Before I jump into my Spiel, I just want to show you pictures of this astonishingly beautiful church I saw in Munich, the Theatine Church. I’ve been to a lot of churches in Europe, and this is easily the most amazing one I have seen thus far.
Now that I got that out of my system, let me actually tell you about my adventures. The first day there, we (my groups of friends and I) sightsaw (?) around on our own. After we were done and starving, we went to the Hofbräuhaus, which is the most famous brewery in all of Germany. Here, I had the best beer and wurst of my life, while I was being served by people dressed in lederhosen and a German band played in the background. Side Note: They only sell the beers in liters at the Hofbräuhaus.
The next day we woke up ridiculously early to take a two hour train ride to Neuschwanstein, the castle that inspired Disney’s Cinderella Castle. It was breathtaking. Bear with me for a quick history lesson.
King Ludwig II, the king that commissioned the castle, was obsessed with fantasy and King Arthur as a child. When he was a young adult, he saw an opera by the little known composer Richard Wagner; he soon became Wagner’s patron, as well as good friend. After Ludwig’s power was revoked (this was during the time when Germany was unifying under Bismark and all that fun stuff), he dedicated himself to building magnificent castles. He made Neuschwanstein a monument to Wagner’s works and strove to make it a fantasy castle out of one of his operas. Needless to say, the Parliament was not happy about the massive amount of money that Ludwig was spending, so they put him under arrest. He died only a few days later under mysterious circumstances: Ludwig went for a walk around the local lake with his doctor (The Parliament was trying to prove that he was crazy, so the doctor was evaluating him.). Apparently, he was so upset that he had lost all his power, Ludwig decided to drown himself and accidentally drowned his doctor, as well. A bit fishy (forgive the unintended pun). Anyway, when he died only 1/3 of the rooms in the palace were complete. Bavaria opened the castle for visitors 6 weeks after his death, and it has made them untold amounts of money since.
The next day wasn’t as epic. We signed up for a “Third Reich Tour” – Munich is where the Nazi party was founded, so it has a lot of history. The tour ended up sucking like no other, so we ditched it along with this woman in her late 20’s, who ended up being very interesting. She was in training with the Navy to go to Iraq, but tore her knee before she was deployed. Now, she’s teaching English in France, so that she can learn French well enough to go to the Congo and help women who are victims of violence. Wow, I know. At any rate, she told us that Dachau (the concentration camp) was actually only a 15 minute train ride way. So, on the train to Dachau we went.
It was very depressing, but extremely interesting. We were there for 2 ½ hours, and it wasn’t nearly enough time; the on site museum was so detailed and interesting.
Afterward, we picked up the train back to Munich. This whole weekend we had been riding the train without tickets – it’s called “Schwartzfahr,” or black riding. Of course, this time there was a man checking tickets on the train. He started at the back, and my group, along with about 6 other people, moved towards the front of the train, praying that we’d reach the next stop before he got to us. Lucky, we did. Interesting Note: All of us were foreigners (American, British, Japananese).
Anyway, we made it to the Munich train station safe and sound and without having to pay a fine. While waiting for the train, I decided that I wanted to get a travel bottle of wine from the convenience store at the train station (remember, this is Germany). Now here, you can buy beer and wine at 16 and hard liquor at 18. As I was in the process of purchasing my wine, the cashier asked me “Wie alt bist du?” For those of you non-German speakers, that was him asking how old I was. This means that he thought I was 15. Needless to say, I gave him a look, and told him I was 21 while the cashier next to him laughed at his stupidity. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I was pseudo-carded in Germany.
And so, I’ve given you a ridiculously long, needlessly detailed account of my travels in Munich. Right now I’m in Belgium, so I’ll tell you more about that later. Until next time!
