My travels started early Saturday morning. 6:30am flight out of Alicante. We arrived in Memmingen Germany and had to take a 90 minute bus trip to Munich. (That’s why Ryanair flights are so cheap. They rarely fly straight into big cities. 90 minutes from Paris, 90 minutes from Barcelona, 90 minutes from London, 90 minutes from Milan, I could go on.)
So we got into the city around 11am. We checked into the hostel and went right to a free walking tour of the city. A nice Irish guy clad in lederhosen led us around. We were a group of about 20 people :/ oh well. It’s a big city so we didn’t see too much. We started at Marienplatz (a main plaza) and learned that Munich means “monk town.” It used to be a small city inhabited by monks. We visited a church that was “made by the devil himself.” The story goes that the devil promised the architect that he’d help if get built faster if the architect promised to not add windows. “Deal.” The devil wanted it to be a dark house of devil worship. Well maybe a decade later the church was done in record time and the devil went in and sunshine streaming it! Well the architect said they had already been there windows and he didn’t add anymore so he really did keep his part of the deal. The devil got mad and stamped is foot and now in the church there’s a big foot print in the entrance. And now it’s a beautiful church. During WWII, it was bombed but not badly. The priests heard that a nearby synagogue was going to be bombed too so they went and told the rabbis that they’d protect any precious relics. They kept them deep in the crypts of the church and after everything as over, the Jewish community was so grateful that they helped rebuild the church and now there’s a menorah on the ceiling :) how nice
Next we passed a huge Michael Jackson memorial (random) then headed to the “Tina Turner” church. Really it’s the Theatinerkirche, but our guide says every tourist calls it Tina Turner because it’s easier to say and easier to remember. Right next to that is some other building, I don’t remember what it was called but decades ago, Hitler stood on the steps addressing thousands of Nazi soldiers. Eerie.
Next we went to the most famous brewery in the world, the Hofbräuhaus. Then we walked to another brewery Augustin and everyone sat down for a beer.
The special thing about this place is that they brew God’s favorite beer. Why? Well, Pope Benedict is from Bavaria and he’s a big fan of the beer from Augustin. He drinks it every single Sunday. So if it’s the Pope’s favorite beer, it must be God’s favorite beer. So Sohae, Allison, and I shared a liter. Meh, I’m not a fan of beer, so I wasn’t too impressed.
After that we walked to the Viktualienmarkt which is a huge, amazing outdoor market located near a big beer garden. Beer gardens are basically big outdoor places with lots of picnic tables were of can just go and buy beer and bring your own food and hang out. So the tour culminated at the market and we all bought a little bit of food for our light late lunch/early dinner. I got some deliciously salty green olives with pimentos and a piece of apple strudel, Sohae got some goat cheese with a dry tomato sauce and a roll, Allison got some ice cream. We took our food back to Marienplatz and sat down in the middle of the plaza eating. 
A few minutes after we got there, the Glockenspiel started! According to our tour guide, the Glockenspiel is the second most overrated tourist attraction. I thought it was cute. It’s basically a little “marionette” show that depicts two scenes. The first is the wedding of Duke Wilhelm V and the second is the celebration of the plague leaving Munich. It plays every day at 11, 12, and 5. It’s been playing for the past hundred years. The show lasts about 15 minutes.
Next we decided to walk back to the hostel to take a siesta. I know that siestas are only in Spain, but we’re so accustomed to it now. At 8 we were out the door to meet up with some German boys (all 19 years old) Sohae met in Barcelona. They brought us to a mediocre Italian fast food place. One good thing is that they introduced us to our new favorite wine. Pinot Grigio. The three of us liked that a lot.
From there the guys took us to a club called Sugar. Johannes had made reservations so the six of us got a nice table and then some of their other friends joined us and someone must have ordered drinks because the waitress brought over a bucket with a handle of vodka and mixers. Drank some of that then we went upstairs to the DANCE FLOOR! It was packed but they played some pretty good music and we danced and danced and passed around what seemed like a bottomless bottle of Prosecco. They even played some Spanish music, and we felt at home. We left at about 3am (the party was still going pretty strong) and made our way home. Luckily our hostel wasn’t too far because Sohae and Allison were both in heals.
Let me tell you this, the whole night, the three of us didn’t pay for any drinks. Those German boys were awesome. They were really nice and protective and only spoke German like half the time, and we had an amazing night!
The next morning we woke and headed to the train station to make our way to Fussen, home of the Neuschwanstein Castle. Originally we were going to take a tour with Radius Tours but it was 32 Euros a piece and that was way expensive. We ended up buying a multi person day pass which only cost 29 for the three of us, round trip. So that saved a TON of money.
We set off on a two hour train ride south to Fussen. The best part of the day might have been the train ride. It was so scenic and beautiful. It was breathtaking. So classic. Hundreds of little cream colored houses with red or brown roofs.
But the funny yet awesome thing was that so many houses had solar panels on the roof! Amazing! So out of place, but so inspiring. We passed farms and forests. We passed rivers and creeks and lakes and slowly the mountains crept up on us.
It’s so easy to see why so many fairy tales were written in Germany. It’s so romantic and dreamy. Silly Sohae slept for most of the train ride but I was up out of my seat all the time trying to snap good pictures. Once we even opened the windows and I got some awesome train/scenery shots.
After a quick two hours we disembarked and made our way through Fussen, a bit lost as to how to get to the castle. We wandered into a souvenir store and found dozens of cuckoo clocks and beautiful music boxes and swords.
One of the music boxes played Edelweiss and it made me smile. We eventually found our way and took a bus to near the castle, but not near enough. The bus brought us to the ticket center and from there we had to take another bus, go up in a horse drawn carriage or hike. We decided to hike but first stopped for a bratwurst. It took about a half hour to walk uphill to the castle and then with time to spare, we took a bunch of photos of the surrounding area and the exterior of the castle.
Then our tour of the castle. It lasted only a half hour and an English speaking guide led a huge group through the finished parts of the castle. Turns out King Ludwig II died before the castle was completed so after his death, they stopped working and immediately turned it into a museum. The castle had three main floors and we visited the 1st and 3rd floors. 
We got to see the kitchen and his bedroom and some meeting rooms and reading rooms and a bunch of other places. Sadly, photography inside the castle was prohibited. But the place was lovely. So many paintings and intricately carved wooden paneling. And fun fact, Neuschwanstein means new swan stone. Ludwig was obsessed with swans and had an entire room decorated with swans. The guide told us that there were hundreds of swan images in that one room. It was true. She also showed us some hidden passage ways and the servants’ quarters, which were definitely nicer than my dorm room. King Ludwig II was also known for his interest in new fangled inventions so his castle had a little electricity and his private rooms had indoor plumbing. He even had a phone that called down to the post office. It was a pretty cool place. And another fun fact, Walt Disney based his Sleeping Beauty’s castle off Neuschwanstein. You can tell because the outside is very modern looking and not very intricately designed like other castles.
After the castle, we were getting pretty tired so we walked back down the mountain, stopping for some DELICIOUS fried cream cheese dough balls on the way. Then we made the two hour journey back to Munich and got some kebaps and called it an early night.
I’ll just leave this post at this and work on the Salzburg one as a separate post since this is already long enough, but I’ll close with this. The scenery made the entire weekend. I’ve never seen more beautiful places in my life. I think I’d like to come back to Germany one day, maybe for my honeymoon, and ski in the Alps and visit Berlin and stay in a small town in the German countryside. That would be just perfect :)
This post made me smile :)
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