Ladies and Germs

Back to blogging about my adventures! Thanks for letting me take a slight break. :)

So, earlier this week I went to Neuschwanstein castle and München! Or Munich. I'm just trying to sound like I speak a little German. My friend Kelsey Barker from high school is studying in Germany so we met up in the middle at Neuschwanstein and traveled around together. 


My first day started off a little hectic. I woke up with plenty of time to catch my train on Monday morning, got to the train station at around 6:15 (my train left at 6:35) and realized that I had left a very important paper at my apartment approximately 10 minutes away. This paper had a list of exactly every place I was supposed to transfer trains or buses. This is even more important because I had to get on one train, then switch trains, get off that train and on a bus, get off that bus onto another bus...and I had no idea where I was going or which stops to get off at. That paper told me where I was going. Therefore, I literally sprinted home, snatched the paper, sprinted back to the train station, and caught my train with about three or four minutes to spare. Thank heavens I did, otherwise I know I would have gotten lost. 


From there I had one of the prettiest train rides ever. It was through a lot of foresty area and I got a great view of the Austrian countryside. I'll admit that until I arrived at the castle, I was completely nervous that I was going the wrong way, that I had missed my stop, that something would go wrong, everything. I couldn't relax until I was finally off the last bus. 

When I got off that last bus, it was FREEZING outside. I got there before Kelsey, so I decided to explore some gift shops and touristy things like that. I bought myself a ridiculously overpriced hot chocolate and waited for Kelsey.


When Kelsey finally came she explained that she had overslept and that's why she was late, but it all turned out just fine. Mainly because she met some Australian guys on the train that were part of a tour group and they told her that we should tag along with them and just tip the tour guide at the end. So that's what we did. I need to take a side note here and describe to you our tour guide. He sounded EXACTLY like Norm MacDonald, and the more you listened to him the more he started to look like Norm MacDonald. Kelsey hit it right on the nose by saying "He's the American that American's make fun of." He would use all sorts of phrases that nobody in the States really uses seriously such as, "Let's boogie," and "Come here, Ladies and Germs," and "this is a hoot and a half..." and things like that. He talked way too much, but it made for a really good memory. 


As for the actual tour of Neuschwanstein...holy cow. That place is incredibly beautiful. We hiked up to the castle and we were surrounded by trees that were changing colors and the temperature was perfect. We talked with the two Aussies, Matt and Brody, and we also met a couple, Roxy and Sammy, from California who had been backpacking through Europe for three months. We walked through the castle, which was really cool. King Ludwig II died while they were building it and they so stopped building right after his death and the castle is still unfinished. That made the tour a lot shorter than we all expected. That's okay, because the best part in my opinion was looking at the castle from the outside. We hiked to this bridge packed with people that looked out over Schwangau (the town) and waterfalls, and the castle. Breathtaking. Then we hiked further down to more waterfalls and streams and awesomeness. Gosh. It was amazing. I was so content. 


From there we took a train back to Munich with the tour group we were with. It was about a two hour train ride back, but Kurt, our tour guide, talked to us almost the whole way back about the controversy surrounding Ludwig's death. It was pretty entertaining. We also discovered that Matt was staying in the hostel right next door to us, Brody was leaving on a train late that night, and the Californians were in a different hostel and were leaving for home the next day. 


When we got back to Munich, we checked into our hostel, dropped our bags off, and met up with our friends for some dinner at an Italian place. It was interesting because we were in Germany, at an Italian restaurant, and the waiter kept speaking French to us. Multicultural dining, folks. After dinner, we exchanged information, said goodbye to our new friends, and decided to walk around Munich at night. It's a really cool city, and it was foggy which made the visual even cooler. All my pictures I took from that night look really creepy. We found the Hofbräuhaus, a really famous bar in Munich, and went inside for a little while. It was soo crowded, but we got a taste of classic Bavaria. There were women dressed in traditional German outfits carrying several hug mugs of beer, the floors were sticky, there was a Bavarian band playing, and people singing drinking songs...it was awesome. Since it was so crowded and we had already eaten, we decided to go back the next day for dinner.

So, we went back to our hostel. Lucky for us, there was a crappy Finnish cover band playing that night! Even more lucky for us, we were in a room with a terribly patched hole in the ceiling, so we could hear the music loud and clear as we tried to fall asleep. It was louder IN our room than outside of our room. I was really tired, so I didn't have that hard of a time falling asleep once I put my headphones in.

We woke up the next day and headed out to the city to walk around and take some more pictures in the daylight. We were planning on taking a tour of the concentration camp Dachau, but the tour didn't leave until about 11:15. It was a Catholic holiday so most of the churches were having mass. It was actually really cool to walk in and kind of watch some of the things that were going on inside the churches.

Then, we met up with Matt, our awesome Australian friend, and found the tour group. I ended up paying only 18 Euro for transportation there and back as well as a tour of Dachau. Pretty stinkin' good deal. I need to find more of these tour companies when I travel other places. We took a train, and then a bus up to Dachau. Kelsey and I sat next to these two Italian guys on the bus that knew VERY little English or German. So, he kept saying things like, "Italiano! Spaghetti! Si! Lasagna! Bella!" and we just laughed and repeated everything he said. It was really quite entertaining.

The tour of Dachau was something I'll never forget. It ended up being about a three hour tour or so. Our tour guide was this small little Irish guy that was very knowledgeable and had a very good way of explaining everything in the camp. It really was a spiritual experience being there, and it's kind of hard to explain the way I felt there, and I'm so glad I had the chance to go.

We didn't have too much time left after we got back because Kelsey and I both had trains to catch that night. We decided to head back to Hofbräuhaus to eat and then take off. Matt came with us and we all enjoyed a great, traditional meal together. Kelsey and I got great pictures of us drinking our non-alcoholic beverages (water for her, apple juice for me). Then we kind of lost track of time and ended up running to catch my train. I made it just fine, had a pleasant ride back to Innsbruck, and slept like a rock that night.

So there you have it! One of my adventures while being here. It was a really great trip. And in other news, I'm doing very well here. The homesickness is very, very minimal now and I'm going to be incredibly sad to leave this place. I'm only a few days away from the halfway point, which is crazy. It's a good thing I've got some pretty great things waiting at home for me, or I'd probably never leave.

Auf wiedersehen! :)