Austria too!

how gross
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THURSDAY I left Madrid on Thursday (Thanksgiving) at about 2pm. My flight flew by because I made a talkative friend sitting next to me. He was 37 years old, was wearing a black turtleneck and little glasses, worked as a journalist for a German radio station and was named Wolfgang.  He was just visiting Madrid for a few days and returning to his hometown of Munich. He chatted my ear off for the entire 2 hour flight and then showed me how to get out of the airport. Quite an interesting character. Anyway, I got off the plane (it was zero degrees Celsius!) walked through the airport with festive decorations and waited for Max to arrive. I sat next to an older lady with a little terrier on her lap whose tongue was hanging out! I laughed and asked to take a picture, she okayed it and explained (in German, so I think this is what she said) that the dog had no teeth so the tongue always hung out! Hah! So Max and I figured out the train/metro system and headed to our hostel. After 45 minutes on the S-Bahn, we found our place which was more like a low budget hotel. Very nice! We headed out to dinner (much earlier than in Spain) and stumbled upon an adorable little restaurant. It had Christmas lights up around the outside, and the menu was all in German. We decided to give it a shot because it was fairly close to our place and looked like it had character. Luckily our waiter spoke English and had menus ready for us. He served us his favorite beer and I had a cheese noodle dish with fried onions on top and Max went for the beer bratwurst. We split a tasty apple strudel for dessert. We stayed there for almost three hours just enjoying the atmosphere. It was a great place, all Germans eating there, delicious food, and the staff was so friendly. We headed back to the hostel, after I called the family to wish them a Happy Thanksgiving.

aston martin
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FRIDAY We woke up at 9am in order to get the buffet breakfast being served at the hostel (cereal, yogurt and juice). We headed to the train station to figure out how to get to the concentration camp in Dachau. Luckily a German man came up and asked if we needed help. He showed us exactly what we needed to do and actually sold us his ticket (he had taken his mom to the airport and it was good for 24 hours) for only 5 euros instead of the usual 19! We took the train out to Dachau, hopped on a bus where we chatted with a family of four from Southern California. Dachau was...I can’t even come up with a word to describe a concentration camp. It was awesome (in the literal sense), scary, dark, bleak and freezing cold. We spent almost 3 hours there, using an audio guide and walking the grounds. We stopped for lunch at a café on the way back and had pretzels! (“Brezen” in German) We took the train back and ended up going to the university there in Munich. We walked in the campus (giant old building), took some pictures and made our way back to our hostel. We walked through the city center full of shops and restaurants and all decorated with lights! Loved the Christmas spirit. The center was the more ritzy area (Aston Martin dealership etc) and the outside of the stores looked like Gothic Cathedrals. We ended up in the main plaza where they had outdoor coffee/cider stands surrounding a crowded ice skating rink. We grabbed a milkshake (even though it was soo cold, it was the cheapest thing we could find) before continuing on our way. The lady there complimented my purse in German, or at least I think, and I definitely felt like the dumb American because it took me about 4 minutes to figure out what she was saying. So, I had read about a cool bar with chairs that hung from the ceiling like swings and we were determined to find it. We ended up walking to the wrong street (those crazy German street names got us confused!). We ended up just returning to our hostel, enjoying the numerous lights and whimsical stores along the way. I had my leftovers for dinner and Max had a sandwich. He had trouble ordering, ended up with a foot long instead of a 6inch and had to change his order after she had made it. She was a little annoyed but still nice about it. Germans are incredibly nice and friendly, contrary to the stereotype!

munich airport
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SATURDAY We woke up at 8am had our usual breakfast then back to the train station. We wanted to go to Salzburg, which I had also read about. The Sound of Music was filmed there! We bought a day pass for two and hopped on a train. It ended up being the wrong one. It was still going to Salzburg but was the high class expensive fast one so we had to get off and wait for another train then a bus, then another train.  Such a long trek, I ended up leaving my umbrella on one of the modes of transportation. :( We got into Salzburg without any plans. We found out The Sound of Music tour was 4 hours and almost 100 euros so we skipped that and did our own walking tour. We didn’t realize it, but Salzburg is actually in Austria, so there’s another country off my list! We walked into the center, through a pretty garden and park. It was a really cute town, small streets, tons of shops and Christmas fairs all over the place. They had a bunch of booths filled with all sorts of things: mugs, toys, pottery, ornaments, candles and of course pretzels and pastries. Another pretzel for lunch! We found an alley way with stairs and decided to hike up. It was a really steep hill with a great view of the city and ended at a church. After hiking back down, we found the biggest Christmas fair in the center of town. It was huge! There was a choir singing Chirstmas songs (I think? ...they were in German). We had a German drink called Gluvine which was basically warmed red wine with sugar and spices. Very tasty. And of course I ended up spilling some on my white scarf. Argh. We walked back across the bridge and along the river to the train station. I was just saying to Max that I could really go for a beer and literally two seconds later this group of high school boys walks up to us with a crate of beer and offered us some. We had some great Bavarian beer and ended up chatting with them the whole ride back. They were headed to a German reggae concert in Munich and lived just outside of the city. They taught us a few words in German (“prost” is cheers) and asked some questions about the states. One guy, Ramon, said “now, I have one question for you.” We thought it would be about Bush or something. He says “ is it true, I see it in the movies... do you have a big party where you dress up at the end of high school?” Haha he was talking about prom! He was pretty upset to hear that we have that and Germany didn`t. We got pictures with the group and exchanged emails and told them to come visit San Francisco. We had a cheap dinner of sandwiches and a marshmallow cookie thing. I bought a new umbrella (only 3 euro!) and Max bought a warm hat. We stopped at an internet café, only to discover my flight had been changed to 2 hours later! I called the company and unfortunately they couldn’t do anything about it. We had to get to bed really early for the long day ahead of us.

first night's dinner
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SUNDAY Max’s flight was at 6am (cheapest one for him) and mine wasn’t until 1130. We woke up at 3, after 5 hours of sleep, and got to the airport at 415am. We said our goodbyes and he left at 530 and I was left to wander for the next 6 hours. I had some hot chocolate, read every English magazine I could find in the stores, slept a bit and FINALLY boarded my plane at 11. Luckily I slept most of the way home and made it back to Madrid safely, just exhausted. Overall, I loved the trip; I think it was my favorite weekend so far! I really want to go back to Germany and see the rest of it...one weekend was not enough.