Having lived in Berlin for 9 months, it would be innapropriate to say the least with my traveling lifestyle not to visit the other most-prominent city in Germany. This trip was fulfilled toward the end of August. I can't exactly say that I got much sleep before going to Munich - not that I ever did in Europe - but on this account due to the fact that my friends and I had roadtripped overnight back from our day excursion to Prague. Lukily, we got back in time for me to make it to the airport for my 7am flight south. A group of 5 of us made the weekend trip: Aria, Kendall, Amasia, Jonah, and myself. Unfortunately, after arriving in Munich at 8am that morning, everyone felt like going back to sleep instead of hopping on a 2.5 hour train ride. I say unfortunately not for myself and my lack of sleep - by this time I had more than learned how to run on fumes. Rather, unfortunately applies to the rest of the group as I left them behind for a solo day-trip south to the town of Füssen, home to the Disney-emulated Neuschwanstein castle.
After sleeping most of the way and almost missing my regional transfer mid-ride, I woke up to the sunshine flooding over the northern Alps of the Germany-Austria border. Füssen, a beautiful town that I would later in the day explore, was 5 kilometers away from the infamous Neuschwanstein castle, leaving the option of a bus transfer or a hike through the Alps. Easy choice. Who wants to ride in bus when you can wind your way around tree-lined glass lakes that reflect off their surface the most famous castle in German history? After a leisurely hike through destination wonderland, I arrived at around 3pm at the base of the Neuschwanstein-capped mountain. Originally, I was planning to wait in the ticket line in order to tour the inner grounds of the castle, but after learning that the line was an hour wait and then another 4 hour wait until the next tour would be available, I graciously declined. Lukily, it worked out not to be a problem as tourists can still tour the entire exterior of the castle in addition to the inner courtyard without a ticket. After leaving the ticket line and then hiking 45 minutes to the top of the mountain, I was rewarded with one of the most beautiful views I have seen in Europe. Looking out over the surrounding landscape, perfectly green grass with small little towns surrouded a selection of sky blue lakes to my right, and back to my left spanned the mountains I had just hiked through in addition to the lesser known Hohenschwangau castle. If my memory serves me correctly, I'm pretty sure at this moment I didn't even care to go through the castle and was perfectly content just to sit atop the mountain while I soaked up the view. Eventually, after an unspecified amount of time, I made it to my feet despite the tremendous view and began the trek around the castle grounds.
The castle grounds mostly consisted of the castle's courtyard, being that there weren't many surrounding walkable areas due to the castle being atop a mountain. After walking through the massive castle gate and into the courtyard, I wandered about the thousands of tourists with my neck craned in order to see the skyward-bound structure. To be entirely truthful, the castle is more impressive to see from a distance in the context of its surrounding landscape, but still impressive up close nonetheless. After exploring the castle for half and hour or so, I continued on my journey to the Marienbrücke, a bridge spanning two narrowly seperated mountains that looks back on the castle and the surrounding landscape. Unfortunately, as is almost every man-made European icon that can be classified as famous and old, the opposite side of the castle was covered in scaffolding. However, even though I couldn't see much of the castle itselft, it was still a remarkably rewarding sight. After taking a few pictures here and there on the bridge, I descended to the bottom of the mountain and hiked a different mountain route on my way back to Füssen.
Once back in Füssen, I worked my way through the southern German architecture that I had previously experienced on my Bavarian trip to Bamberg. Colorful wooden-trimmed buildings often adorned with paintings lined the cobble stone streets that housed artisans displaying an array of unique crafts. My favorite shop owner, a wood craftsman, owned a shop hidden toward the back of the small town and confirmed what many had previously told me about southern Germans: they are extremely nice. In contrast to Berlin, where people are nice but mostly introverted, southern Germans are much more extroverted and welcome tourists and locals alike with an overflow of warmth and cheerfulness. I spent literally half an hour talking to the shop owner, who had a son getting ready to leave to study abroad in Chicago. He himself spends all his vacation time in New York, Florida, and the Carolinas, and could not possibly understand why so many European tourists flock to the beaches of Spain or Greece for holidays instead of choosing the US. Not a common opinion among most Europeans I must admit, but pretty cool nonetheless. After finishing our debate regarding the best NBA players, food culture, and other odds and ends, I left the small German town and reluctantly made my way back to the train station. Somewhere along the 2.5 hour journey back to Munich, I'm pretty sure I decided that I liked small southern-German towns quite a bit.
After lunch we made our way to a Dali exhibition, which isn't something I normally do on weekend trips in Europe. Normally I try to stray away from the museums and instead embrace a more outdoors sightseeing approach. But all in all it wasn't so bad to spend an hour wandering through paintings - maybe I'm more "cultured" now because of it. After the exhibit, we walked throughout Prague to a few midieval churches, structures, and eventually to the famous Charles Bridge. The bridge is lined with numerous sculptures that connect the two sides of the city. My favorite part of the bridge was the plethora of street artists, whether it be painters, jewelers, musicians, or some other sort of craft. Street preformers unfortunately were not to be found, but other than that the bridge was pretty satisfying. On the other side of the bridge, we hiked our way up to the top of the Prague Castle, which itself wasn't so spectacular, but did offer a nice panoramic view of the city. The nice thing about Prague is it's so small that it makes it incredibly easy to walk the entire city (or at the least the part of the city worth seeing). From the view at the top, you could see everything - with the mountains on one side, the river, the churches, ect. Something about panoramic views just makes it nice to see where you've been. Comically, after our treck to the top of the castle, I think we repeated the already said journey through the city a couple more times and eventually stopped in an underground tavern for dinner. After a tasty plate of something that I can't remember at the moment, we walked back across the river to the John Lennon wall which is covered in Beatles oriented graffiti. And pretty much, that concluded our 24 hour excursion to Prague.
The red light district: actually not nearly as cool or big as it is hyped up to be. Basically, if you don't already now, the district gets its name because prostitution is legal in Amsterdam. The prostitutes rent out small little rooms along the street with windows that are illuminated with red lights from which comes the name. I must admit, it is pretty funny to walk through the district and see a man walk out of the room as the prostitute opens the curtains again. Other than sex, you can also legally buy marijuana all throughout Amsterdam, although again most places are located in the red light. However, the district is not nearly as big nor as crazy as I had pictured in my head before arriving. Another tour guide fact, the red light district won't be there by 2015, but at the rate the current government in power is shutting down coffee shops and red light shops, it will be nonexistent by 2012. Over the past 5 years, the number of coffee shops and red light shops being shot down has doubled each year, starting with 4 the first year and rapidly working its way up. So, if you want to go get there while you can, because it probably won't exist in 5 years time. Although as seems to be the case with everything in Amsterdam, it will just go underground but won't actually go away.
We had dinner with a couple of her friends at an Irish pub where we also watched the Man United game. I played the role of your stereotypical tourist and had fish-and-chips (f.y.i. - chips=fries, crisps=chips, and biscuts=cookies). After dinner, we made our way back to her area and went out with some more of her friends to a couple pubs before finding a bar/lounge type place in East London. Hilarious moment (one seems to happen on every trip): we are leaving the lounge at the end of our night and for some reason everyone wants to go get hotdogs. Really? I get it that we are all drunk at this point and people want food, but seriously, a hot dog? Anyhow, we pay 18 pounds for a taxi to take us to Picadilly Circus where the owner of the hot dog stand knows half of our group by name and gives them discounts for being regular customers. Unfortunately, I do have to admit this was the best hot dog I have ever had - so thank you to our drunken hosts who dragged my reluctant self to a hot dog stand in the middle of the night. (And sorry if these moments aren't actually funny - I am sure that they're probably much funnier in my own memory).
