München Adventures

For those unaware, München = Munich, the city I visted last weekend. My room mate Jacob and I took a train down Friday morning and spent two days around Munich and then took a day trip out to Neuschwanstein castle. It was a good trip away from Würzburg for a bit and one of the trips that I had really wanted to make so I'm glad I got to.

We started out the day visiting the Marienplatz which is the main town square and home to the new town hall and Glockenspiel - the dancing clock. I'm pretty sure it's listed as one of the most over-rated tourist attractions, and definitely rightly so, but still cute. We bought fruit from a stand and munched while watching it then headed to the Viktualienmarkt, a large outdoor market which appears to specialize in sausage, for lunch.

After sampling some things Jacob and I headed north in the city in the direction of the English Gardens, wandering there and stopping by the Residenz and Hofgarten on our way. The English Gardens are really pretty, and one of the largest in Europe. We headed to the Chinese Tower, a beer garden in the middle of it, for our first mass in Munich. Throughout the weekend we decided that a) weissbier (wheat beer) is very tasty b) I drink beer rather quickly (thanks Ireland) and c) Müncheners like beer (apparently they drink 10,000 L a day, just at one beer hall). We definitely partook in that intake and tried several varieties while there including the standard hofbrau and the dark beer, called hofbrau something, along with the weissbier. The darker beer was very good as well, though rather strong (9%).

After the English Gardens we went back through the Residenz, wandered aimlessly through the city for a bit and then headed to the Hofbrauhaus for dinner. The Hofbrauhaus definitely deserves its reputation for being stereotypical and touristy, but it was interesting to see. It's not really necessary to visit though for anyone with trips planned to Munich. After dinner we headed back to our hostel for an early night as Jacob hadn't had much sleep the night before and we had woken up early to catch our train.

The next day we had a bit of a slow start and were planning on getting the typical Bavarian breakfast, weisswurst, and then heading to the Deutches Museum, a big technology museum. We did the first part and ate outside at the Viktualienmarkt - weisswurst is delicious! - but then decided that since it was shaping up to be a gorgeous day we would go on a free (nominally - they work off tips) bike tour around the city before going to the museum. The bike tour was cool, it was about 3 and a half hours and took us all around Munich, including a stop by the Chinese Tower again for a beer and lots of stories about the monuments and city along the way.

We finished the bike tour and headed to the Deutches Muesum, but unfortunately got there an hour before it closed. Because of that they didn't charge us admission, which was nice, but also meant we didn't get to see much of it. You could probably spend a full day there. We headed to the physics/computer section being the nerds that we are and wandered around until the museum closed.


We climbed up one of the church towers which had a really cool view of the city, 330 steps up to the top :) Dinner and souvenir shopping before heading back to the hostel. We spent some time relaxing in the hostel's bar before going to bed.

Our next day was largely spent on the train/bus - 3 hours to Füssen, bus ride to Neuschwanstein, bus back to Füssen, 3 hours back to Munich and then 3 hours to Würzburg and 45 min tram to our house. Lots of reading/music/nap time. But, the point of this outrageous journey was to see Castle Neuschwastein, the Disney prototype castle. It was really pretty, though one side was covered in scaffolding and there was an imminent storm. We walked up to the castle, wandered around the parts that you can get in for free and then took the trails around the grounds, which are really pretty in and of themselves and give you a good view of the castle and it's neighbor, Hohenschwangau. A side trail looked interesting and lead us to the river below the castle. It was gorgeous, and had freezing cold water that we waded in. We decided to try a different way back which turned out to be really cool and had several gorgeous waterfalls. We made it back to the train just ahead of a storm rolling in and headed back to Würzburg.


Back in Würzburg I'm working on putting together a presentation of my work this summer. The four of us each has to complete a presentation at the start of next week as a final for our work. Still haven't taken any data, but I have done some analysis with the previous data my group has. Maybe (though its looking increasingly unlikely) I'll get to do some experiments next week.

Also, two weeks until I'm back in Texas!