we grabbed dinner at the train station, warmed up at the hostel, and then got on an overnight train to Berlin...

TO BE CONTINUED...