Managing Munich

I got to München / Munich in the mid afternoon and fairly quickly found the hostel (Wombats) and organised my bed and bag. I would say that Wombats was the best hostel I've been in so far. The rooms are huge, with six beds to each, and their own bathroom. The beds are made of good strong wood which means they don't make too much noise when people are climbing up and down them. It also has an awesome bar downstairs with a pool table which is full of English speaking backpackers. Happy hour runs from 6 till 8, and then again from midnight until 2AM when they close up. It's also got a really funky indoor terrace thing with a glass ceiling full of beanbags and such. I'm trying not to sound like a pimp for the place, but it really was that good.

After having a shower and getting myself freshened up, I went down the bar to check out happy hour and ended up playing some pool and chatting to a couple of Americans who had also just arrived. They were intending on heading out to a pub crawl that night, and with very little convincing I decided to join them. We actually weren't able to find the one we were after, as we happened to be a couple of minutes late and it seems that they had left already. After a bit of asking around, however, we were pointed in the direction of the internet cafe across the road where it was said that another was in the beginning stages. We waltzed over there to find a row of tables with about 40 or so people sitting around having a few drinks, and after finding the organisers were allowed to join. Being an hour late, we had missed the first hour of free drinks included in the cost, so we were charged a lesser rate for the crawl and given a few beers and Jagermeister shots to catch up on. The group was fairly mixed, and I got chatting to an Australian guy and a bunch of Irish girls, and about half an hour later we were on our way to the first destination of the tour, the Augistiner Brauhaus. This is the oldest brewery in Munich, started by monks (München means 'Monk' in some way), and they pride themselves on having the longest running brew, and apparently the best in Munich. The best beer in the beer capital of the world? You'd hope it's a good drop. We lined up for our liter steins and I also bought a pretzel (a photo will be available soon), and I will attest to it's high quality. The group found itself a large bunch of tables within the other two thousand people (no exaggeration) in the garden under a chestnut tree. The chestnut tree has special significance, as they were planted to keep the beer in the shade, as the brewery would not brew beer during the summer for reasons I can't remember, and so they would store huge quantities of it for that period, and the chestnut trees were planted to ensure its safekeeping. All of these things were explained to us by the tour guide, however most of the time he was drowned out by the sound of the Irish girls singing and carrying on. This wasn't a problem for the rest of us, as we were enjoying their shenanigans immensely, however the guide insisted on trying to get the rest of his story through.

After an hour or so at the Augustiner, we moved onto the Lowenbrau haus, also one of the top five beers in Munich, of which more liter steins were brought out. These were also very good, however we were indoors this time, and by now all the Australians had gotten up to the raucousness of the Irish, and the volume of our combined voices near on drowned out the whole place. Several times the guide pleaded with us to keep it down lest we get kicked out, but certainly to no avail. After a while we left (could have been kicked out, not sure), and ended up at the Euro Youth hostel bar, literally two doors down from Wombats. By this stage the group had dwindled to about 15 people or so, and some of the Irish girls had started to fall over, so after a few more drinks there I went to my bed. I was very drunk at this point and what exactly happened next I don't quite recall correctly.

Basically I got into bed as quickly as I could, lay down for an indeterminate amount of time, could have been half an hour, could have been fifteen minutes, but after this period had expired I sat up on my bed (lower bunk) and curled up in the fetal position near the end trying to convince my vision to stay still. At this point some other guy who was standing around our room lay down and appeared to try to go to sleep right there on my bed, and even after a few foul words and some shoving didn't want to move. I was at a loss for what was going on, however two Korean girls that were also staying in our room had gone downstairs and brought up one of the staff, and were pointing at this guy and making an awful fuss about something I didn't understand. It was at this point that the guy finally got up and was escorted out by the staff member. I managed to reclaim my entire bed, and quickly lost consciousness, but the whole event left me very confused.

The result of this ambitious drinking session was that the next morning I slept in, fitfully, until about 11AM, at which point I got myself ready as normal. After my usual ritual of showers and food, followed by a quick email check I still didn't feel part of this earth, and long story short I accomplished very little that day.

What I -did- accomplish, however, was that the previous day I had found that there was an English cinema in Munich that showed original versions of current movies. I had bought myself a ticket to the 3:30 showing of the Simpsons movie, and by the time I had arrived for it, I was more or less back to normal and was able to enjoy the flick thoroughly. For those who haven't seen it yet and are Simpsons fans, I recommend you go and see it. Right now. I thought it was great, and the whole "Spiderpig" thing was awesome. Ooooohhhhh, he's Spiderpig!

After seeing that delightful movie I had a great cheap sushi dinner and then wandered around the streets of Munich a little bit, hoping to find the Australian bar to see if they were showing any AFL matches over the next couple of days. On the way I saw a series of buskers, the first being an excellent group of 3 violinists and a bass, who played a series of classical pieces. After that there was another guy with a guitar who was doing a more musical / comedy act, and he was quite good also. He probably spent a bit too much time hustling for cash rather than performing, but over all it was pretty entertaining. He made a point of guessing everyone's nationality as they walked past, and seemed to know a word or two in most languages.

Eventually I did find the Aussie pub, but it was already deep into its party throes and in the midst of a karaoke session, something I didn't particularly want to participate in at the time. I never did find out of they were showing AFL there. I wandered back to the Wombat bar, had a couple of drinks and a game of pool and crashed out for the night.

The following day I had planned to go to Neuschwanstein castle, better known as the Disney castle (or at least the one on which the Disney castle is based). I went down to the Wombat's tour desk and asked for some information on their tour, only to find it wasn't running that day. However I was pointed to another guy, Joon, who was also keen on seeing the castle and was looking for companions. The type of train ticket we were to get could take up to 5 people for the same price, so the more people we were able to get together, the cheaper it would be for all. Unfortunately we couldn't find any takers at the hostel, and ended up making our way to Fussen, the closest town, by ourselves. It was on the train that I ran into Kyle, one of the Americans I had hung out with at the pub crawl, and his new found traveling companion, Corey. We spent the 2 hour train ride chatting away, and once we made it to Fussen we met an Aussie girl who tagged along with us for the rest of the day. Once the bus had taken us to the little village at the base of the mountain the castle is perched upon we got our tickets, but had to wait for 3 hours for entry time to come up.

In very typical German fashion, the ticket you get for the castle isn't a free walking trip, but rather part of a guided tour of the place. There is no way to wander around by ones lonesome, so you are assigned a group number and a time, and are expected to arrive at the castle at that time. This requires a half hour walk up the hill, or a cheap bus fare or even horse and carriage ride if you are so inclined. With three hours to spare we decided to walk, but unfortunately it was at this point that it started to rain. We whiled away the next couple of hours at a little cafe just near the base of the castle, mostly just trying to stay out of the weather. Thankfully by the time our number came up the rain had all but stopped, though the overcast weather still loomed dangerously.

Also in very typical German fashion our tour started at the alloted time to the second, and the tour itself was quite good. I'm sure the guide had a tape recorder in her head that she pressed a button on every time we went into a room, and I feel sorry for her that she has to say the exact same thing about 15 times a day. The interior of the castle was interesting, with a lot of frescoes on the wall, though a good percentage of the place was never finished. The parts that had been completed were very opulent, though terribly gaudy. Most of the frescoes had some relevance to Wagner's opera's, of which King Ludwig II, the designer and commissioner of the castle was very fond. The views out of the windows over the town were spectacular, even in the cloudy weather, and after the 45 minute tour was over we hiked up further around the hills where a bridge had been situated to get a nice view of the castle as a whole.

We took some photo's from the bridge, which turned out great, and then high tailed it in back into Fussen to get the 2 hour train ride back into Munich. Unfortunately the train was broken and we ended up getting a bus for the first half of the journey, and we ended up getting back to Munich about 9PM. We shared a pizza between the group of us, then went our separate ways for half an hour before regrouping at the Jager hostel bar next to Wombats. We had a few drinks and I arranged with Kyle to go with him the next day to the Dachau concentration camp memorial site. We bade farewell to Corey around midnight as he left to go to Paris, had a couple final drinks at the Wombat bar and packed it in for the day.

Neuschwanstein was a good trip, very picturesque, and was a good use of a day. The next would see me checking out Dachau with Kyle, followed by the Munich bike tour.