Munich, Neuschwanstein, and Dachau

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I think this weekend is one of the best I’ve had thus far! Jeff, Steven, Andrea, and I rented a car and headed out to Munich on Friday after school. Not to toot our own horns, but we are a ton of fun! It was loads of fun from the get-go. We had a nice, leisurely drive to Munich and arrived at our hostel (Meininger) around 9:30 pm. It was very nice and was actually ranked in the top few hostels in Germany. The best part was that the room had a private bathroom and shower, not that the shower got much use with only one person using it all weekend, but it was nice to know it was there! Saturday morning we got up, had a free continental breakfast, packed our “free” continental sandwiches, and headed to Neuschwantstein Castle, aka the Disney castle. The boys slept in back almost the entire way there, as always, and we hit a bit of snow on the way. Good thing we had “winter tires!” After parking, we trekked our way up the snowy, wintery, horse-pie ridden path to the castle. Perhaps we should have shelled out the extra five euro so that we could ridden with the horses instead of walking through their presents up the hill. It was so snowy, in fact, that when we got there, we had to ask, “Is this it? I can’t tell!” While waiting for our tour (of thirty plus people!) to start, we mingled with a group of Italian high school boys who spoke in very broken English. Even their high school English teacher could not understand us! I don’t know if that speaks poorly for them or for us! Finally it was time for our tour to begin, and I’m pretty sure they don’t put a cap on how many people can partake in one tour. For this reason, our English speaking tour was way overcrowded with people that couldn’t hear, and as a result were talking, and as a result prevented the few people trying to listen from hearing. It was quite frustrating at times and unfortunately did take away from the tour a bit. The parts we did hear were pretty interesting, though, about “mad” King Ludwig II of Bavaria. He built the castle as his own personal fairy tale land, with every room filled with murals of dragons, swans, and believe it or not biblical stories. The castle is one of the more recent ones in Germany, being built in 1879. In fact, Ludwig was a bit of a “techie,” as the tour guide put it, and actually had a working telephone in his castle! Those are two things you certainly wouldn’t normally associate—castles and telephones! We spent the rest of the day in Munich, touring the sites, taking it all in. In the late afternoon, Andrea and I visited the Neue Pinathotek art museum to see more of Van Gogh and Monet’s masterpieces. Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” actually reside here, as does another smaller piece of Monet’s “Waterlily” collection. We were on the speed tour since we only had an hour to make it through the entire museum before it closed. That evening we enjoyed a nice dinner at the highly recommended Hofbrauhaus, the center of Oktoberfest in Germany! It was crazy since there was a big soccer game the next day…lots of singing and toasting and good old fashioned drunken debauchery. In fact, we were greeted by some drunk German falling out of the doors mumbling (in German) something about alcohol and how he had already had too much. He might be surprised to know that we did not need him to tell us that. We were joined at our table by a colorful group of English-speaking Germans, but talking politics, sex, and foreign policy for a couple hours, when I wanted to just relax with my friends, was not my idea of the best time. It wasn’t all for naught! We “borrowed” a few HB mugs as souvenirs for our friends, family, and, in Jeff’s case, his giddy self!

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Sunday we headed back home and stopped at Dachau Concentration Camp for a few hours. It was very sobering and stomach-turning. By the end, I almost couldn’t look at any more pictures or hear anymore about the cruelty and torture that humans can inflict on other human beings. Anyone that has studied WWII and the Holocaust knows that it was bad, but you truly don’t have any idea and can’t really understand the pain and suffering until you enter a concentration camp yourself. Words can't describe. Take a look at the pictures.