This is Part 2 of my travels through Germany, you can read Part 1 here.
I left Nürnberg early on the 30th of May, on a train towards Fussen in Southern Bavaria. Just a few kilometers from Fussen lies Schwangau, the little village sitting besides the imperial castles of Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau. Neuschwanstein is the cooler one in my opinion; it lies on top of a big cliff at the foot of the Alps, overlooking an enormous gorge over a waterfall and looks exactly the way you’d imagine a fairy tale castle to look like. I hiked up there with a New Zealander I met in Fussen, but didn’t feel like paying to actually go inside the castle. Near the castle is also a bridge spanning the gorge, which is a little bit above the castle and looks over it and towards the Forggensee lake and the pastures and small villages of Southern Bavaria. I talked to Keiron, the New Zealander, for a while, about a lot of things, it turns out he has a degree in Music but now works for a huge Australian wine company as the manager of a publicity, PR kinda team (I don’t remember exactly what the team did). We also checked out the other castle, which Keiran said looks like a castle from a King Arthur legend, after which we walked over to the Alpsee lake. The nature there is amazing, it reminded me a lot of the last episode of Band of Brothers when Major Winters swims in the Austrian lake after the war in Europe was over.
Neuschwanstein Castle
We split up afterwards, and I had to find ‘the office’ for the only affordable room in the village for the night. There technically wasn’t an office, it was just a few people who I luckily bumped into outside the ‘pension’ or whatever the place is called. It was basically just a building with rooms, and you paid the person straight up when they brought you up. I had a fairly large room with a single bed to myself, with a table, a private shower and toilet, even a stove and fridge! It was a little pricey, 22 Euros, but given the fact that every cheap room in München was booked for that night, this was a really good option. I also showed up to Fussen with no plan, and I had been eyeing the benches around the village as potential places to sleep (all my stuff minus the camera was locked up at the train station), so the money I paid was worth it.
The next day I checked out of the room (this meant leaving the keys on the table and just leaving), locked my bags up again, and rented a bike for the day. I got an awesome street bike and the plan was to start biking along the Forggensee and see where I end up. It was awesome! They have a nice paved path for bicycles that goes along the lake, and from time to time a little farther away from it through pastures and villages. It was just like the movies again, just what you’d picture Bavaria to look like. The Alps on the other side of the lake, both castles almost always visible in the distance, the cyan-coloured lake, cows and their bells, horses and lots of nature. I biked over 30km and only got lost once, but the constant going up and down hills killed my legs, I was super tired when I got back into Fussen.
Cottage in Southern Bavaria
At the train station waiting for the train to Munich were two Californians, a brother and sister, who were having trouble communicating with the people at the train station that they lost a bag there earlier and whether there was a lost and found anywhere. Unfortunately for them (Joe and Biz) they didn’t find their bag, which had an expensive gift for their grandparents in it, and being a Sunday, there was nobody at the train station offices to help them.
It turned out that they had beds booked at the same hostel I was hoping to find one in Munich, so we chatted for a while on the train and searched out the hostel together. The hostel luckily had a bed for me too, so after we all unpacked our stuff we went to look for a bite to eat. Most places seemed to be closed on a Sunday evening, but we found a place with cheap pizza. It turned out the be a gay bar/lounge/restaurant. I think the ‘Queens’ in the name of it should’ve been a bit of a giveaway. Afterwards we had a couple good, cheap Bavarian beers each at the hostel bar, which was showing The Meaning of Life, and we ended up chatting about all kinds of things until 1am.
The next day was a public holiday in Germany, so unfortunately no butcher was open to sell me Leberkaese. I did find a bakery open, so I didn’t set out to explore the city on an empty stomach. Just a few blocks west of the hostel is Theresienwiese, the giant field where Oktoberfest is held yearly. It’s enormous! I can only imagine how much fun it would be with a few hundred thousand people all enjoying Bavarian sausage and amazing Bavarian beer. The beer here really is great, and if you get it on tap it’s served in either half a liter for the weak, or one, yes ONE, liter for the real beer drinkers. It almost gets difficult to hold these monstrous beer mugs…
Exploring the city was fun. Right before getting to the old town I saw an middle aged German man setting up a huge chessboard in a park (by huge I mean the pieces came up to my knees and were thicker than my arms). I stopped by to see what he was doing, and he challenged me to a game. If you know me well enough, you know there’s no way in hell I would turn down a chess game, especially one as epic as this. He was really good, I was on the defensive right from the start and felt as if it was only a matter of time before I made a costly mistake, but he made one first and I was up a knight on him, from which point on I dominated the game and ended up winning. He was getting some help from the few spectators, one who kept saying “Der junge ist gut!”
The old town of Munich is pretty, but I think I’ve been spoiled by Prague. It has several huge, beautiful churches and a really cool Rathaus, but it’s nothing compared to Prague. The St. Jan Nepomuc church was gorgeous however, being intricately painted from floor to ceiling and lined in awesome sculptures and decorations. I also went up in the bell tower of a church (St. Peter) and took in the view from up there. The day was a overcast so I could see as far as the alps, but I could see the entire city.
One really interesting thing is that a river flowing through the English Gardens, creates a natural standing wave at one point, just after passing under a bridge. This means that there are people always surfing there, back and forth, until they lose their balance, fall in and float down the river. It’s really mesmerizing, but I don’t know if you can call it ‘surfing’ - the surfers kinda just stand up and they’re already on the wave. It’s really cool and worth seeing, nonetheless.
Surfing away from the ocean
In the evening I met up with Joe and Biz again. We enjoyed some free beer tasting, and wow, Bavarian beer is ALL good. The wheat beer is really interesting, and the Helles is super smooth and you can definitely drink more than one liter-sized mug. We played a drinking game with a girl from Victoria (how crazy is that?? Small world) and after 2 mugs of beer each plus some shots of Jager (it was happy hour, a shot for one euro) we were definitely drunk. We got into quite an argument with a cocky Italian guy, who kept saying that Italy is the best because they make love not war, and that the mafia is great. Apparently he was part of the mafia, and he made fun of us for holding jobs, but for some reason he was staying at the cheapest hostel in Munich… I also talked to a German lady who was shocked at how we were taught WW2 in Canada. She was shocked to find out that our teachers lectured that Hitler came to power for many reasons, leading as far back as the Treaty of Versailles. She says she was never taught it that way, that they were never given such connections, and she didn’t know that the inflation of ’23 played a role in the rise of the Nazi party. Maybe she didn’t pay attention in school, but it was definitely interesting to hear this and I wonder what German students are taught today.
The next day Joe, Biz and I went to Dachau. I had been to Terezin about a month before, but Dachau was so much more shocking. First of all, the camp is enormous. Thousands of prisoners suffered there, and many of them died. What I hadn’t known before is that the camp was established merely three months after Hitler became Chancellor, and it was the only camp to be used for the entire twelve years of Nazi rule. Initially imprisoned in the camp were political prisoners, mostly communists, social democrats and trade unionists, but over time it became a labour camp for all kinds of people. Imprisoned at the concentration camp by the SS were Jews, Roma, homosexuals, foreign resistors, priests, Jehovah's Witness, Soviet POWs, beggars and the socially outcast (homeless, the mentally or physically challenged), and anyone else the regime found a threat or sub-human. The pictures and video footage from around the camps, are truly awful and they really leave you speechless. It’s hard to comprehend the hatred of some men, and how men can treat other men in such ways. The memorial is very educational however and it touches on more aspects of the Third Reich than just Dachau, and I’m glad I had the chance to see it.
This post was written from Frankfurt. I'll blog about Heidelberg, Frankfurt and whatever comes next soon. Stay tuned.
