More Munich, Salzburg, Southern Germany Castle Hunting, Vienna, Barcalona, London

Wow obviously timely blog updates are not my cup of tea.

I believe I left off having arrived in Munich, but having not really left it yet for any trips. That was about 2 months ago and since then I've...
- been on 6 weekend trips in 5 countries
- started classes and am already nearly halfway done (scary)
- met more Germans and folks from 6 continents...still looking for a friendly penguin from Antarctica
- bought and enjoyed an awesome bike
- been to a circus
- and so much more...!

Lets talk trips first. Its only about 90 miles from Munich to Salzburg, Austria. If you have enough people, you get a special deal called the Bayern ticket, so its only about 6 euros to get to Salzburg via a 2 hour train ride. A couple weeks after I arrived in Munich, 16 of the exchange students went down there for the weekend (weekend of March 20 I believe). Who went? I will steal that info from another person's blog! It was...
Katherine (Wisc), Stephen (Wisc), Scott (Wisc), Vanessa (Wisc), Tim (Cali), Jared(Cali), Garrett (Cali), Spencer (Cali), Logan (Arizona), Skyler (Colorado), Danielle (Holland), Heidi (Finland), Kate (Australia), Linsay (Canada), and Cristina (Spain).


Salzburg (Salz - salt, burg - castle) has a big castle where salt used to be stored (what a creative name right?). We checked that out on the first day we arrived.  It was quite a climb to the top, and totally work it for the great view from the top. See picasa for pictures. The city of Salzburg is touristy, but nice. You see a lot of stuff regarding Mozart (from Salzburg) and The Sound of Music. That night we went to an Irish pub and slept in our "hostel" which was more like a hotel. Our own bathroom? Amazing!

The next day was probably my first (of many) crazy adventure in Europe. From the castle, we could see a sweet looking gondola that brought you up to the top of a giant cliff. We decided to find it and ride it. After a long bus ride way out of the city, we arrived. And realized it cost something like 20 euro to ride the gondola. Nooo thank you. Anyway, the best adventures are free, we said. At the base of the aforementioned cliff, was a pretty fantastic looking waterfall. "I want to go to there" we said (30 rock anyone?). So we did. Between us and the waterfall was a surprisingly large amount of personal property, so a few fences were hopped. After a long walk through a steep, pathless forest, we reached the base of the giant cliff. After a minute or two of rest, we started heading toward the waterfall. Ahh, then suddently "Bang, bang....splat." Rocks are falling a hundred feed or so from the cliff and landing frighteningly near us. Nothing like that feeling of impending death to wake you up! We dove behind trees, waited a few minutes and kept going! And gosh darn it, we made it to that waterfall, took some pictures and ran away. Again, see picasa for the pictures! And that, essentially, was Salzburg.

Next up, a trip across Southern Germany. It turns out renting a car, at least a tiny little car, is quite cheap. Linsay and I reserved a car for Saturday and Sunday (March 27-28). There was plans for skiing on Friday, but train issues meant we learned we couldn't go, after getting up at 5.30am. We sort of spontaneously called Enterprise and asked if we could pick up the car a day early. We could! We called Christina and Kate and asked if they wanted to go. They did! I'm glad everyone is up for impromptu adventures. So basically, we had a map and plans to see castles in Southern Germany. And that was it.

So, in case anyone was unaware, there are a lot of castles in Germany. Like 10,000. The vast majority of these castles are "ruins." The secret is, ruins are the best type of castle. A ruin isn't kept nice on the inside. It's also free, and generally void of tourists. You are free to explore wherever you want, climb around, and get freaked out in pitch dark cellars. Its much more interesting. So we were driving along, and saw a castle at the top of a hill. This was in Bad Urach, near Stuttgart. As we parked, it started to drizzle, but we decided to go for it anyway. After walking along a random trail for awhile, we realized we weren't really heading up, towards the castle. So we walked straight up. It's always more satisfying to reach the top of something if you've struggled on the way up. Lets just say we were really satisfied once we finally made it. We later realized there WAS a nice trail directly to the top. Oh well, live and learn. Or not. (That's foreshadowing!) Anyway, it was well worth it. We were the only people in this giant castle, exploring dark rooms and climbing to the top of towers for great views. The one plaque said it was once a prison. An old abandoned prison. Niiiice. Anyway, good times.

This being a spontaneous trip, we had decided not to book any hostel, bring sleeping bags, and just see what happened. So we saved some money, and slept in the car! We found a vineyard near, I think, Stuttgart, drove in, and went to sleep. Well first watched one guy run past our car at 1am, then two more people run up to our car, bang on the window, say something in German, and keep running. We locked the doors, kept the key in the ignition, and then went to sleep.

Waking up the next day at dawn, we decided we didn't want to go that again the next night. Hmmmmm. Oh, Linsay's grandma (ahem, oma) lives near Lahr, a tiny town at the top of black forest and only a hour or two from where we were. So we called her up, and got a place to sleep! To be honest, I only remember one thing we did that day before we arrived in Lahr. That would be getting an amazing McDonalds breakfast with lots of coffee (I've started liking coffee everyone).

So Linsay's grandma speaks no English at all. Kate, Linsay and I essentially can't communicate in German. Christina speaks Spansh, English, and German. Phew. After a very slow and gesture filled conversation with the grandma (I don't think I ever actually learned her name), Linsay's aunt, uncle, cousin, and crazy other uncle came over. The aunt spoke a little English, so we had another translator. We sat around drinking champagne and teaching each other funny words in each other's language. Good times!

The black forest is very cool. We drove home on tiny winding roads through villages built with very traditional German architecture. Lots of exposed timber beams and steeply angled roofs. Maybe I'll build myself a house like that when I get home.

And we were back to Munich!

The next trip was actually very similar, but still very cool. We rented a giant 9 seater van and again traveled around southern Germany. Actually, we ended up getting it free an extra two days, so we went on two day trips before actually leaving. The first was to Ikea. Awesome. Cheap food. The next was to Starnberger See, not a sea, a lake, 30 minutes from Munich. That was quite nice, we just walked around and checked out the countryside near Munich. 7 of us went on this trip. This time it was Jarad, Spencer, Garrett, Marietta (Hungary), Jasmine (China), Karla (Equador) and myself. We again only had a few plans. We were going for two nights, but only booked a hostel for the second night, and were mostly just castle hunting as well as hoping to check out a few cities. Ok so the castles and small towns are all starting to blur together. Here's what I remember. We checked out one "unruined" castle which was pretty cool. It was dark before we found a place to park the car and sleep. I slept in the back of van, I mean the very very back. At one point I woke up claustrophobic and freaking out and had to get out for a little while. Hah. Anyway we woke up in a beautiful orchard, which was quite nice.

This turned out to be Easter morning! We spent Easter continuing to castle hunt, eventually finding another great ruin to explore. Right as we were about to go, we found one more room which turned out to be...wait for it....a little pub. In a castle. In this undeveloped bottom room of this random castle, where we were nearly the only ones there, on Easter, we find an open pub. We went in and had dinner (we were the only ones there) and our waitress invited us to a party that night! So random. Anyway, a really good place. Hopefully we'll be going back to have a party (for someone's birthday or something, we'll find an excuse). We had to decline the party because we had to make it to Heidelberg where our hostel was. There were some minor car issues. We tried to park the very tall car in a parking garage with very low ceilings. Spencer and I ended up "walking" the car out by standing on the back bumper and pressing on the ceiling while Garrett slowly drove. Anyway, we made it out with only a few small scratches, which Enterprise didn't notice on return. Nice.

Heidelberg is a beautiful, if a bit touristy, town. We spent the morning checking out the city. We also bought a bunch of mandarin oranges that turned out to taste terrible. So we all started juggling them. I tried to get a "clown" on the street to juggle with me, but HE DIDN'T KNOW HOW TO JUGGLE. What kind of clown doesn't know how to juggle? Ridiculous. Anyway, I now have plans to get really good a juggling and make some money as a street performer in Munich. We'll see how that goes...

So driving home, we saw another castle and decided to climb up to it. Just like last weekend, we decided not to take the trail, but go straight up. Once we made it to the top, things started looking very familiar. Maybe all the castles were just blending together in my head? No, it turned out, this was the very same castle I had been to the weekend before, and I didn't even realize it until I'd been walking around it for awhile. We watched the sunset from the top and headed home!

Vienna! The next weekend, we were off to Vienna, Austria. Its only about 4 hours away by train. Its pretty sweet how close everything is to Munich. It was really nasty weather so we mostly stuck to museums on the first day. We visited the Natural History Museum, with the largest collection of stuffed animals I've ever seen, and some other museum I forget the name of, with lots of paintings and armor and spears and cool stuff like that. The next day we checked out some really cool gardens and walked around the city. Good times.

Barcelona. We flew to Barcelona just as the Volcano in Iceland started its eruption festivities. Once we arrived we noticed almost all the other flights were canceled. We barely made it! Barcelona is a very cool city. We stayed in a cool hostel called Kabul (no idea why). It was crazy, the whole place was run totally in English. Its quite convenient how English is the new Latin. Anyway, we checked out the maria area first, which has recently been very built up, it even has a full mall out over the water. Picaso lived in Barcelona for parts of his life and there is a giant museum that we checked out that has lots of his paintings. One room is full of about 30 paintings, which we realized after about 10 minutes were all actually of the same thing, just in completely different styles. He was one crazy cat. At the hostel we met people from Mexico, Canada, and Australia and did some adventuring with them. Antoni Gaudi, a famous architect, lived in Barcelona. We saw some of the buildings he designed and went to the Park Guell, which is I guess dedicated to him. Its a giant park with a great view of the city from the top. On our last full day, we headed 20 minutes out of the city to a little beach town and hung out on the beach. It wasn't quite beach weather, but it wasn't too cold. I went swimming in the Mediterranean! Only for about 30 seconds, but I did! On the last day we went on a walking tour - and realized its probably a lot better to do tours on the first day in a city, not the last. It was mostly in the Gothic quarter, through tiny alleyways that have been around for hundreds, or maybe even a thousand years.

Last but definitely not least, London! A few people had told me London was just a big city, without a lot of character. From my experience there, its the complete opposite. It was great to see all the famous sites - Buckingham Palace and the changing of the guards, the huge London Eye Farris Wheel, Big Ben (which is actually just the bell, not the whole clock tower), Hyde Park, the Tower Bridge, and Shakespeare's Globe Theater, to name a few. We went and saw Macbeth at the Globe, which was probably my favorite experience in London. The Globe is an open air amphitheater. The actors don't use mics and its a very "up close and personal" experience. You could buy nice seats for 35 pounds, or pay 5 for the "yard" seats, which is standing room only. We had heard this was more fun anyway, so we went for the 5 pound tickets. What a good decision. People stand right in front of the stage. To keep people separated, they cover this area with a big piece of fabric with head sized holes in it. So you crouch around under the fabric until you find a hole, then pop up. Once everyone gets in, all you can see are a bunch of heads poking through this big black cloth. It made for some good pictures. The show started with the Three Witches running around under the cloth pretending to try to steal stuff from you. I'm not sure if they were actually pretending though, because they jumped on stage with a wallet. Whatever, they didn't get mine. Anyway, the show had lots of blood, some splattered on the audience. Halfway through, it started to rain and all the standing people, and the actors, got soaked. But it was fun times. On our last night up with a guy that knows Skyler's dad. He showed us around to some of the 'local' pubs, and I think must have spent a couple hundred pounds buying us all drinks. Cool guy! Our flight left at 6am the next morning, so we had decided to cancel our hostel for that night and just stay up all night. It was an interesting night. It was raining, so after we left the last pub, we just wandered around the city. We tried to see a movie, but it was too late, and then we tried to get some chicken at KFC, BUT THEY WERE OUT OF CHICKEN. How is that possible? KFC out of chicken? Madness. We finally made it back after a not so fun bus ride, plane ride, and train ride. And I slept all day. Good times.

So that's the trips update. This weekend is off, next weekend I go to Prague, and the weekend after (or so) I'm going to Rome to meet up with my grandma and uncle who are there for the world boomerang championship. Fun stuff.

What have I done while in Munich you ask? Well let me (very quickly) tell you. Classes are basically ridiculously easy. There isn't much in the way of homework, and classes generally meet just once a week for an hour and a half. I'm now really taking 4 classes (plus a block class) for a grand total of 6 hours of class a week. Most of those classes I don't think I'll get credit for, so I'm probably looking at only about half a quarters worth of credit from this trip. Which sucks, but that's not why I'm here anyway, so I'll live. Like always, some of the classes are interesting, some not so much. Three I like are a class about the economic and cultural workings of the EU, a class about human-machine communication (weird) and the "physics of logic" (really weird, about universes, multiverses, black holes, worm holes, and other crazyness).

Ohh I went to Cirque du Soleil at the Olympic Stadium, which is a 10 minute walk from where I live. It was crazy to see how strong and flexible everyone is. I've also started swimming at the Olympic pool. Its cool to be able to swim in the same pool that Olympians did. 50m pools also make me feel intense. I got a sweet road bike. I bike around the city a lot, and almost always ride it to school. It takes about 15 minutes to get there, really not bad at all. The weather is terrible right now, but I hope to go on some rides outside the city soon. There seems to be some sort of party, either through one of the many universities here, an international club, or just people getting together just about every night. They are pretty fun, but get expensive fast. Germans are crazy party-ers - staying out until 6 or 7am is no big deal. My German is...not great. I'm trying to keep learning, but with everyone speaking English it makes it difficult. We'll see what happens.

Ok, if you've made it this far you are probably tired of reading, and I am definitely tired of writing, so lets call it good! Next is pictures, so hopefully there will be some up on picasa soon!