To the Land of Bier!

Munich is a gorgeous place. I spent 4 days & 4 nights there and I cant help but love the state of Bavaria. The people are polite, the sunshine is plentiful, the weather is mild, the architecture is amazing, the culture is everywhere, the history is dark, comical & delightful all at once. How can anyone not like such a place where beer takes centre stage, along with their staggering variety of sausages, salamis & the likes.

Munich was founded by MONKS.
So thats a modern & artist impression of a funky monk. haha.

I dropped in on the last day of Oktoberfest on 5 October. It was Sunday and the grounds were packed. I wished I could join the people who were merrily guzzling their 1litre beers and singing off-tune to the brass bands. But i didnt, I walked around and then headed to the Brauhaus for lunch & Beer!

In the beer tents.

Thats German Engineering for you.
Can you believe it? Its TEMPORARY.

Around the fair, there are like amusement rides, shops selling overpriced souvenirs, food stalls selling stuff like candy floss, bratwursts, prezels.

A band was playing below some huge statue thingie.
Anyway Oktoberfest was started because of the marriage between King Ludwig & his queen.The carpark which oktoberfest is held on every year, is the field which he gave to his queen as a gift.Because the field by itself simply looks too cheap, the better part of the gift was the city-wide celebrations that went with it. The wedding celebrations were with wine & all that, but the next year, the people of Munich wanted to have a fabulous party like the previous year, they had it with beer instead of wine, since it was cheaper. hence OKTOBERFEST.
Thanks to them, we get to enjoy this party as well.

Then after my huge-ass Pork knuckle, we went to the English Gardens before heading back to rest. Well, when the sun is out, so are the people of munich. So many of them took the opportunity to lie in the sun to get some vitamin D. Haha. Its an european thing, to lie on the grass, in the sun.

The Chinese Tower, which I didnt think look very chinese.
Only because it looks like a pagoda, doesnt mean its CHINESE, you know?
But it is a lovely place for a beer garden.

The river which runs through the city.
Clear water and you have a beach as well!

On day 2, i started my journey to the German Alps. Ok not so glamourous- just to Fussen. This town which is home to the Fairytale castle which inspired Disneyland. Schloss Neuschwanstein. Its in a gorgeous location and the castle itself is magnificent. No pictures were allowed IN the castle, but we were free to take pictures from the windows. The castle was actually not completed because the King died too early, nevertheless it's really a sight to behold. Breath-taking and post-card worthy from every angle. My 2.5hours times 2 of travelling by train and walking uphill & up winding-never-ending staircases in the castle towers are well-worth it.

Fairytale huh?

The Autumn foage made is even more beautiful.

The picture i took from a window from the top of the castle.

A picture I took when I was heading downhill.
Overlooked the valley.

In the town of Fussen. I was walking around trying to find a supermartto get some nutritious alpine milk or cheese. But there was none! So I just got an icecream cone & the server said arigato to me. Haha.

Day 3 started on a more solemn note. I headed to Dachau, the place of the Nazi concentration camp during Hitler's rule. I've read & heard so much about it, nothing beats being there at the original site to feel the real horrors which had happened there. Although the sun was shining strongly on the ground, i felt chills down my spine & goosebumps on my skin every 10 mins. I'm not entirely sure whether it was a physical or just mental thing. But walking around the memorial and learning about the lives of the prisoners who were there really creeped me out. The cruelty and pain that fellow human beings can inflict on one another is really scary. The immense suffering, which was not just physical, but also mentally because of the torment they undergo, being disregarded as a human being. Once you enter the camp, you are stripped of your identity, your rights, basically anything human. Youre worth as much as they think you are, usually its hardly anything.

The entrance which you pass through, before imprisonment.

The words on the metal grille gate says "Work sets you free."

We should have this in SMU too!

Its a bench which they strap the prisoners down & whip them. They make them count out the number of strokes. If they miscounted, the punishment is doubled.

The camp road. It leads to the religious memorials.

The cremetorium. In the last phase of the 3rd reich, the camp ran out of coal to burn the bodies. When the Americans liberated the place, they found leftover bodies inside and the residents of Dachua finally saw the terrible things which happened in the concentration camp. All along they had been under the influence of Nazi propaganda, so they believed that the Nazis were merely re-educating the undesirables in the camp.

In memory of the unknown victim.
So many died and so many died nameless.

Eventually I decided I had enough, after walking through ALL the exhibits. I headed back to Marienplatz for lunch before my Free City Tour. I had a leberkas in a butchery or shop selling all sorts of processed & packaged meat. It was a lovely 1.5Euros lunch. Immensely satisfying and while eating, I just stood comfortably in my corner to observe all the customers in the shop and the passerbys who took samples of salami from the girl behind the glass counter. Anyway, if you were wondering how it tasted like, think LUNCHEON meat in this nice crusty baguette-texture bun. It's good. I had grilled beef bratwurst wrapped in a bun in Fussen the previous day, topped with generous helpings of mustard. That was good as well.

I had my lunch here, with the friendly girls who giggled when i said leberkas! Haha.

So I met the people at Marienplatz, we saw the gigantic Glockenspiel on top of the new town hall and many many many many many more. It was an intense 3 hour tour. It'd be easier to explain with the pictures. But yeah, extremely informative and the guide was a charming american girl who lived in Munich for a while.

Karlplatz

The New Town Hall & the Glockenspiel

The Church of Our Lady at Marienplatz. The sides of the wall are lined with gravestones of rich families who were able to buy a spot on the wall. Because the place used to be a graveyard. The not so fortunate, had their gravestones ground to make a dam somewhere else. They didnt move the bodies either and simply built on top of the graves.
There was a cute story about the devil's footprint as well, which turned out to be the footprint of the architect. HAHA.

Monkey tower. I'm too lazy to explain the story now. haha.

This used to be the royal beer house.

Travelling can be such a chore, when you live in guildford. I had to take a bus from my place to the train station. Take the train from the guildford trainstation to the london waterloo train station. Run to the Underground station at Waterloo to take the tube, do 1 transfer to Liverpool street underground station. Run up to the liverpool train station to take the stansted express to the airport. Stansted Airport's security check is a major bitch. I almost missed my flight due to the longgggggg slow-moving lines. Customs can be a bitch as well. When i was leaving Munich, the immigration officer spent like 10mins studying my face & the photo on my passport! As if I did plastic surgery or something.

Despite all the inconveniences, it's been a fabulous experience. I never imagined that I could travel alone in a place where I cant speak a word of German, but I did. Extremely empowering and liberating. Navigating the transport system by yourself and ensuring that you last every day in one piece is a huge responsiblity, but i grew to like it. No nagging mom in the background who insists on keeping your passport after the customs. I only had myself for company and I didnt feel lonely. That blew me away. Of course, it helped that Munich is such a safe place. I feel safe walking around by myself. AND I had weixuan's help every night with my itinerary. Anyhow I felt almost like a real backpacker, I even got used to the image of me hunching over carrying my huge-ass backpack and walking around awkwardly. Haha. It's been an eye-opener. I met some people, some nice, some not 100% genuinely nice. But overall, its been a blast and I dont even need beer goggles. But the beer definitely made my tastebuds happy.