My Roadtrip 17th -20th September: Munich, GERMANY

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.......On the 16 September I arrived Melbourne Airport about oh…say 4 hours too early!( Not my fault, but it did make the whole 22 hour flight trip to Europe, that little bit longer). Mum and I were travelling together to Germany to visit Sam, before I travelled on my own for a little while. After a couple of stopovers at Singapore and Dubai, and not much sleep, we landed in Munich. Sam was there to meet us at the airport, although neither mum nor I recognized her at first, and walked straight past her.





Once in Munich we raced to get our hire car and head to the hostel. I however, had totally forgotten about the whole left hand drive thing and spent 30minutes trying to figure out how to navigate the car out of the car park. Sam managed to work out how to use the cars GPS satellite navigation system even though it was in German, and this soon became our best friend. We even named the GPS voice Thelma, as we hung on her every word for directions, to the point where if she told us to drive straight off a cliff, we probably would have! After a short trip along the autobahn at 160km/hour, we arrived at our hostel a lot sooner than I had expected. I did feel a little stupid driving a brand new Mercedes into the garage of a budget backpackers hostel, but that was our little bit of comfort for our trip.






We stayed at Easy Palace hostel in Munich and after a little rest, set out to explore the Marienplatz and many, many, of the beer gartens. After a little lesson on beer, I put myself to bed early.





We woke waaaaayyyy too early, on 18th September, to a very rainy and yucky day. Nevertheless, we drove out to Dachau concentration camp for a look around. Feeling very tourist like, we thought we might drive to another very popular tourist location, the Neuschwanstein Castle. Around 4 hours later, and after numerous stops for directions, we found the Castle. Feeling a little worse for wear, (mum and Sam found it quite amusing that I was car sick when I was the one driving) we turned back. What should have been a 50 minute drive, turned out to be 4 hours, and left us 5 minutes up the road from the border or Austria. What was Thelma thinking!!!....so basically after promising mum that we will one day get to the castle, we have rescheduled that tourist attraction for the end of our trip...





We stopped off at a little country restaurant for some struddle and coffee, where nobody spoke English and the little old lady who owned the place was so bewildered to have foreigners in her restaurant that she followed mum into the toilet dumbfounded. On leaving the little town, we found our car surrounded by cows on the main road, and stuck, unable to drive anywhere until they all passed. We three sat in the car while stationary, laughing until we cried at the thought that this was a normal sight and probably routine activity for the people in this town... and they thought we were strange.





Our last day in Munich, ( 19th September) was spent exploring the rest of the city square, shopping, shopping, taking photos of the Glockenspiel, shopping and hiring a bike to ride through the Englisher Gartens. Later that night, we took the U train to the Hofbrauhaus beer hall, a definite eye opener for mum! Before we left the next day, we went for a walk around the Oktoberfest site. They had nearly finished setting up the various beer tents and amusement rides as it was to open the following week. It was great to walk around the festival site without the few million other people who are expected to visit it next week.

We went back to the hostel, and packed the car with all our luggage...yes....three girls worth of luggage, (you can imagine how many pairs of shoes and straightening irons we had between us), and headed off (under Thelmas direction) to Dresden.

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