European Escapade

Greetings everyone,

Before I begin, I would like to dedicate this post to Kirsten who is getting married next week. The title comes from my encounter with her Hen’s night party just a moment ago. When walking through the square today I noticed a bunch of German girls, dressed in the same clothes which all had some slogan on them, and assumed they were a frat party of some sort, or something of that nature.

As I walked back the way I came, one of them jumped out in front of me and started trying to convince me to buy a CD from her, in German. I’m finding that happens a lot. Apparently I look German enough to warrant people just talking to me in the assumption that I speak it. Often enough I can decipher what they are saying (my audio comprehension is higher than I would have expected), but I can’t fathom how to reply to them in German so I have to either say that I only speak English, or do my best “what the?” dumb tourist look.

Anyway, I told this chick I didn’t speak much German, in German. By this time she’d been joined by a few of the others and, in their best English they tried to convince me to buy either the CD, some condoms, or a variety of other random things from them. When I asked what it was for, one of them, wearing a crown of flowers, approached and explained, in better English than all the others, that she was to be married in a few days, and they were raising money for her Hen’s night party. I must have looked like I wasn’t interested because at that point, she made the best offer yet: a kiss from any of the girls present, for one Euro. Now imagine Jesse, standing in the main square of München, surrounded by Germans girls in their 20s, all encouraging me to take a kiss for one Euro.

Stupid idiot that I am, I said no thank you to the kisses, but gave her a few Euro to celebrate her last night of freedom with. Maybe you had to be there, but I found it very funny indeed. So here’s to Kirsten and her new husband!

Today was a day of Museums, and I am sorry to admit it, I think I’m all art-ed out. Actually, I’ll take that back. I’m over Renaissance art. Almost completely. There are three museums in one street nearby where I’m staying. One is full of Renaissance stuff, the next is work since the 1800s and finally there is a Gallery of Modern Art. We did them all today and I really enjoyed some parts of the last one. If nothing else, the building itself was awesome. But in addition, some modern art really appeals to me. Mainly simple things with bright colors… I wonder what that says about me.

My lack of enthusiasm art was shared today by KC from Vancouver, and Jeff, from Kentucky. Jeff is in my room as of yesterday, along with two English boys, Chris and Joe, who are both good guys, and two New Jersey brothers who seem pretty nice too. Jeff and I both planned to go today because museums are just €1 on Sundays, and we bumped into KC along the way.

Since I last posted I’ve been really quite social. Caleb, the guy I spent some time with over the last few days, is going to arrive in Berlin on Monday, same as me, so we’ve booked into the same hostel. Jeff and KC will probably both book the same one as well, so during my days in Berlin I should have a little group to hang out with. Everyone’s plans are pretty flexible though, so we’ll just wait and see.

Berlin is where I’ll be late tomorrow. I  have a 6-hour super-fast train ride from about mid-day, which I managed to get reasonably cheap. It feels almost a shame to be leaving Munich, even though I’ve kind of exhausted it from a tourist perspective. The feeling of “wow, I LIKE this place” which hit me on day one is still there, and I could really see myself living here for a few months at least if it wasn’t so terribly expensive. Great city. A must for anyone reading this blog to plan their own itinerary.

Yesterday I went to Disney Land. Well, not exactly. I went to the real castle that Walt Disney based his Disney Land Castle on. It’s called Neuschweinstein and it’s about 3 hours out of Munich. I travelled with about 9 others, and we bought a big group transport ticket to keep the costs down. In the group were 4 Mexicans, a couple from the US, 2 Aussies living in England straight out of high-school, a kiwi girl doing the same, and me. It was a really good group to travel with.

The train out to this place is over two hours and there were no seats for the first hour, so we sat in the aisles, or in the covered area between the carriages, getting to know one-another. After the long train ride, we all crammed onto buses, which go to the foot of the mountain. It was an early start so while we waited in line for tickets, the boys went to buy food for everyone and we hungrily devoured some sausages as we bought our tour tickets. The castle can only be entered as part of a tour. Tours have limited numbers and start and finish at really strict times, like a lot of things here in Germany.

We then had to catch another bus, and walk a way. By the time we got to the actual castle we’d been travelling almost 4 hours, but it was worth it. The place is completely surreal. It looks like Beauty and The Beast should be dancing in the corridors, and Cinderella waiving at you from a window somewhere. It was built as one of three by ‘mad’ King Ludwig II, who was famed for spending Bavaria’s coin on these exorbitant constructions in the middle of nowhere. As exemplified by the amount of travel it took us to get there, the place is indeed in the middle of nowhere, but this particular nowhere is the perfect setting for a castle such as this. Imagine the most amazing cliff faces, the Bavarian ‘black’ forest (so called due to its density), rolling fields, a massive, crystal clear lake, and sitting on the crest of a big hill, right in the middle of all the other mountains, a big, fairy tale castle. Now imagine me waiving from the top of the tallest tower

Anyway, the castle trip was a great thing to do, although with all the commuting I was pretty exhausted. Came back, at something, then met a whole bunch of Aussies by accident. Melbournians in fact. They were going to some local House club, which is exactly what I was up for, so I opted to join them. Only thing was, on my way to get changed, I bumped in to Caleb who was madly packing his stuff with a handful of minutes until his train left. I grabbed his spare bag and sprinted with him to the station, just a block away and helped him find his train. It was fun.

When I got back to the hostel the Aussies had disappeared so unfortunately my night ended there. But in going back to my room I got a chance to meet those who had just checked in, and hang out with them a little. I also bumped into the Aussies today and we may meet up tonight.

In some spare time today I used my camera to prepare some images for uploading. it took ages but they are ready. I plugged it into this computer just before but it’s not letting me get at them… I’ll keep trying, but hopefully soon I’ll find one which will let me throw a few images up and give you an idea of what I’ve been seeing. If not, I have over 800 photos already, and plenty of space left on my cards, so never fear: there’ll be plenty of time for long-winded slide shows when I return…

Well, there might be. If I don’t decide upon my return to pack up and move over there. I’ve been playing with that again a bit recently. Now really seems like as good a time to do it as I’m going to find. I think I’ll have a more serious chat to the boys in London about it and that’ll help me make my mind up a bit more. I’ll keep you all posted.

Anyway gang, I’m going to sign off now. Want to head back to the hostel and get as packed as I can so if anything is going on tonight I can go out and party, and just come back to a packed bag, and check out tomorrow without an early morning rush. Before I leave this internet place I’ll check to see if I can’t find another computer which lets me use USB. If I can, I’ll post some photos, but if there are none attached to this article, I’ve had no luck.

Looking forward to hearing from you all soon. From tomorrow I’ll be in Berlin, and I hear that’s a bit of a party city, and a bit expensive, so posts may be less frequent. We’ll see.

Take care, love jess oxox

This entry was posted on Monday, July 24th, 2006 at 2:00 am and is filed under Germany. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.