Munich Day 1 and 2 (tours, beers, and castles!)

We got off our overnight train and found our hostel. Ian (friend from the train) was just in the city til that night when he had a train to catch, so he tagged along with us!

The 5 of us put our bags in the luggage room and paid for the all-you-can-eat breakfast at the hostel. After some good grub we were off to our New Europe tour!!!

Now, this was my least favorite of our tours. The tour guide was just not up to par with the others we've had. But we saw some cool things, including:
-the glockenspeil
-the opera house
-the memorial to german resistance
-Frauenkirche
-new town hall
-old town hall

Its funny... Because of having to be rebuilt, the new town hall is older than the old town hall! Haha.

We also heard the legend of the devil's footprint and the origins of Oktoberfest. With that, we learned that the average resident of munich drinks 1.5 liters of beer per day. WOW.

So after the tour we went to a restraunt with the tour group. It was yummy foor for a low price with large portions. Our tour group really hit it off together! After that, we left tour guide Kevin to go back to the hofbrauhaus with most of our group. We had looots of fun all together. Ther was the 5 of us, Kathleen from Australia, and Emmett and Justine from Montreal.
The Hofbrauhaus is this awesome beer garden with a huge beer hall onside as well! We played 21, a scottish drinking game we picked up in Prague. It's so much fun whether or not you have alcohol! When Pat had to drink we'd all yell, "Hydrate!!!!"

Later on we went back to the hostel, checked in, and went for drinks/food with this same group. We really had a great time together!

The next day, pat and I were off to a New Europe tour that we paid for: Neuschwanstein Castle Tour. Now for those of you wondering, yes, this is the castle that Sleeping Beauty's castle was based off of! I can't believe I actually got to go there!

It was a 2 hour train ride there, but the countryside was pretty and every so often we'd pass a little German village :-)

When we got there we heard a lot about Ludwig II, who built this castle. He was very into fantasy worlds, which is why he built the castle, and many people felt he was insane. Others think he was just very forward thinking. To me it seemed like he was a really smart guy who had a great imagination. I liked his life story so much that I think I'm gonna read up some more on him. How he died exactly is still a mystery, too. There's lots of sketchy things that went down.

Anywho, we saw Hohenschwangau Castle, which was the weeked getaway castle that Ludwug grew up in. Swan Lake is right behind the castle and our tour guide told us the legend of the Swan King. Swans were Ludwigs favorite animal because of this!

We hiked the mountain to Mary's Bridge (Marienbrucke Bridge). This is the only thing in germany with the name Mary that is not named after the Virgin Mary... It was named for Ludwig's mother. He built this bridge to connect the two mountains near the top. It's been reinforced with steel so that it's save to go on, but it was still impressive that the wood from the 1800's is still there!

The view from the bridge was amazing. Mountains on one side, waterfall below us, and the castle followed by the valley on the other side. It was so pretty! And a really rewarding view for climbing the mountain lol.

We walked down another path for a minute and we were at my castle! I mean sleeping beauty's castle. Oh oops.... Ludwig's castle. It's so impressive on the outside!

We had a different tour guide for inside the castle (they don't let anyone but their own tour guides in). He was kind of a creepy guy! He was like half robot, half ghost. Strange.

We weren't allowed to take pictures on the inside (I still snuck a few). This place was INCREDIBLE!!! No wonder it took 4 carpenters 4 years to do the bedroom alone! No wonder Ludwig got himself into so much debt (the equivalent of 15,000 euros)! There was no detail left uncovered. He even had a secret doorway in his room. And a hallway that was a replica of a cave because of one of his favorite shows!

The castle has a very modern kitchen for it's time, running water, central heating (a system of stoves), one of the very first telephones (connected only to the post office), and a flushing toilet!! Its a shame that the guy only got to live there for 172 days before he died (...or was murdered..). I mean, I would live here in the servants quarters if I could!

Back to reality, we went back to munich. Well, that's not REALLY reality, now is it? Lol. We went out (the 4 of us and 2 girls from the hostel that jen and dave had met) to the hofbrauhaus to watch the game!!! USA versus Ghana. Jen and I bought flags to wear (everyone here shows team pride!!) And we were off! When I walked in I was carrying my flag in my hand and everyone yelled at me til I wore it!! It was the perfect place to watch the game. Everyone was so into it and we had so much fun! That is, until the US lost. Oh well. We'll get em in 4 years!

Oh on the way back to the hostel we stopped and saw this really funny guy playing guitar on the street. He stopped to speak to the crowd a bunch of times. He was so good that I stayed there about 10 minutes!

That was about all for that day! More munich to report about in the next post!