Last Stop

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It's 6:16 on a rainy saturday morning. I'm on my way back to Amsterdam. It was an early morrning to catch the train at 5:44am and will be a late night rolling into Amsterdam at 11:02pm. That's correct....I will be in transit today for a total of over 17 hours....that's almost twice as long as my flight from Vancouver! If you're thinking there's gotta be a better way to do it....you're correct. The options were a 135 euro fast train, or a 200 euro flight. I bit the bullet and went for the long day costing me only 71 euros. It's going to be a long one though!! Hopefully my 2 paperback novels, 3 classic fiction ebooks i downloaded for free, ipod, and computer can help me get through this evil day.
Munich. Second time around was good but the time is just going so fast!! i really cannot beleive that I'll be staying in my last hostel tonight and with only 2 full days in Amsterdam it's back on the plane heading home!!
My first night in town was uneventful, just did some souvenir shopping for Sarah and Kendra. Sarah wanted a deautchland hoody to represent randy's german heritage and Kendra (litte cuz) is in love with germany. They were sold out of small hoodies to kendra gets a t-shirt, newspaper and sticker. Had a german meal of sausages and saurkraut, headed back to the hostel and sat in the bar hanging out with my friend...mr computer. The bar was dead but there were 2 bartenders so we were chatting and decided we should probabaly get some exercise. So the wii came out!! So we played tennis doubles style and i maybe got my ass whooped, but we don't need to talk about that! It ended up getting busy so a whole bunch of us were hanging out. But, i had to call it an early night because 8:45 was the meeting time for the Neuschwanstein Castle day trip!!
There are a few tours in town that go out there, but they all require you to take the train and only tour the areafor a couple of hours. The tour I did was AWESOME!!!
They drive you out there in their luxury coach, have bikes ready to go for a nice bike ride around the countryside there and to swan lake. It reminded me so much of a provincial campground in BC!! So cute. So some people swam, then we headed back to this little restaurant for lunch. Next up, we did what was called an alpine slide. kinda like a luge but not with ice, not so intense but it was still fun because you control how fast you go yourself.
There was a little something thrown into the tour that you don't normally get...a magic show!!!
Yes you heard right. Our tour guide is an expert close up magician, he even went to the german academy of magic and has been to the worldwide magic competitions!! He was soooo good. The fastest hands in history, I'm not sure how its possible!! Like for one trick he would have had to look at every card he was dealing out with no one seeing, and he did! one was really neat...he had blank paper in his hands the same size as bills but no ink or anything on them. Keep in mind he was wearing short sleeves and had his hands out infront of him and i was no more than 3 feet away from him. There was nothing in his hands except the black paper, then with a flip of his hands he was holding new 10 euro bills. WHERE DID THEY COME FROM!?!? no idea. That's what i mean by so fast! He was joking around that the best time to pull out that trick is when they're not expecting it. His favourtie was one time in a walmart in florida had 6 one dollar bills in his hand. not enough to pay the bill. He said he was acting all flustered and embarassed that he didn't have enough money and was trying to draw a crowd in. Then he finally 'oh i know' and busted out his trick and changed it to 6 twenty dollar bills! hahaha. He said the casher nearly lost her mind, looking at the money in astonishment. hahah!
Anyways....up to this point it had been a beautiful day. Rumour had it that severe thundershowers were on the way. The rumours were correct!! On our hike up the waterfall gorge to the castle, we were getting poured on!! Good thing for us the company gave out ponchos so other than our shoes, we were pretty dry underneath.
I can't even explain how pretty this castle was. Perched on the top of cliffs, a waterfall going down behind it, mist in the hills. Neuschwanstein was actually the castle that walt disney based his design for the disney sympol and sleeping beauty's castle!! Now I didn't actually see princess Aurora but I'm sure she was hiding somewhere.
This was the very fist castle I had ever been in....and it was incredible!! The inside was all nice furniture and carpets and everything was so grand! It's exactly what you would think a castle would be like. The guy who built it was very young, King Ludwig. He became king at 18 and starting building castles. 3. This was very expensive and a psychiatrist called him certifiably insane. Funny thing because the psychiatrist never met him! There are different theories, but the one that makes the most sense is that the king's men stepped in, knowing he was blowing all this money and wanted him out of power. His bedroom alone took 12 carpenters 4 years to construct because it had replica church towers carved and was incredibly intricate and detailed. So he was taken from the castle and the government took it over. King Ludwig and his psychiatrist both ended up dead in 2 feet of water. No one knows exactly what happened. All the tour guide says is that they died of mysterious circumstances. Some think what makes the most sense is that the government had ludwig shot in the water and the psychiatrist knew too much so he was killed as well. But no one really knows, it's one of the big mysteries of munich's history.
We weren't exactly allowed to take pictures in the castle (which is bull) but whatever. I snuck a couple of them. Unfortunately when i was going to take a picture of his ludwigs bed....there was a tour guide hiding behind me and FREAKED on me. Scared the shit out of me because she clapped her hands and bellowed 'NOOOO PIICTUURESSS' right into my ear!! Apparently they're the only castle you're not allowed to take pictures in, probabaly becauae it's a money grab to sell picture books in one of the two book shops you walk through during the tour.
So after the castle we called it a day and headed back to munich at 8pm. A girl i met from calgary and i headed to the hofbrauhaus to grab dinner when we got back, then i went back to the hostel for the night.
My last day in munich i just did some wandering around and shopping. Planned to head over to the english gardens and hang out by the river. Well the weather had different plans. I was stuck in the hostel all afternoon because the rain was relentless! I ended up making the journy to the hofbrauhaus again because the people from vienna who i went to the concert with were in town and i was meeting them. Well, i waited for half and hour and they didn't show up. Later on facebook they said the bus was late and they would be half an hour late. But oh well, i went back to the hostel and had pizza and a beer for dinner. Then to bed early to make sure i would get up for this train day. So other than the castle tour, munich was pretty casual for the second time around.
I'll probably get one more blog in before home. So talk to you again in a few days!!

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