Germany Trip Pt. 1

Breaking with tradition an actual blog post (maybe even a series of posts).

Sarah and I went to Germany for our holidays this year and I am going to jot down our experiences from the trip. It was a brilliant holiday and we had a great time and mostly good weather :-). Most of the links will be to the trip advisor entry for the place/thing.

We went green and ditched planes (also I fecking hate airports) so used the trains, which we will be doing again, twas a great idea. Anyway on the Saturday (the 7th) we took the train all the way from London to Munich. It was a long day (~9hours), London -> Brussels -> Frankfurt -> Munich. However it was so relaxing, loads of leg room, real German beer whenever you wanted it and no fecking airports. It was also quite cheap as Deutsche Bahn do specials which go on sale 3 months (92 days) in advance from various cities into most German cities. Already looking into what we can do next year 🙂

Landed in Munich in the early evening, well rested, watered and fed (we’d brought pies) and got checked into our hotel, The Cocoon, which was a lovely little boutique-esque hotel. We did wander into Munich centre but didn’t get up to much.

So our first real day in Munich was a Sunday in August, in central Europe, so it was buzzing (!). As many would know Europe shuts down over August and also shuts down on Sundays so combining the two, ta-da. However we decided to do Mike’s Bike Tour which was brilliant, a nice easy peddle around the city and then on to the English Garden (a massive public park) and then on to the beer garden, The Chinese Tower. A litre of beer and wurst was lunch :-). They brought us back into town and we headed to Zum Spockmeier

Monday we headed out of the city to the countryside and Neuschwanstein Castle which is the castle used in Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang (see attached photo). The castle itself was a bit meh but the cycle around the nearby lake and wandering around the German countryside was great. It was a lovely day out and well worth it, would have loved to do the paragliding over the castle but it was €140 each so a bit rich for us. It was another long day as it is a 2 hour drive from Munich so we just flaked and ended up in the Ratskellar for dinner, twas OK.

On Tuesday we had too decided we had too much fun so far so we traipsed off to Dachau concentration camp. We just did the tour (2.5 hours) and were out-depressed after that, it’s a hard day to be fair. Afterwards we headed in to Dachau town (on foot) and stopped off in a proper old man’s pub, bunch of non-English speakers, chain smoking and the bartender in a leather apron. We grabbed some beers and some weiners a bit bizarre but proper Germany. The rest of the day we just headed back in Munich and wandered around the city and made it to Cafe Altschwabing for dinner which was amazing food :-).

Our last day in Munich was to be a relaxed one as we had a train to catch at 10pm that night. We rolled out of of bed and decided to grab breakfast in the Viktualienmarkt on the way to the Deutsches Museum. Viktualienmarkt was fun, but most stalls were just opening up when we got there so we just got food and went on to the most intense science museum I have ever been in. I think we saw almost everything but it has just so much stuff and were exhausted so went back to Viktualienmarkt for lunch. It was a bit bizarre in the end as I had a fish roll which I think (my German is poor) was pickled white fish (not herring) with raw onion in a roll. To be fair it was lovely but just not what I’m used to.

With the impending train journey it we decided to get some fresh air in and we hired som bikes and hit the English Garden again and just cycled around it (we got all the way to the most northerly point too :-D). However with 4 beer gardens in there we had to get to one and had a lovely beer in the sunshine by the lake’s edge. Dinner that night was also out of the ordinary as we went to Lemar and had the most amazing Lebanese food.

It was now time to make a move for the train. We had decided to get the night train from Munich to Berlin. Neither of us had done this before but we booked a private double cabin and looked forward to the experience. I don’t know what I was expecting but it wasn;t what we got. It was lovely just a little cramped but then we were only sleeping there. In the morning after the beds were put away the cabin was actually quite spacious and would be great for a longer journey. Anyway we left Munich late Wednesday and woke up in Berlin early Thursday, but that’s another blog post …

Photos can be seen here.

Later Days,
Halo

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