Bayerische Abenteuer

We left for Munich at around 9:00 on Sunday morning. The train ride lasted about 7-8 hours so we got there mid-afternoon. We took a regional train for around an hour to Dortmund (I believe) and then took an ICE directly to Munich. ICE's are really nice trains and we had an entire car almost to ourselves, so it was nice and quiet.

Our hostel in Munich. This is from inside the courtyard.

We stayed in Munich in a castle. It was never actually used as a castle since it was built in the late 1800's by a rich artist who had been knighted by Ludwig II (or something along those lines), but it was still kind of cool.
After getting to the hostel we ate dinner there (it was really good) and then went back into the city for a small tour by Herr Steding. We saw the Isartor, both the Neues and Altes Rathaus, some synagogue, the Viktualienmarkt platz (although it was closed down), the Stadt Museum, Marienplatz, some Residenz opera house or something and a monument of some sort with big lions on it. That tour was pretty quick, and afterwards they distributed the transit passes.

The surfing wave on the Isar through the Englisher Garten.

Five of us decided to walk around some more in the direction of the Englisher Garten. I don't remember what the others did. So Jake, Nick, Kirk, Jackie and I went and walked through a bit of the park. It was getting pretty dark when we decided to find the surfing wave that Paul had shown Jake and I. I didn't think we would be able to find it; it was not a city-sanctioned thing, so I didn't think it would be lit up at all. It turns out it was lit up by a couple of lights plugged in to a generator on the bridge above and there were a few people actually surfing. We watched them for a little while before walking further. We ended up going around the southern tip of the park, seeing an interesting fountain, and catching the U-Bahn back.
The U-Bahn we caught took us to a stop where we figured we would get on the S-Bahn to get back to the hostel. We got off there and found the station was under construction. This meant that we had to go all the way around it to get to the S-Bahn platform. However, on the way there was a cool playground that we spent some time at.

The submarine set used in the movie Das Boot at the
Bayerishe Filmstadt.

The next day we started off by going to the Bayerishe Filmstadt. This is the largest film studio in Europe (maybe Germany, but I think Europe). They have several warehouse-like buildings to shoot films in, a couple of which have been made into places for tours to go. It was kind of neat. One of the things that happened on the tour is there was a scene of a person stealing a car to be acted out. Eve stole the car and Herr Steding and Kirk were the policemen that ran her down. It was fairly funny. They also have a lot of things from the movie Das Boot. It makes sense I guess given that the movie is the most successful German films of all time. Not having seen it, however, I was not too excited about it. We did get to walk through the submarine set they used though.

The view of part of Olympiapark from the Olympiaturm.

It was a decently nice day outside (although I thought it was a little too warm), so we went to Olympiapark afterwards to go up in the Olympiaturm. It's basically just one of those really huge towers that every large German city seems to have. It was pretty neat because the wind was blowing very hard the whole time, making it much cooler than on the ground. We stayed up there for a while and I took several pictures, only a few of which turned out.
Eventually everyone else decided it was time to leave. I think I could have stayed up there for quite a while. They wanted to go to the BMW showroom sort of place that was next to the park, and then go look at a couple of clothing stores that have traditional Bavarian clothes. Since we only had three transit passes for all of us, I didn't have all that much choice. The BMW cars were kind of boring, I though. I don't really know enough about cars to have any interest in super overpriced ones. We then went to the clothing stores. Everything they had was very expensive, so I lost interest pretty fast. Some of us also went to a furniture store that Herr Steding said was fun to look around in. It turned out to be kind of an Ikea for people who have thousands of euros to spend on everything in their overpriced apartment. Some things were kind of interesting, but mostly not so much. We soon went back to the hostel for dinner.

From the Marienbrücke.

The next day was for Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau. They are both about two hours away from Munich by train. They were kind of cool, but more interesting, I thought, were the mountains. Just looking at them made me want to climb them all. We obviously did not have time for this, but we did get to go out to the Marienbrücke behind Neuschwanstein. It's a really scenic bridge in pretty much every sense of the word.
We got back to Munich after supper at the hostel was already done, so we went instead to some little Asian restaurant. I got some sort of curry which was really good. After that, everyone else went back I think, but Jake and I went walking around. We walked for quite a while and only realized after 10:00 or so that I had the key to the room. So we headed back, with a stop to squish some coins on the S-Bahn tracks.

Some large hall at the Residenz Palace.

Wednesday we went to the Residenz palace and the Deutsches Museum. The Residenz was absolutely massive. It is apparently the largest palace in a city in all of Europe. They have a large treasury collection of shiny things along with the preserved rooms. I felt it was far too large and repetitious, although it was interesting at times. I really wanted to save my attention for the Deutsches Museum though. So I went through the palace pretty fast (although that meant I, and Jake who was also moving quickly, saw more than some others). We ate lunch in the courtyard afterwards and then went right to the museum.

The Cray I in the Deutsches Museum.

I had been looking forward to seeing the Deutsches Museum for quite a while. It is the German equivalent of the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, but it happens to be the most visited museum in the nation and I think it is larger. Jake, Jackie and I stayed at the museum till close. Everyone else bailed about 45 minutes earlier (I have no idea why). We saw several exhibits, one of which was the computer one. It was kind of neat because it had lots of huge old computers and memory of all kinds. Many of the displays are also in English, so it was not too much of a problem to understand things. It was very enjoyable.

The Biergarten down the street from the hosel. With
old German guys playing jazz.

After dinner at the hostel, several of us went to a Biergarten down the road from the hostel. It was kind of neat. I split a pretzel with Nick and got a Späzi. There were some old guys playing a lot of jazz music and the sort. It was certainly interesting to hear Louis Armstrong sung with a German accent.

Thursday was our free day for museums or shopping. Jake, Jackie, and I all went back to the Deutsches Museum (there is enough there to fill several days) for the afternoon. In the morning we got Weißwurst with Phil, Nick, and Kirk. The Weißwurst was very good and the five additional hours in the museum were well worth the three euros. After the museum closed, we went to a store that Herr Steding said would be interesting since it has all handmade things of all kinds. It turned out to be more of an overpriced junk store where I think most things were factory produced. We also went to a delicacy grocery store right next door. That was kind of interesting, but didn't take very long. We were meeting at six at Marienplatz to go to dinner with the whole group. That was interesting. Like in Wittemberg, we went to a traditional sort of German restaurant. The food was very yummy. All of us except Kim and Ashley went right back to the hostel afterwards (they went to the Hofbräuhaus). Jake and I went and walked around the area and talked for a while.

The medieval stone-arch bridge in Regensburg where we
met after eating.

The next day we went to Regensburg. We left early in the morning and got there around 10. We dropped our things at the hostel and Herr Steding gave us a tour of the city. It's where he went to college, so he is decently familiar with the town and knows a bunch of its history. After the tour, we went back to put our things in our rooms and then we parted ways. Jake and I wandered around. The guys and Jackie planned to meet at a famous sausage restaurant right on the river for dinner. The rest of the girls ended up going to some Thai or Chinese restaurant. We met up afterwards to go to a Biergarten that Herr Steding recommended. We stayed there until after dark, then went back and went to bed pretty soon after. We left the next morning early and spent most of the day on the train. It was just one train this time heading right back to Münster. At Cologne at bunch of really noisy beer-drinking men got on. That was annoying, but luckily we didn't have to deal with it for very long.
We got back around four to nice cold, rainy weather. The entire time in Munich, we had Fön. That is a certain weather pattern that happens sometimes that makes the Alps visible from Munich (and from our hostel window!!) and means warm weather. Apparently Münster had similar weather the whole time we were away, but now it's back to the nice coolness.