Munich

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Our last day in Amsterdam was spent mostly at the Heineken experience. After a not so quick all you can eat ribs breakfast for Binnson, we headed there on the tram. For not having high expectations, the Heineken experience was actually a lot of fun! It’s based in a former brewery and has lots of fun things to do while learning about the history of Heineken, the brewing process, bottling and more. There was a ride, a swanky little bar, and a DJ game where Binnson took a spin. They also give you some free beer and we got free sunglasses. Later we stopped at the iamsterdam sign so we could get a quick picture before grabbing our bags and going to the train station for our night train to Munich.

The train sleeper cars are no different than the ones that we have taken before in Vietnam and somehow we always end up on the top bunk. As we crawled up to the top and squished our bags away, four British guys piled in our tiny car and took the 4 bottom bunks. Around 5:30-6am we were woken up by loud banging our sleeper door and someone yelling in German. Groggily, I pulled the curtain back to see a man wearing rubber gloves and holding his ID to the glass window. I unlocked the door and he continued to talk in German until he looked at the confused faces in our bunks and switched to English. He was looking for our passports and tickets, border crossing! He continued to ask if we had been in contact with drugs, etc (leaving Amsterdam...) - the Brits admitted to being in a lot of coffee shops while they were in Amsterdam and right away they were ordered out of their bunks and told to bring all of their bags. I watched from my nice little top bunk as the Germans went through every single thing the Brits had with them. They took all of their clothes and searched every pocket, they looked in socks, hair gels, pen lids, EVERYTHING. In the end the one guy was caught with some weed and hash and was taken away to fill out papers, apparently he is to expect post from Germany when he returns to the UK.

We got to Munich at 7:15am and spent the next couple hours trying to figure out the train/tram/bus system and what pass we needed to buy. This was followed by us getting on the right S-bahn train and getting off at the wrong stop, giving us a nice morning 2km hike to our hotel! We had been lucky at finding an awesome deal on Expedia's 40% off list for Munich, paying the same price per night as we would have for a crappy hotel at the Holiday Inn. Our hotel experience can officially only go down from here, the complimentary blow dryers of Amsterdam can't compare with the towel heater, sauna, coffee maker and croissants of the Holiday Inn! The only downfall is it is far from the city center but easily reached by the S-bahn train system. Anyways, after hiking with our bags in the hot morning sun after an 11 hour train ride - we were disgusting. We walked into the hotel where business men in suits were milling about and tried not to sweat on anything, clearly not a backpacker’s hotel. After some showers, tea, and croissants, we headed out.

Starting at Marienplatz square, we walked to the Viktualienmarkt - a big outdoor farmers market basically- where we discovered that Munich is the land of sausage, giant pretzels, and giant beers. Walking back to Marienplatz new town hall for a quick Glockenspiel show, we jumped on a tram to head for Englischer Garden. It is a huge park of trees, grass plains, and water that is apparently bigger than NY's central park. There were a ton of people out running, biking, and playing in the sun. We headed towards the Chinesischer Trum and were greeted by a giant beer garden when we got there. So we grabbed more food and beer and pulled up a bench to join the festivities. So much fun!

The next couple of days were spent at Dachau and the castles in Fussen. Dachau is the first concentration camp and it is very well documented out at the site. We took a train to Fussen to visit the Neuschwanstein Schloss and Hohenschwangau Schloss (castles), the castles were awesome, the History of Barvairan kings museum was not. It is really nice and everything but sooo boring. So we headed back to Munich after a long day out in Füssen and went to Hofbrauhaus. This giant beer hall was crazy. It was indoors, outdoors, and gigantic. It took us a long time to sniper a seat from some people leaving and within seconds we were joined at our table by a few Germans. We had a lot of fun with more delicious German food and another giant beer. Today we are leaving to Vienna on the train!

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Comments

[wonder]

Beer!!!
I want beer too! but... anyway you guys drink as much as you can :0)