What is that bright, warm thing in the sky?
Is that… it can’t be… is that the sun?! Blimey, I'd almost forgotten what it looked like.
Again, that could have been a lot better
but… you get what you get, okay?! It’s exam season, gosh!
11
April
The next morning I woke inhumanly early,
waved goodbye to my half-asleep cousins, and headed out the door and down to
the tube station.
I was meeting a shuttle to take me to the
airport and, though I had tons of time, I nonetheless was my typical self and
worried constantly about being late. Regardless, I arrived at my super random
meeting spot with time to spare… actually, much too much time to spare.
I was meant to be meeting an 11:15 shuttle,
but the one that showed up at 11:20 was apparently intended to be the 11:00… if
you haven’t already clicked away out of sheer confusion, let me explain.
Basically, the shuttles were running quite a bit late. Luckily, this bus had a
couple extra seats, so I was allowed on, thanking God for
helping me dodge actual lateness. Lesson to be learned: don’t ride
with easyBus, people.
I did get to Gatwick in the end and before
long was on my way to Germany!
I arrived in the country armed with my
cheat sheet of necessary translations, but about 2 minutes in Germany turned
that little table from my saving grace in to nothing more than a laughingstock.
While I was comforted by English translations under every sign in the airport,
my rude awakening was waiting for me right outside those exit doors where the
bus information was posted in full-on German.
Nonetheless – and after a considerable
amount of time wandering around like a pathetic foreigner – I did by some
miracle make it onto a bus that would hopefully take me where I needed to go.
What was more, that bus even had a driver
who knew at least enough English to understand my ticket order. However he would stand and turn around every now and then to address the
passengers in fluent German. While everyone else nodded understandingly, I sat
there in utter incomprehension, resigned to not understanding and praying it
wasn’t important.
During the bus ride, I enjoyed my first
glimpses of Germany with the bus’s radio playing in the background. Though the
adverts were obviously in German, I was surprised to hear virtually all American
music. While I was feeling like a proper foreigner at this point, I did at
least feel blessed to understand the music.
When we arrived at the train station near
my hostel, I happily hopped off and soaked in the first fully foreign
experience of my life.
It didn’t take too long to locate my hostel
and, once I had checked in and met the one roommate already there, I began my
quest for a grocery store. Luckily, there were several nearby that were
suggested by the complimentary city map given to me upon check-in.
I found my way to LIDL. Admittedly, this
finding experience occurred much in the fashion of taking the long way there. I
didn’t mind, though. The absence of a group and my determination to keep my
mouth shut (in an attempt to hide my identity as an English speaker), meant
that I hopefully looked like a local and therefore was able to move amongst
them and immerse myself in a way that you just can’t when you’re with other people;
distracted and in your little bubble of America.
Crazy as it may sound, the realisation of actually being in Germany finally hit me when I looked at the prices in the grocery
store. I know my idea of reasonable prices has been skewed slightly by living in good
ole expensive England, but it’s quite possible my jaw literally dropped to the
floor. What would have gotten me maybe a few oranges in Bristol got me a huge
sack of them in Munich, with change to spare.
Unfortunately, though the prices were amazing and my disguise had held up so far, I was forced to reveal
myself as a foreigner when approached by two Germans in the store. Totally thrown
off, I blurted out “I don’t speak English”. Smooth, Christy.
Things only got worse when people politely
muttered things that I must assume to be along the lines of ‘thank you’ or ‘excuse me’. I just tried to smile, not knowing what to say in response and feeling
totally rude for not verbally acknowledging them at all. Luckily though, the
cashier spared me any attempts at conversation aside from stating the total.
Though I desperately searched for it, there didn’t seem to be a screen that
showed me my total in numerical terms, so I just handed the cashier a note I
knew was big enough.
Regardless of the inevitable difficulties,
groceries in tow, I happily skipped back to my hostel to enjoy my feast of
oranges, read and wait for the rest of my group to turn up. When they did
eventually make an appearance at 1 am, I gave them a nice surprise by popping up from my
bed after recognizing their voices with little warning other than an abrupt, ‘hey guys!!’.
12
April
When in Germany, go to a concentration
camp.
Unfortunately, I think it is very safe to
say that when the average American thinks of the great Deutschland, World War
II is the first thing that pops into their head. I, being far from innocent in
this regard, was very excited to both see a concentration camp first-hand, as
well as gain a new perspective on modern day Germany as a whole. I am now happy
to report that not only were both of those aims met spectacularly, but they
also provide some (questionably) great story material for you now.
We bussed it over to Dachau in the morning,
doing our best to squeeze in some last laughs before the sombre occasion the
rest of the day was sure to be. Luckily, our home base of Munich city is not
only beautiful and lively in itself, but is also conveniently located within
easy travel distance to the two places we wanted to visit most on this trip –
the primary being the first concentration camp ever built in Germany – Dachau.
When we arrived, we made our way to
reception where we were informed of an English-spoken tour leaving in under an
hour. Though I considered saving a few euros by opting for a more self-guided
experience, I soon found out that the tour was 2 hours. Apart from feeling that
such a long tour would probably be worth my money, I also wasn’t sure what I
would do by myself for such a length of time, so in the end bought a ticket. We
wiled away the hour's wait in the café where I – though deciding not to buy
anything – had an unshakable yearning for apfelstreudel instilled in me by Anna
B. When we had eaten, looked around outside, and Anna had gone to the gift
shop, it was finally time to depart with our belated tour guide.
Though the tour was admittedly long and a
little long-winded (not unlike these blogs, I am sure) it was full of some
great information and was overall a great experience to have had.
When the tour had finished, we were nothing
short of starving and unanimously decided to get the first bus back to Munich
where we would ask our hostel staff for dinner suggestions. Though we told them
that we would prefer a traditional German restaurant, the place we eventually
ended up at (and took forever to find) was delicious – but probably not
wholly traditional from what little we knew. Nonetheless, it was a great meal
and gave us an opportunity to explore Munich a little more on our way to find
it.
But the explorations were far from finished
for the night. Though we were staying in Munich, we didn’t feel as
though we were going to get an opportunity to really see the city itself. So,
when we had finished eating, we headed not back to the hostel, but in a
completely other direction of which – truth be told – we knew nothing of the ending. But putting faith in our numbers for safety, we ventured off into the
wild unknown with only instinct (and the backup of a smartphone and Google
maps) to guide us.
We followed the path of increasing foot
traffic, finally reaching what we hoped to be the heart of the city, but from
there on out, we basically just went where our feet took us. Our first real
destination was found simply by luck. While walking down one of the more busy
streets, I happened to look round at just the right second and caught a glimpse
of a large, important-looking building through the space between a row of
buildings. Upon my arm flying up in the air to point and an accompanied exclamation of ‘Ooh, that looks important! Let’s go there!’, our group made an
immediate 90 degree turn in search of the monument.
Once we decided that we had taken enough
pictures and disturbed enough annoyed-looking couples, we left
the park via a new street and found ourselves on high ground. From our
altitude, we could clearly see the several buildings that stuck out
significantly higher and looked significantly older than the rest. We planned
our route from there based only on sight and the conviction that following the
tall buildings was an advanced enough system for any study abroad student. The
first place we came to turned out to be a church, and though dark and clearly
closed, it was beautiful to look at from outside.
Although we then departed for the next
building on our make-shift route – this one conveniently pseudo-named the ‘salt
and pepper building’ for lack of real knowledge and the fact that its pillars
looked like salt and pepper shakers – our bladders had different plans for some
of us. Deciding half-way to temporarily abandon our search, we made it back to
the hostel instead with the intention of returning to the hunt after a quick
visit to the loo. Unfortunately, a funny thing happens when you sit down at
your hostel; tiredness. Therefore, instead of continuing our search, we decided
to cash in our free drink tickets at the hostel bar… because nothing’s better
than a 10 minute night turning into 3 hours.
13 April
The next day, my deepest darkest Disney
fantasies came true in almost every way. That is, I saw a true castle. If you
were expecting a fairy tale, slow-motion, gush fest about being rescued from a
dragon by my knight in shining armour, welcome to the corner of sad
disappointment. You can join me in my ceaseless task of waiting for that to
happen. In the meantime, I guess we can just read this blog about a castle.
But wait, the disappointment doesn’t end
there! Since I am officially over a month behind, the rest of this post comes
to you in list form. I know, I’m sorry (who are we kidding, you’re happy this
is going to be shorter!). To all you great literary minds out there; I just can’t
keep up. I’ve officially finished exams, and I still can’t keep up. You can
blame Netflix. Or, in a slightly more positive way of thinking, you can blame the
countless places I am itching to visit and am slowly checking off my list. They’re awesome, but they both add to my
list of unwritten blog posts and take away time I could be writing said posts.
Talk about first world problems. Anyways, I’d better actually get to the point
or this apology will officially succeed in defeating its own purpose.
- By
plane, train and
automobile, we made it to the Neuschwanstein area, seeing some great German
countryside on the way.
- After about 2 minutes there, we
realised that the slowly thinning stream of people headed off the train and
towards the bus officially didn’t contain Christine. What can we say, it was a
sprint to the train and a scattered seating situation once boarded.
- We messaged her on facebook,
but realised that our punishment for being in Europe without actual, reliable
forms of communication was finally being dealt.
- After another couple of minutes,
we decided that we were crazy for considering smoke signals and hoped that Christine was
alright, but eventually moved on.
- We waited in a huge line for
tickets, of which I opted out in the interest of my seriously thinning wallet
and in the hopes that seeing just the outside of the castles would be enough.
- I ate my first German pretzel!
- We saw a castle! (We waited for
their tour in English then I waited outside and facetimed my mum <3 )
- Who am I kidding, it wasn’t
just “another castle”. It was the castle that inspired Sleeping Beauty’s! Sleeping Beauty’s! Also, we almost died
on the bus ride up the mountain. But that’s a story for another time… or never.
- … or now because who are we
kidding, when the heck else am I going to tell it?! Basically, we were squeezed
in to the very front of the bus, I was the lucky one in the group who actually
managed to find something to hold onto, this mountain apparently didn’t have
safety barricades to stop busses from plunging to their deaths, and the driver
had a seriously hard time suppressing his laughter at our obvious terror. The
end (:
- We saw the castle from the view of a nearby bridge! (Because one angle is just simply not enough. Who are we kidding, neither
was two, but I can’t get picky.)
- We bussed it back to the city
centre where I finally got my apfelstreudel (I actually just spelled that
correctly without checking! Proud moment! Can I become an honorary German now?)
then took the train back to Munich.
 |
| They were that tired. |
- We decided that – though it was
a true German experience missed – the beer garden just simply wasn’t happening that
night. The shoes were off.
- We found Christine - who
apparently had ended up getting the next train and was at the castle area when we were – apologised
profusely, then proceeded to fall straight asleep.
Well that was a lot quicker, wasn't it?! I
might have to do this again… we’ll see (: Until then, Tschüss everyone!
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