George and Deborah's Great Adventures: 05/13/17

Munich was everything we thought it would be. It is a city of great beers, sausages, pretzels, and culture. There were no disappointments. Our three and a half days were filled with sightseeing, eating and drinking beer.

Our direct flight from Vancouver to Munich took a little over nine hours. We breezed through Customs and Immigration and after a half hour taxi ride, arrived at the Hotel Mirabell at 3 pm. The hotel is located in the Middle Eastern immigrant district, an easy walk from the Central Train station and two blocks to the gates of the historic centre of the city.

The first evening was spent drinking beer, nibbling on pretzels and people watching on the historic Marienplatz at the end of Kaufingerstrasse. Our goal was to stay awake for as long as we could to acclimatize ourselves to the new time zone. We finally stumbled (not an exaggeration) into our beds around 1:30 am.

We were up at 9 am the next morning and off to explore the city. We took at Hop-On-Hop-Off open bus tour (but as usual, we never hopped off). We started with the city’s historical district and then the surrounding area including the Olympic Park, site of the 1972 Olympics.

We spent the rest of the afternoon tasting different beers and sausages at the various beer halls in town. We (the girls) met some traditionally dressed Bayern men at the world famous Hofbrauhaus.

Our second full day was spent touring to the Neuschwanstein Castle area. Most people know Neuschwanstein as it was the inspiration for the Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland. We booked on to a tour organized by Mike's Bike Tours. Our guides were South African Brad and Bulgarian Natalia. (They explained to us that Germans don’t work minimum wage jobs like tour guides.) It included a two-hour luxury bus ride to the southwest tip of Bavaria. The manicured farms covered the hillsides as we approached the foothills of the German Alps were well worth the trip alone. The mountaintops of Austria were visible just past the castle.

Yellow Castle (Home) - Sleeping Beauty Castle Above

To get a little training in for our cycling the following week, we chose to participate in a bicycle tour of the immediate area surrounding the castle. This bit of biking was followed with traditional Bavarian food (sausage of course) and more beer.

We Biked Around Swan Lake

We were second-guessing the lunchtime beers as we began the 500-meter hike up to the castle. Bavarian King Ludwig II built Neuschwanstein in the 1800’s. Not that many folks were building medieval castles at that time but Ludwig was a bit of a character and had led a sad life in isolation with his family in the Yellow Castle. After the death of his parents and the loss of his only sibling to mental illness, Ludwig began building his castle. It has a fairytale theme. It took about 14 years to construct but he didn’t get to finish it. He too was arrested for alleged mental illness and was found dead in a lake along with his psychiatrist under a shroud of mystery.

Our final day was a journey to Dachau. We hired James our guide at the train station and took a short 20-minute train trip out to the village of Dachau. After a short bus ride we were at the entrance to Bavaria’s World War II Concentration Camp, Dachau. Over 42,000 people lost their lives in this place over a 12-year period ending at the close of the war in 1945. It is not an uplifting story but one that remains important to be told if for no other reason than to shine a light on a horrific example of genocide. At the time it was homosexuals, mentally handicapped, communists and of course the largest numbers were Jews. Not necessarily folks practicing the Jewish religion but an entire race of people. We had a chance to observe the original administration building, the jail within the jail, and two replica prisoner barracks. The guard towers, gas chambers and crematorium are still standing in their original condition. It is a somber tour but worth doing.