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Published: November 28th 2005
Füssen
Where we wandered around for an hour.Even though i'm pretty relieved to know that i wont have to go on any more 12 hour train rides across the continent any time soon, i'm still pretty sad about the fact that i'm almost done with my semester here. I ended my 6th day of rail travel with our trip to Munich for thanksgiving weekend. Keri and Sarah and I started out trip from Rome on Wednesday night after another long wednesday, and since we didnt book sleeper cars, we spent the night in an uncomfortable box with some initially irate italian lady and did not sleep, or at least i didnt. but in the morning, the ride was beautiful because we were traveling through mountains and fields covered wtih snow. soooo much snow. more than i've ever seen in my life. we got to munich and it was sooo cold there. still snowing pretty lightly. we stayed at the Euro Youth Hostel which was fortunately pretty close to the train station. but we didnt even get to check into our room until later that day so we stowed our bags away and took a train ride to Füssen, where we went to the Neuschwanstein castle. another 4 hour
Sarah and Keri in Füssen
and we thought THIS was Christmassy... round trip train ride (15 out of 24 hours spent on a train on the first day). since our passes were still validated for that day, we didnt have to spend any money on the ride there, so that was pretty cool. In Füssen, we missed the bus ride to the castles by 10 min. so we had to wait another hour for the next one to come. we went around the town looking at stuff and stopped in a cafe place to get some hot chocolate and keri got this really good plum cake thing. i ate so much this weekend, its a little embarassing, but i thought about it and then realized i would have eaten so much more if i had been home for thanksgiving dinner, so i dont feel so bad. we took the busses to the castles, but to get to Neuschwanstein, its another 40 min walk up a big hill or a 10 min bus ride or a 15 min horse and carriage ride. but the busses weren't running because of the snow, so we just had to take the carriage ride through the snowy mountains. it was pretty cool. i've never been on
one before. The castle was really cool, but we were so cold by this point, that none of us could feel our feet or hands, and most people there waiting on the tours were in the bathrooms using the air dryer to warm socks and shoes, myself included. The castle was really elaborate on teh inside and had a spectacular view of the valley and mountains. So we finished there and it was dark out even though it was only like 4:30 in the afternoon, we took another train ride back to munich and warmed up and got settled in our room. thats when i found out that my converter i need for my camera charger wont fit into german sockets, so i didnt get to take many pictures after the castle. Sarah's camera was acting up too so keri became the photographer for hte rest of the weekend. We ate dinner that night at the Augustiner Brau place, and it was a very very german beerhall experience, with everyone eating at big tables together singing and swaying and drinking and toasting to everything. we all got the roast pork that the guy at the hostel reccommended adn it was
very good. i havent eaten that much meat all semster in rome i think. and we got a sauerkraut salad, but it was different, becasue it was a cold salad, and these huge baseball sized potato dumplings, and of course huge beers. afterwards we were so full of food and beer and were still tired from going all day with no sleep the night before, we pretty much crashed afterwards. the next morning we walked through the town to find the Marienplatz, where they were jsut starting the Christkindlmarkt, and were lighting the huge tree that night. All the stands were up and i went crazy with all the christmas stuff everywhere and all the good smells of food and meat and fat cooking. i ate a bunch of chocolate covered fruits and fried potato pancakes that you dip in applesauce or sour cream or something. omg they were so good and fatty. yum. we also went into some of the huge department stores around there. the clothes they sell there are a lot more like american fashion than the crazy italian stuff here that is so expensive and shiny. there are these bookstores there called Hugendubel and they are
carriage ride
how picturesque. like the barnes and nobel of germany and we went into 3 of them in munich and i bought something at every single one including the diary of anne frank as a prelude to the trip to Amsterdam. the one on marienplatz is huge. 6 stories tall. so we went up to the top to take pictures of the Rathaus and the market. We got to the market just as they were beginning the ceremony for hte tree. and they had a band up in the Rathaus and some speaker and i didnt catch most of waht he was saying. i think it was just the history of the christkindlmarkt adn the christmas tree, but then they lit it and it was pretty. then we got some dinner at the bratwurst stand and it was SOOO GOOD. ahhh i wish i could have that everysingle day. all that sauerkraut and greasy meat. yum. got some glühwein later that night, its this hot spiced wine that is everywhere around town. i liked it a lot. warmed me up. then on saturday morning we woke up and walked around town just looking at stuff. for some reason, there are these huge lions
everywehre taht are painted and dressed up all crazy. they have the same thing in florence but its a cow, and in berlin its bears, as i found out from cassie. but we took pictures with the crazy lions. we also stopped at another cafe and had this little mocha cake and this big weird cookie filled with jam or something. it was delicious. the only thing that was not delicious was the coffee at the hostel breakfast. the hostel is really really nice otherwise. just really bad coffee. we actually got our own room at the hostel. 3 person private room. pretty cool, especially compared to where we're staying in amsterdam-- a 10 girl dorm room. yikes. so we walked around some more and found the hofbrauhaus and then we walked to st. peter's where we climbed the impossibly steep and narrow staircase all the way to the top of the tower. the view was really beautiful. but then we had to climb back down the stairs, and luckily we didnt run into nearly as many people on the way down as we did on teh way up. then we did some more shopping around the christmas market adn
then we had dinner that night at the hofbrauhaus. it was cool to go there, but it was a little bit disappointing. our waiter was mean and these guys sat down at our table and they looked about 13 years old so they got carded and since we were with them we got carded too. he asked how old i was and i told him 20 and he was very disbelieveing, and made us show id anyway. ugh! and then the menu was all in german (at the augustiner, we got english menus) so we just guessed at what to get and i was a little disappointed in mine adn keri was in hers too. then the next mornign we got up early and went to the train station to go on our very last train ride. it was 12 hours long. 12!! and by the time we got in to northern italy, about a million people got on our car and none had reservations so htey were all just standing out in the hallways for about 6 hours. i was sooo glad to be off of that train. but on the bus ride home, keri almost got pickpocked again!
it was really crowded and the guy standing by us unzipped her purse as she was pushing her way through the crowd, but she yanked it away from him before he got anything thankfully. i hate coming back to rome from traveling. the city is just full of perverts and thieves and rude people. i'm feeling a little jaded about rome right now. i tried to think of something i liked about it, and then i realized that the vatican isnt actually part of hte city, its its own country. so i decided it was the coffee. i like the coffee here. and gelato. i will miss the gelato and the coffee. anyway, i hope everyone back home had a really great thanksgiving, even if it was without me.
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Claus
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the other castle
"The other castle" near Neuschwanstein is called Hohenschwangau. Its the castle of King Ludwigs Parents. http://www.hohenschwangau.de/index.php?id=430 Living in munich, it really feels good to see people from other countries enyoing this city so much! Be sure to come back some times... And btw, Augustiner is sooo much better than Hofbräuhaus! ;-)