More Munich....

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Sorry I got cut off...anyway, the haufbrauhaus was even better than we expected...an oooompah band played hits all night and the halls were filled with drunken americans and japanese tourist groups (honestly, the bathrooms here smelled worse than any other that we have utilized). The next morning, we got up at around 9am to the sound of pouring rain (the area outside of the tent was complete mud) and headed out to our hostel, just around the corner from the main train station. Here we met up with our boy Rich (a ruffian university of Wisconsin grad student that we met up with in Prague who is basically on the same course as us)...we then boarded the two hour train to Fussen, a town southwest of Munich, in order to check out the famous Neuswanstein castle. Thinking that rain would eventually let up, we were disappointed to find that rain in this region of the Bavarian alps was much worse...fighting through the throngs of tourists we found that the castle tour would not fit into our schedule and we therefore opted to tour the Schwangau castle (much less striking than the other, but much more historical). Walking up the mountain we became soaked but finally arrived at the castle and took our tour (in all actuality, the castle, while dating back to the 16th century, really was not that significant) undeterred by the rain, we pushed on another 20 minutes uphill to check out the Neuswanstein caslte (very nice, absolutely no significance other than the fact that Walt Disney modeled all of his castles after this one). Soaked with rain, we headed back to Munich where we all had some more doners and inquired at the front desk as to where we could find a more traditional Bavarian beer hall expericence. We were pointed in the direction of the Augustiner hall, a ten minute walk from our hostel, here we found no tourists - only ze Germans and a seemingly endless supply of pork...it was a good time! We then topped off the night back at the Haufbrauhaus where good ol' Rich drank a liter in 38 seconds! (it was a truely awesome performance!). Today we all went to the Dachau concentration camp where, at the end, we found ourselves slightly depressed. Counteracting this somber experience, we took the famous Mike's bike tour of Munich where we rode around town on bike for 4 hours. Tomorrow we head for Switzerland (a six hour ride) where we will do some canyoning...

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