Week 5

This weekend we traveled to Munich in southern Germany. We left Friday night and took a train from Bonn to Munich. We had a connecting train in Mannheim but because our first train was 10 minutes behind schedule we had to run across the train station to make it to our connecting train. In the midst of the chaos our group got separated and we realized as the train pulled away from the station that we were missing half the group. Luckily they had gotten on the train further down and we found each other on the train.

Although we stayed in Munich we didn't do very much there. On Saturday morning we woke up bright and early and went to Neuschwanstein Castle. We left our hostel at 7 am and went to the train station. Its a two hour train ride to the castle. We slept on the first train, but because the second train was smaller and lots of people were trying to go to the castle we didn't get any seats. So one of my friends and I sat on the floor of the train in the aisle for an hour. Luckily we were too tired to really mind, we were just happy to sit.

In Schwangau there are to castles. The smaller one is called Hohenschwangau castle, which was the summer hunting cabin. And Neuschwanstein Castle, the bigger one. It was never actually finished because the king died before its completion, but it is the castle that inspired the Sleeping Beauty Castle for Walt Disney. We took a guided tour of both castles and saw all of the decorated rooms inside. They were very impressive; one of the rooms was decorated like a cave and the throne room was amazing. That night when we got back to Munich we went to a traditional Bavarian restaurant where they had live music and liters of beer.

On Sunday we woke up early again and went to the concentration camp memorial in Dachau. We took an audio guided tour through the memorial and saw what it was like during WWII. On the front gate were the words "work will set you free" in German. We walked through a museum depicting how the prisoners were treated and what life there was like. We went inside a gas chamber, which was interestingly never actually used at Dachau, although no one knows why.  We also happened to be there at the same time as Mike Pence, he left a nice wreath of flowers at the memorial. While it was an interesting experience to visit and I learned a lot it was also a very upsetting and emotional day for all of us. After we finished we ate at the cafe in the visitor center and then found a stray cat that cheered us all up.