munich, germany

Munich was a blast!

We've had a really busy last couple of days, and are now in Berlin. Looks like that free internet didn't do us much good after all cause there was no time for it anyways..

On our first full day in Munich we met up with one of Mike's old roomates from Waterloo named Gunnar, who lives in Germany about an hour away from Munich. We went to a beer garden and he showed us around town a bit. We went to the English Gardens which is this huuuuge park with like a river that runs through it. There's also a man made surfing area at the entrance to the park which was awesome to see. The park was packed with people cause it was such a hot day and we regretted not bringing our bathing suits because we could have hopped into the river and rode it down a ways.. there were so many people doing that! That night was also the night of the World Cup finals. The Munich fan fest area was humongous, and every square inch was packed with people.. The Italian fans went CRAZY when Italy won and this one guy even grabbed Mike, picked him up, and started dancing around with him.. lol it was hilarious!

Our next morning was an early one.. we woke up around 5:45 and caught the first train to Fussen, which is near where the Castles we toured were. We went with this other guy from our hostel, Aaron, who is from Vancouver as well. It saved us on the train/bus cost because we had more people too. We bought this pass called the Bavaria pass which gives up to 5 people unlimited transit travel for one day.. .bonus! It turned out the pass wasn't valid until 9am though, so we had to get off at this little town and wait until 9 until we could get back on the train. We had breakfast there though so it all worked out ok. The other thing was that part of the train track was being repaired so we had to take this 45 min detour on a bus. We had made reservations for our tour of the two castles, and we still made it there in time for those. The first castle, Hoenschwangau was King Ludwig's parent's summer home. He grew up there and when he was older built a huge, extravagant castle of his own called Neuschwanstein, just across the way from Hoenschwangau. The tour of the first castle was a bit of an introduction and warm up for the second, which was a hundred times more amazing than the first. Ludwig never actually got to finish it though, because he was declared "insane" and soon after was found dead in a nearby lake. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside either of the castles, but I did manage to get a few spycam shots.. muhaha.. The hike up to Neushwanstein was pretty steep and we were quite out of breath.. it was so worth it though!

After both tours we hiked up to the bridge behind Neuschwanstein for an incredible view. Im so glad it was a nice day; rain would have really sucked. For the way down we took the trail down the gorge instead, to the base of this big waterfall and we actually climbed right along the rocks to the base of it. The water was sooo cold.. We tried motoring over to the luge course (bobsled on wheels down the mountain) but it was further that we thought and we got there 5 MINUTES too late ! grrr... we were like out of breath and sweating from the hike but the guy still wouldn't let us on.. oh well.. we caught the bus back to Fussen and began the train ride back to Munich.

The next day (yesterday) we went to the Deutsches Museum, which is kind of like Science World, but like a hundred times bigger. They had exhibits on every type of technology out there.. like computers, transportation, astronomy, power machines, boats, airplanes, and on and on and on... Afterwards we went to this huge beer hall called the Hofbrauhaus for dinner and 1L mugs of beer. I got this beer called Radler which had lemonade in it, it was delicious! We were planning on taking the night train to Berlin, but when we went to the train station to make the mandatory reservations, we found out it was full. Crap. So we went back to the hostel but they were full as well. Crap. Checked the other hostels on the street. Full, crap. We either had to sleep at the station of sneak back into our old hostel dorm and sleep on the floor or something. This wouldn't have been a problem because they have no way of keeping track of who's coming and going, but we just ended up staying up all night at the hostel bar with these guys from Scotland and a couple other people from Edmonton instead and caught the 5am train the Berlin. The Scots were CRAZY. The introduced us to a few Scottish drinking games and man do they take them seriously! They made Mike chug his beer just for re-explaining the rules to this other guy who wasn't paying attention.. lol They were so stereotypically Scottish, with the accents and the beer and the singing and banging on the table. It was a hilariously awesome night and sure helped us pass the time till we had to catch our train. We got their emails and might meet up with them in Scotland when we go there.

Now we are in Berlin and just took it easy today. We did laundry, and are going to plan out our next week. We have 5 nights booked here at the Circus Hostel, and might actaully add another because it seems like there is A LOT to see here, with all the WWII stuff and whatnot..

<3 shanon