Is that the Sun?!

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.

Dorms

Dorms

Gas Chamber

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 ) 

• We saw a lake! 

• We saw another castle! 

•  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!