Hi Blavellers! So the next lot of our travels to portray is our journey from Dubrovnik to Munich via a very long bus trip and then our stay in Munich.
In Dubrovnik we arrived at the coach station ready for our 5am departure and got on the bus no problem. Then a few hours later we pick up more people, then more people then more people! Suddenly, the coach is overfull to the extent that the aisle is completely full of people standing and sitting wherever they can! Also, the roads we are travelling on put a new meaning on the word windy so lucky for us that we had seats but how awful for those who didn’t! It was like that for about 2 hours too! Then, thankfully they got half of us to get onto another bus so it was a bit more comfy for everyone by this stage. The rest of the trip (the total time was about 22 hours) was OK... we met some nice people on the bus, we met some not so nice people on the bus... we also didn’t understand any of the announcements so it was pretty hard to know how long we were allowed at rest stops etc but it’s all good, we got by. The scenery passed was incredible. The coastline of Croatia has massive rocky hills coming right down to the water’s edge with pristine sea gently lapping the rocks. It was beautiful but it made for a very long and windy and up and down bus ride! We heard people being sick on the bus it was that bad! :(
So finally we arrived in Munich at 3.30am and found our way to our accommodation at THE TENT. Yep, silly me had decided to save money by booking at a 10 euro per person/per night place. The downside was that it was a 100 bed dorm TENT! It also started pelting rain when we got there and the temperature dropped to below 10! OK, I’m probably not doing it justice, it wasn’t really bad at all... the facilities were fantastic and the atmosphere was great... just don’t count on any sleep. We were probably the oldest there by about 10 years too (!) so it was kind of funny (or not) to be lying there at 4am wanting to shout at everyone to shut up and go to sleep!
OK, so Munich, well, we love Germany and have been to Berlin, Dresden and Cottbus before so we were excited to see what Munich, which is in Bavaria (think funny hats, large beers and lederhosen type clothes) would be like. It’s fantastic! The city seems quite spread out and the buildings are really quite imposing in a good way. The food was yummy and the beer came in large quantities! Usually they serve it by the litre! Everyone was really friendly as well and off course, so organised!
We visited Dachau one day which is infamous for being the site of the first concentration camp which all the others were modelled on. It was very sobering, sad and quite an eye-opener. The museum they have inside one of the buildings has an absolute wealth of information on the camp and it was interesting to learn how they fooled the German people into thinking it was a re-education camp for people who didn’t fit into society. We recommend it for anyone who visits that area!
We also walked about Munich a fair bit just soaking it all up. We visited the Town Hall which contains the Rathaus-Glockenspiel which plays a HUGE song and some figurines go dancing around at certain hours. Not the most exciting thing in the world but we were one of 100s of tourists watching it! LOL We also tasted the local cuisine of Bavarian baked sausage loaf served with potato salad (yummy!) and we wanted to try a Munich specialty - Weißwürste (white sausages) but they didn’t have any left at the time!
We spent a full day going to visit Neuschwanstein castle which is a 2 hour train ride from Munich. It’s amazing! It was our first sight of the Alps too and the area is beautiful beautiful beautiful! The town just below the castle, although geared to the tourist market, is really pretty with lots of nice pubs and shops and to get to the castle is a really nice 20 min walk up a forest shaded path. The castle itself is in pristine condition! It was started in 1869 and was near completion in 1886 when the King who had commissioned it was declared insane and then found drowned in suspicious circumstances. King Ludwig II of Bavaria actually got a theatrical set designer, rather than an architect to design the place and the whole thing really is a fantasy. It’s exactly what you think a castle should be in a fairytale! Due to his death there are whole floors unfinished but the stuff that is complete is truly fantastical. Can you believe that just 6 weeks after his death the place was opened as a museum!
So apart from going on a walk and getting lost in a forest that was close to where we were staying that’s about all we saw in Munich. It’s a great city with excellent people and we’ll definitely miss Germany!
