Pretzels, Science, and Dachau

Coffee and pastry break

Part of Marienplatz Square from the top of St. Peter's

Surprisingly, Prague wasn't nearly as scary at 4:30 in the morning. We easily found out train headed for Munich, Germany and while I had planned to get more sleep on the train that didn't happen. Paige on the other quickly passed out. I discovered on this trip that that girl can sleep wherever, whenever, in whatever position. But I enjoyed watching the sunrise and watching the houses fly by. We arrived in Munich around 11 and found the train station there to be HUGE (like mall status) and so we ate lunch there. After of course buying a map (number one activity when getting into a new city), we headed to our hostel. Yes, I said hostel... not hotel. A hostel is an establishment that provides cheap (well.. usually. We found in Prague that the hotel was actually cheaper) food and lodging for a specific group of people. This was a youth hostel and therefore housed mostly traveling students. You can choose to sleep in a dorm like setting with people you don't know or spend a bit more for a private room. In Munich we chose a private room but later in Interlaken we went dorm room style. Our room wasn't ready so we left our bags in the luggage room (another nice option in hostels) and headed towards Marienplatz Square to look around.

Paige and I on top of St. Peter's

There was SO much shopping in Munich. Many stores that I felt under dressed just walking into. We climbed St. Peter's tower which was really fun and nice break from looking in store windows and feeling a bit lost. In my travels as of late, I've decided that getting up high to view the city is almost a must. For one it's almost always beautiful. Secondly, it helps you orientate yourself and have a better idea of how to get around the city. We explored inside Frauenkirche cathedral and fought the urge to sing and try out the acoustics. It was a very relaxed afternoon of just wondering around the city. We weren't in too much of a rush since we new we'd have the whole day tomorrow to go to the specific places we'd planned out. We found a cool outdoor market with various booths which included a pastry tent where we bought chocolate covered banana's.

Deutsches Museum

We ate dinner at Hofbrauhous, which is a traditional inn and restaurant (and is said to be the oldest restaurant still in business). It wasn't what we expected but it was really fun. Although, I think the setting would have been better in a larger group. It was huge, loud, very busy and only had big booths of which small groups had to share with other small groups. The beers were HUGE and it was comical to see so many different types of people holding such a large mug. After dinner we walked back towards the main part of town to explore some more (we walk A LOT but the bus tickets in town were expensive and 24 hrs at a time so we'd decided to wait to get one til the next morning).

The next morning we had breakfast at our hostel and met an interesting and experienced traveler named Pierry. After picking up some tips from him and experiencing the usual "You're crazy for traveling so many places in a week" reaction we said goodbye, checked out of our hostel, left our packs in the baggage room and headed to Deutsches Museum. We had some good expectations but we didn't expect to spend 3 hours there and still not get to see everything we wanted to! It is one of the oldest science and technology museums in the owrld and had loads of galleries on a wide range of subjects. Just to name a few we looked at: shipping/marine navigation, photography/film, pharmaceutics, power machinery, solar and alternative power, and astronomy. Luckily, many of the exhibits had English translations but for the few that didn't we had fun making up what the machine was.... we encountered a lot of time machines. ;)

After lunch in the train station and German pretzel (they were sold everywhere and were extremely good) we headed to Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial. We made it just in time for the English showing of the Dachau documentary and then we walked around the concentration camp reading various plaques. I wish we'd had more time there. we walked around were the barracks used to be and multiple memorials. We sang in the empty Christian church also built as a memorial and only got part way through the museum when they kicked us for closing time. The main building at the camp (where the museum is located now) is still standing and was built by the first prisoners of the camp. The whole experience was heart wrenching. I'd learned so much about the holocaust growing up that actually standing in what used to be a concentration camp was mind blowing for me.

On our way back into the main part of town we went grocery shopping for the next day because we'd be in Switzerland which is the most expensive country we'd be in (a double cheeseburger at McDonald's will cost you about $8.50). After that we went to the English Gardens to find a place to eat (which by the way is a garden where nudity is legal... it was at night and cold though so we didn't see or participate) but the restaurants were a bit fancy for what we wanted so we ate at another traditional restaurant in town. We walked around town some more and enjoyed the night life and also spent some time talking to people in the bar at our hostel. Around 11:30 pm we boarded our train to Interlaken, Switzerland.