Guten Tag

Our last night in Switzerland was over, and it was time to head to Germany. We caught a morning train and spent several hours riding from Interlaken to Fussen. I think it took a total of four trains to get there. It pretty much took most of the day.

This trip wouldn't have been so bad if it weren't for a couple of mishaps. The first was a mean train station worker; the next, a delayed train. The delay caused us to miss our connecting train, and we had to wait for another. While waiting, we decided to eat lunch.

Never. . .

Ever. . .

EVER.

Order a hamburger from a train station in the middle of nowhere, Germany, which comes frozen in a package and gets microwaved before it's handed to you without a napkin.

I don't care how hungry you are. Don't do it.

The bottom bun will be crunchy. The whole thing will be 1000 degrees, with a couple of cold spots. It will not taste anything like a hamburger. (Looks can be deceiving.) It will have some sort of nasty sauce on it, a sad attempt at ketchup with a sweet aftertaste. The sauce will find its way across every square inch of your hands. You will have no choice but to wipe said hands on your tall socks (Josh) or just whimper with a sad face and try to wipe them on a stray piece of paper, followed by a good dollop of hand sanitizer.

Not fun.

Probably our worst experience in Germany.

Luckily, it got better after that.

We got to Fussen in the afternoon. Maybe around 2? I can't remember. We walked to our hostel and then we waited for the owner to get there so we could pay and find our room. He didn't come for a while, so we called him. He told us which room was ours, and that we could take our key. We dropped our stuff in the room (a 6-bed mixed dorm with only 2 other people there) and then headed back out.

We walked back to the train station where we caught a bus which took us to the castles. Mad King Ludwig's castles: Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau.

Hohenschwangau

Josh in front of Neuschwanstein

Unfortunately, we didn't have enough time to tour both castles, so we just toured the cooler one, Neuschwanstein. (The one that inspired the Disney castle.) It had been cloudy all afternoon, and it started pouring while we were waiting for our turn at the castle.

The inside of the castle is awesome, even though it was never completed. The rooms are huge. There are secret passageways inside. (Well, at least one.) There is even a man-made cave in one of the rooms. Seriously. It looks like you're walking through a real cave.

We were not allowed to take pictures inside, so I encourage you to click the Wikipedia link above and read more about Neuschwanstein and look at the pictures. Amazing.

After we were done with our castle tour, we headed back into town. We walked to a place recommended by Rick Steves. Obviously. For my first German dinner, I had sausages with sour kraut and roasted potatoes. And something called a radler. It's beer mixed with lemon soda.

First real German Meal!

Stuffed and tired, we went back to the hostel for the night. We met a really cool guy from Australia and someone from Ukraine.

The next morning, we got up and went to the train station. We had another multiple-train day ahead of us. This time, we were going to Rothenburg.

I want to live in Rothenburg.

The first thing we did was get off the train and walk into the town. We found the street with our Pension. We knocked on the door. An old lady met us and led us upstairs to our room. It was really cute, and the bed had the most comfortable big blanket on it. When (one day) I go back to Rothenburg, I am staying there again. She gave us our key and told us what time breakfast was the next morning.

We dropped our things and headed out to the town. Since we didn't think we'd have time to go to both the Christmas Museum and the Medieval Torture Museum, and because the town was so small, we split up. I went to explore the history of my favorite holiday. Josh went to be tortured. (Not really.)

This was a good plan, because after touring the Christmas museum (which was AWESOME), I spent over an hour shopping for Christmas ornaments. Josh would have been bored out of his mind. We met up later and we wandered around the town. We each got one of these balls. It's a Rothenburg specialty, and tastes like a crunchy funnel cake. They weren't very good, and they were messy. At least they look pretty!

Prettier than they Taste

As we were discussing which direction led back to the main square, a middle-aged man asked us where we were from. Apparently, he used to work in Branson, and currently lives in Tennessee. He actually works for the FAA. (Dad works for the FAA.) He and his co-workers had been working there and staying in Rothenburg for over a month. He walked us down the street and showed us a place to eat that he said was really great.

On that man's recommendation, I ordered the schnitzel with fried potatoes for dinner. It also came with a salad. So delicious. I couldn't eat it all, though, so I gave Josh the other half of my schnitzel.

After dinner, we went back to the pension to drop off the things I had accumulated from all the Christmas stores. Then we went back to the main square by 8 to see the night watchman.

The night watchman gives an awesome tour telling the story of Rothenburg. It is the one thing you must do in Rothenburg. Josh and I were obsessed with it. We bought the DVD (which ended up being a disappointment) and a brochure, bookmark, and postcard of the night watchman. We got our picture taken with him.

Josh, Night Watchman, Me

After the night watchman tour, we did a bit more exploring of the town before going to bed.

Sunset

Rothenburg

Rothenburg

And more Rothenburg

The next morning, we got up early. We walked the wall that goes around the town.

Medieval Wall

Wall

Rooftops

We got back to the Pension in time for breakfast: cheese, meat, rolls with butter and jam, coffee, orange juice, cereal, granola bars. . .

Then we went to look inside St. James's Church. It's actually a Lutheran church, and it has an incredible wood carving inside.

Amazing Wood Carving

Close Up

Then we went to a little shop that gives a discount to holders of Rick Steves' Germany book, and we bought Vince a pocket watch. It's the kind that you have to wind every day, and you can see the gears inside, so we thought it was really cool.

Next stop was the Rothenburg museum. It has some town history and some dungeons downstairs.

We had finished with Rothenburg. We went back and got our things from the Pension, and we walked to the train station. Next stop: Munich

Munich's New Town Hall

Munich is a large city. It reminded me of Milan in that aspect, but it was a lot more fun than Milan. I didn't like the buildings very much, though, but the beer scene was pretty fun. ;)

Our Munich hostel was really close to the train station. We got there in the afternoon and checked in, dropped off our things, and headed into the main part of the city.

We stopped at an outdoor eating area for a giant (like, bigger than my head) pretzel and a beer. It was really crowded so we had to sit with some old German men who ignored us. We didn't have any real plans for the day, and we didn't really feel like going to any museums or anything, so we made our way to the Hofbrauhaus. The Hofbrauhaus is the most famous beer hall in the world.

We sat in the outdoor seating area, and we each ordered a liter (!!!) of beer. I'm not a beer person. But this was one thing I was determined to do while in Germany. I also ordered a plate of wurst and potato salad to help wash down the beer.

Before

Josh and I had a great time. We made silly videos with his camera and we observed the other people around. We were there for quite a while. And I finished my beer.

After :)

After finally leaving the Hofbrauhaus, we walked across town to the English Garden, a huge park. Josh ordered another beer, and I think I had a soda.

Then we started to walk back to our hostel. We had a map, but neither of us knew where we were. (The English Garden was really far from the train station.) We made it about halfway back. It started to rain, and we caught a taxi to take us the rest of the way. Once back, I collapsed on my bed immediately. I don't know what Josh did the rest of the night.

The next morning, we had McDonalds breakfast. We got metro tickets for the day, and we took the metro to the town of Dachau. There, we took a bus to the concentration camp.

The Entry Gate

We went inside, and we went through the museum. The museum is really extensive, really interesting, and hard to go through. They show a documentary inside, too, so we watched that.

After the museum, we walked down the length of the camp. It is huge. I definitely didn't expect it to be so enormous.

Looking out over where the barracks used to be

We looked inside the reconstructed barracks. We went into the crematorium and the gas chambers.

There's a really heavy feeling when you're there. It's not easy to walk around knowing what happened there and that it wasn't really that long ago that it happened.

Monument

Never Again

We were there as long as we could stand to be, and then we went back to the main part of Munich. We went to get a late lunch. I ordered a grilled pork chop with a baked potato with tzatziki, and it was one of the best meals I had in Europe. I got a soda to go with that, too. (No more beer for a long time!)

We spent the afternoon at the Munich City museum. It was pretty cool and gave us something to do besides beer halls. Josh wanted to go back to the Hofbrauhaus to hear the band play, but first I made him go with me to a restaurant on Marienplatz for some warm apple strudel with vanilla sauce. Not ice cream, sauce. It was like a cross between vanilla pudding and melted vanilla ice cream. Yummy. (I can't believe I was too excited to take a picture of it.)

I found a really awesome jewelry store on the way to the Hofbrauhaus, and I knew I'd be there for a while. I sent Josh ahead of me, shopped, and met him at the beer hall a while later. They have really cool sodas in Germany. I tried one that is orange soda mixed with coke. Not bad!

We left there and went back to the hostel. We got our things and then we went to the train station where we boarded our overnight train back to Florence.

Our car had 6 beds: 3 on each side, and Josh and I were on the third level. I love overnight trains! I definitely didn't sleep well, but it was really cool having a moving bed. It was fun going to sleep (or trying to) in Munich and waking up in Florence!

And that's when we left Germany. It had been a wonderful four days, and I look forward to someday going back.