Mischief in Europe

Where did I last leave off? Oh yea, doing laundry in my hostel room. I went to the Pinakotheke der Moderne (a modern art museum) and explored the city. Unlike the UK it costs to get into museums here in Germany. I miss that. It was like 10 euro to get in. I wouldn't be visiting all the museums here. There are a lot and I'd spend a small fortune. I magically found my way into the special exhibition. Not wanting to salmon to get out I went with the flow of traffic to the end. The exhibition was a collection of portraits of women by Picasso, Max Beckmann, and Willem De Kooning. I'm glad I didn't pay for it. Portraits aren't my cup of tea. It was cool as it was free though. One that really stood out for me was by Picasso, it was of his wife and it was weird to not see a mind bending painting of his. In the limited photography section was a collection titled "Hotelarbieten". In it the artists went to various hotels and made forts out of flipped furniture, mattresses, doors taken off the hinges, basically anything that was available in the room. Pretty nifty. Afterwards I explored the city as I am wont to do.

Visiting a concentration camp was one of the things that I absolutely needed to do. The first concectration camp, Dachau, is located 10 miles outside of Munich. It was opened in 1933 and active all through the war. Putting my emotions into words seems near impossible. I felt the deepest of sorrow for the prisoners and nothing but outrage that such a thing could have ever happened. I can't imagine the horror of enduring ~~life~~ an existence there. It was a day I won't forget.

Today I went to Schloss Nymphenburg, the summer palace of the Wittelbach's. I'm under the impression it was one of those places that "If you have to ask, you can't afford it." haha. It was huge. It was beautiful. Extravagant is an understatement. One of the princes connected all of the families palaces with a series of canals and hired Venetian gondoliers to pilot the gondolas between them. I can't even fathom how these people lived. All in all Munich has been wonderful but I'm off to a small town in the Alps tomorrow. I'll come back after that. I gotta have another deep fried pork leg and stein of housebrewed Bavarian beer.

Ha! Just realized I ate at that burrito place on the corner. Not bad for being a continent removed from the origin of burrito's

Sweet cruiser

Inside the Pinakotheke der Moderne

It's a shame the second tower is undergoing renovations. Killed my photo ops

I was enamored with this building

There was some sort of pole vaulting competition. He was successful, others not so much

Made in the camp by a prisoner

I found it touching that despite being in Dachau he still found the strength to make a card, let alone such a beautiful one.

Plaques of rememberance

Bunks

Looking down the main road of Dachau

Inside the Jewish memorial

Looking out the Jewish memorial

Inside the Catholic Carmelite convent

This was the Madonna that was housed in the priests barracks at Dachau

Originally that trench ran all the way around the perimeter

Inside the bunker. It was a place for "special cases". It was hell inside of hell. You did not want to end up here.

Schloss Nymphenburg

Beautiful and gaudy. I would never live here but mannn was it impressive.

Closing that door only makes me want to go in there more.

Bayern coat of arms

Gardens in the back

Heh

Been a while since I've been on this, I haven't had time or a decent internet connection to upload pictures. It's late and I'm tired so I'll try and knock this out in a sort of coherent manner.

After the fiasco in London I got a bus to Amsterdam the next day. Buses are the cheapest way to travel. They're also the least pleasant. I'm on a budget, I gotta suck it up. Fortunately Megabus has wifi on all their buses which makes 14 hours a little easier, a little. Unfortunately the wifi didn't work once the ferry landed. An aside, I was quite fine taking a ferry and not The Chunnel (the tunnel that goes through the English Channel to the continent) even if it was "a once in a lifetime chance". No thanks, I don't even like the 5 minutes I'm underwater in Hampton Roads let alone 31 miles underwater. That's a lot of time for my imagination to play out every possible scenario that all end in a trapped watery death. Continuing the bus ride, the wifi ate it after landing. This presented a problem. I was gonna message my Canadian friends on Facebook when I got near so they could meet me at the train station and we go to their apartment they had rented. Well, I get off the bus find the train station, I know the stop they're at so I ride out with the intention of just finding a place with free internet and hitting them up. I get off the train in the quickly fading evening light. At the end of the platform I hear two Canuck accents hollering my name with big smiles to match them. Friends. When they didn't hear from me they figured I had no internet so they had just been waiting at the station for me. Bless them boys.

I really needed a break from traveling and I was missing friends. I've met LOADS of friendly people and had a great time so far making friends, but I made great friends with Erik and Jesse back in Dublin. They have a more relaxed version of traveling than me which is cool. I didn't go out and see a whole bunch of stuff like I usually do. I hung out with them and poked around. Totally cool with that. A few thoughts on each city.

In Amsterdam I had the freshest most delicious strawberries sitting in the grass beside a canal. Amsterdam was great. It was super laid back. The bikes ruled the streets there, which I'm completely OK with haha. Just about everyone there spoke English. Not too surprising.

Germans have been extremely friendly. Between getting off the bus and finding our hostel two or three different people came up to us offering to help us send us in the right direction. It's also nice to be able to enjoy a brew while walking down the street. Germans were also shocked to learn that back in the States we have drunk tanks. Here the police just tell you to go home. It's just a different culture. It's an accepted and deeply rooted tradition.

Berlin was CRAZY. The nightlife there lives up to its reputation. We would leave the club in the morning and see the sunrise, see folks going to work on the train, and then crash at the hostel. One of the clubs we went to had a half pipe (for skateboarding mom :) ), a rock wall, and a fountain. Another one had 7 dancefloors. They were all just insane. Being someone who prefers talking and having a beer with friends at a bar than going to a club with friends, I had a blast at all of them. Also, don't think there's much hope for me ever again going into a club in RVA after I've had so much fun in Berlin.

Frankfurt was pretty crummy. It's the headquarters for the Central European bank. So lots of bankers, bleh. The city was pretty much flattened during WW2, so there weren't many old buildings to see. I noticed there were some sketchy parts of town and signs of heavy drug use. Someone we met there told us Germans refer to it as the ugliest city in Germany, another showed us the "Frankfurt Applause", where he clapped his arm. A sad, true, social commentary on the state of Frankfurt.

After deciding we were done with Frankfurt we met up with a friend of E&J's in Mainz, a big town/small city about 30 minutes outside of Frankfurt. It sits on the Rhine and is much better than Frankfurt. We didn't want to spend much time there. We messaged Josh (their friend from Canada) and had two nights and a day there. It rained all day during the daytime but let up at night. We headed to the Rhine. I wanted to at least get some night photography in because I missed out during the day. I of course forgot the head to my tripod, this has happened too much and I'm figuring out a way to stop that from happening. Anyway, I got a couple fun shots from the ground.

This morning Erik and Jesse had to catch a flight back to Canada. We hugged at the airport and said goodbye. It was one of the tougher goodbyes I've said in a while. I'm seriously gonna miss them. I hope to see them again. I hopped the train to Frankfurt and decided Munich would be my next destination. I went to one bus station office to try and buy tickets only to find out they don't run to Munich. Instead of finding a hostel and staying a night in Frankfurt and planning something out I played a game I like to call "Get the hell out of Frankfurt" and shelled out €100 (about two days budget) to get a train to Munich. It was an Intercity Express train too so it was one of the nice ones, leg room for dayssss, REALLY fast (not the super fast 200 mph ones though), and hardly few stops. So this is where I am. Munich. By luck I have a whole 6 bed dorm to myself so I showered, shaved, reorganized my pack after weeks of just cramming things in and moving on, I did a little sink laundry. I have a feeling I'll like it here. I enjoyed my Nutella and baguette in the park. Why wouldn't I enjoy the rest of it?