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Published: September 24th 2009
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Town hall in Kirchhiem unter Teck
This is the town of Kirchhiem unter Teck (Teck is a castle, the town is at the bottom of the mountain--Kirchhiem unter Teck) Sorry I haven't been able to update this thing. The place that we stayed in Munich didn't have internet. On Sunday we went to Rothenburg, which was great. It is a medieval walled town that is one of the best preserved anywhere. It is only about an hour and a half drive from Veronika's hometown. We spent a lot of time on the Autobahn and here's what I have observed about German driving:
(1)If people knew how to drive, speed limits would be unnecessary
(2)Stop signs are a waste, Germans have yield signs 90% of the time and it works for them
(3)Police don't need to worry about enforcing traffic laws, we are wasting money on the Highway Patrol
Rothenburg was great though. We walked along the wall for while when we got there, then headed into town. We went to the top of the town hall tower, which was pretty awesome. It was a seriously tight squeeze getting up there. We have decided that we are going to find a tower that we can go to the top of in every city we visit. We also went to the medieval crime and punishment museum in Rothenburg, which was really
The view from some
The view from some castle ruins cool. They had all kinds of torture devices and other interesting stuff.
We got dinner at a cool little restuarant and sat outside in the street. We took a tour with a guy who dresses up as a night watchman (they used to walk the town looking for theves and fires). That was really interesting. He was really funny and had some great stories about the town. Monday morning we left early for Munich. It is just going to be train travel from now on. So far it is working surprisingly well. The place where we stayed in Munich was great. It was a pension in an old house where an old couple rents out 6 or so rooms. They made breakfast in the mornings and the old man was hilarious. There was Bavarian music (he loves the German weather channel) and he knew every song, singing and whistling along. He would tell Veronika a joke or funny story and she translated it. It was pretty cool. The whole thing seemed like a joke. I can't believe there really are places like that still.
The first day in town we just explored Munich for a few hours. We went up
Weddings
We saw 4 weddings in one day-Apparently 9/19/09 is a big deal. This is one on top of the castle ruins--for Beav and Jessica, wish I could be there in a tower in Munich's city hall too. It is a really great old building. We could see Oktoberfest and I was over Munich and ready to check it out. In the afternoon we met Paul at Oktoberfest. We spent the next few hours standing on our table drinking beer and singing. The beer was great, the music was funny old German drinking songs. Germans definitely know how to throw a party. On Tuesday, our second day, we spent the morning at the Deutsches Museum which was actually much more interesting than it sounds.
It is huge and has sections for just about everything from planes to electricity and bridge engineering. In the afternoon we went back to Oktoberfest. We rode this huge swing ride that is probably 250 feet tall so that we could see Oktoberfest from the air. We walked around some and every one of the breweries that had a tent there had their horse carriages (think Budweiser). We walked into every tent until we found the one that looked the best but wasn't too crowded. We got some food (sausages, of course) and drank some great beer. Veronika's friends Chris and Crissy met us there, too,
Windmills
We passed tons of windmills on the way to Rothenburg which was cool. A couple of Austrailians sat at our table (lots of Austrailians go to Oktoberfest) and ended up spending the whole afternoon/night going around with them.
Today we went to the castles near Fussen, in Bavaria. They are called Hohenschwangau and Neuschwanstein. The first one is the boyhood home of King Ludwig II and Neuschwanstein is the castle he built in the 1880's. It was great. We took tours in both castles and got to see some great stuff. Hohenschwangau wasn't too impressive but Neuschwanstein was incredible. The views from the castle are unreal. All of Bavaria is just extremely green. We are on the train to Luzern now and hopefully we will arrive at 1 AM. The train we are on now is running a little late and that may mess up our connections but hopefully not.
We made it to Luzern with no problems, just a little late (almost 2). I know everybody always says this but the trains are awesome. I'm still glad I have someone who really knows the system and speaks the language to help me out though. Italy might be a challenge since you have to reserve a
lot of the trains and neither of us speak Italian.
I forgot to mention...my camera broke 2 days ago and I had to buy a new one (160 euros down the drain) so I will have more pics tomorrow when I get them onto the computer. I'm going to bed now, though, we were in 3 countries today and it's 2:30 and I'm tired.
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Bummer about the camera. Good decision to buy another one; cameras are cheap and replaceable; trips to Europe aren't. Thanks for the detailed commentary. It helps us really picture where you are and to enjoy your trip without really being there. That sure was a tall beer, but we know you had only one!