Eurotrip #1: MUNICH

Hello my little readers!

Normally when I do these things, I look over my previous blog post to see where I left off and then pick up my life story from there.  But right now I have no Internet connection so I’m writing this blog post on Word.  You might ask me why I have no Internet, so I’ll fill you in.  Right now I’m on a train riding through some German mountains and cute little towns with houses perched precariously on the mountain-side.. with occasional sheep grazing about.  That’s right, it’s #eurotrip2012!!!!  We left Germany early in the morning and we’ve been on a train for four hours already en route to Switzerland!

Okay, so first thing: Germany is amazing!  But before I begin the Germany story, the adventure starts in London.

Caity and I woke up at 6 a.m. on Sunday to catch the tubes to Heathrow Airport for our flight at 9:45.  We had it all planned out.  We were gonna get on the tubes at 6:45, be at Heathrow at 7:30, check our bag, go through security and shop around the wonderful world of duty free for a little bit, then catch our flight to Munich.  We got to the tubes at 6:45, as planned, only to find out they don’t open until 7:15!  This is when we became slightly panicked. The tube stations open at 7:15 but the first train though was at 7:23, so we were almost an hour behind schedule.  We finally got off the tubes at 8:30 at Heathrow, and once we walked through the tube station and into Heathrow, we literally had 30 minutes to check our bag, go through security and get to the terminal.  We couldn’t find where we check the bags for like seven minutes and Caity was like “Okay, that’s it, we’re not making our flight.  We’re gonna miss our flight to Germany!”  I was thinking it too, but I didn’t want to say it out loud haha.  But somehow, by the grace of God, we got to the terminal with a few minutes to spare after running through the airport like crazy women.  

Sad because the gate was closed :(

We landed in Germany and got to our hostel at around noon, but we couldn’t check in until 2, so we sat around the hostel and used the wifi for about an hour to book flights and other hostels and whatnot, then we grabbed some Italian food across the street and came back to check in.  We hit the town around 2:30.  Since it was a Sunday, most places were closed, but it was still fun to walk through and sort of get to know the city.  Marienplatz is where all the shops and food places are to eat, so we took pics and walked around there for a while too.  Then at 4:30 we stumbled upon Hofbräuhaus!! 

mmmm. Italian food :)

Yeah, we scolded us for baout a minute until we walked away.

In the center of Marienplatz

The Hofbrauhaus!

Hofbräuhaus is what they call a beer garden or a beer hall.  It’s just a huge building/restaurant that serves the biggest beer you will ever drink.  The mugs were bigger than my head,  We walked in an had no clue what to do, so we were walking around like idiots for a few minutes.  Then some random guy came up to us, started talking to us with some German accent, saying he’s from America and talking to us like we’re idiots.  We were like dude, we’re form America too, cut the crap.  Anyways, this guy says his name is Aspen and that he is a professional snowboarder.  He had to older guys with him with a camera and a video recorder saying that to make his brand or whatever look good, he needed pictures with girls while he’s wearing the sponsors clothes. It was werid.  He even had the group of us to yell “We love Rome snowboards and Volcom rocks” into a camera, because he said it’s gonna be in his next video.  I still don’t know if I believe any of it. 

Yeah, that's Aspen. 

inside!

normal

He had other people sitting at the table too and after he walked off somewhere, never to be seen again, the rest of all of us at the table stayed.  We met this couple, Jennifer and John, and they are in the America Air Force!  John was deployed in Afghanistan for seven months and he’s on leave now so he’s visiting Jennifer in Germany because she lives there right now.  OMG Caity and I loved them!  Jennifer was so funny and outgoing and John was hilarious and had the funniest stories.  We all sat and talked together and drank our mugs full of beer for hours.  We had other people come and go at the table, but Jennifer, John, Caity and I all stayed at the table.  It was such a fun night!  Oh, and John and Jennifer lived in OKC so we were talking about boutiques and restaurants and stuff that we’ve both been to .  Anyways, we loved them and if one of you two are reading thing COME TO LONDON!!

Hofbrauhaus was not in short supply of these guys

The story behind this is priceless

Friends!

The next day we woke up and the weather was gross and rainy.  So we went back to sleep, hoping the rain would be gone by the time we got up again.  But it wasn’t.  We grabbed some breakfast. Bought some souvenirs and made our way to Dachau, the German concentration camp.  Since we booked Germany, we’ve wanted to go to Dachau because we figured we’ll probably not have another opportunity to go to a concentration camp, and it would be an experience. 

Precious German stand

I wish I knew someone with a child so I cold put them in this

So we went and walked in, and it was eerie, or creepy.   It was a weird feeling.  We were there for about two hours.  We saw the barracks they lived in, the convent and some chapels.  But I can’t even describe the feeling when I first set eyes on the ovens.  It was one of the most sobering moments of my life.  Like, it was real and right in front of me.  Then just one room away from the ovens was the gas chamber.  Right when I walked in I could tell that this was a gas chamber; it had that eerie, uncomfortable feeling about it.  Then in the crematorium, there were 2 death chambers, where they put the bodies after they choked to death in the gas chambers. It wasn’t a fun trip by any means but I feel the concentration camp is something that everyone should go and experience.

So we got back to Munich at like 5 and shopped around a little bit in Marienplatz, bought a German pretzel, a weird Germany cookie thing and grabbed some Starbucks and chilled out for about an hour.  Then we went back to the hostel, packed our bags for the next day and went down to the bar!  We met some people that left the same time as us to go to Interloken and they’re staying at the same hostel as us!  It was nuts! So then we hung out with them for a little and walked to another beer garden. We were there for only a little bit, then we came back hung out some more, and left to go to bed!

German cookie!

This morning, we woke up at like 5:30, got on a train at 7:30 and now here we are, on our way to Switzerland! 

I’ll update soon!

Cheers!