German Instalment!

Well again I see that I have fallen behind in updating you all on our crazy European adventures. But before this there is one important thing I must mention, this week will be my last week in Sweden. Emotional? Yes! Excited? Yes! I guess you could say that we are all a big ball of mixed emotions with having to say goodbye to friends we now refer to as family. After having our final farewell Ronnen party on the weekend and a week full of farewell dinners and fika’s we will all be officially leaving our humble abode at Ronnen International housing at the end of this week and embark on what is going to be the trip of a life time.

Okay, now for my German instalment.

Destination: Munich, Germany

Munich is truly the city of beer.

We arrive early morning after another classically minimalistic train ride with DB Bahn, drop the invalids (Sarrah, still quite unwell, poor thing) off at the hostel and depart for the city where we would begin the Sandemans free walking tour. On this tour we passed The Feldherrnhalle, Kristallnacht, Frauenkirche, Viktualienmarkt, The National Theater & Opera House, Marienplatz, Covered the Origins of Oktoberfest, Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch, The Hofbrauhaus, Odeonsplatz, Theatinerkirche, Mary’s Column, The Royal Residence, Church of St. Peter, Maximillianstrabe, New Synagogue, The Glockenspiel, St Jacobsplatz and much more. 

Our tour guide Jon was a character, and we tipped him well considering he put up with us staring at pooches, making inappropriate jokes, even answering his rhetorical questions and being the most interactive participants on the tour. I even stayed focussed for the three-hour tour, which impressed both Lindsay and Emily! His true English humour really brought the city of Munich alive. Just a couple more highlights worth a mention from this tour;

-       Jon’s explanation of the town clock, the second biggest waste of time/tourist in all of Europe, that has a combination of ninja baby statues that twirl, a thrusting clown and the sound of strangled chickens.

-       Jon complimenting my marvellous whistling skills (told you I’m good mum)

-       Being mistaken as being a German school child on an excursion and being rounded up for roll call in the main square

-       Being introduced to the vomitorium

-       How crazy ‘us’ Australians are

-       Learning about the craziest ways people have died at Oktoberfest, lost their children and at times even forgotten they had children let alone taken them to Oktoberfest with them

Moving on, the tour was complete and we were desperate to make a quick toilet stop but before this could happen of course Lindsay was hit on, by a drunk Norwegian who insisted on telling her how his mother had given him strict instructions to come to Munich to drink. We could only leave telling him how proud she would be. We continue on and find ourselves in the beautiful Englisher Garten; if you are ever in Munich I would definitely recommend a stroll through this fabulous park it has so much on offer. We continue to stroll through the park and come to realise that in some sections clothes may be optional. Continuing on and we find a man made stationary wave in the river, where locals all wet-suited up, scoot across in front of an audience filled with tourists and their cameras.

I could honestly watch this forever and we did, 2 hours later we realised what the time was and continued on with our stroll through this massive park. We soon come to the Chinese Tower, one of the world’s most famous beer gardens. Order a beer and a pretzel the size of my head and came to the realisation that all those people who attend Oktoberfest may actually be onto something; this beer is delicious. We soon depart with 3 steins and make our way to of course an Irish pub for dinner and then back to the hostel for a relatively early night.

The next day was spent in true Munich form, relaxing, drinking beverages and soaking up the marvellous sun. Although we did manage to embrace our inner tourist and make our way to the top of an old church bell tower, much to some of our displeasures (Max). Although I must say credit goes to Max who managed to get one photo with one foot out the door, the fear of heights really got the girl. The rest of the day was spent in the sun at the park we had fallen in love with the day before, naming surfers and giving them fake back-stories. We soon retired for the hostel as we had an extremely early morning the following day.

After a 3am wakeup call and short flight we were in Berlin. We of course did a free walking tour, pub-crawl and drank plenty of beer, why not? We were in Germany after all.  On a more serious note we covered plenty of history, including museums based upon the horrible Hitler, memorials of the great Berlin wall and the east side gallery.

We also went to the concentration camp – Sachenhausen. For all of you who may be considering going to Berlin or Germany I would recommend doing this fantastic and insightful tour of the concentration camp.  Our guide Nigel really encapsulated the true ambience and I guess you could say eerie feelings of the concentration camp. The tour finished with one quote that has stayed with me ever since.

‘The last thing that dies is hope’.

This is so true; walking through the gates of a concentration camp where so much torture, pain and suffering occurred all due to one mans idea of perfection really made me stop, think and consider how lucky I am, well how lucky we all are. To consider the fact that this one sick mans way of creating idealistic society was to kill innocent victims and make them suffer because they were different or did not conform. To think that we complain about little dramas today when innocent children and families were murdered for no reason. We really need to stop, think and appreciate how lucky we are to be free.

Besides this our Berlin experience was not complete until we of course went on a pub-crawl. This pub-crawl took us to a few underground bars and bars that were built in old railway stations, quite the experience. We made plenty of friends, drank plenty of beer and ended the night in true style, having piggy-back races.

The next day would be our final day in Berlin and after locating the whereabouts of Genna carefree Bradley we of course continued on with our tourist expeditions.  Berlin was a truly great city, it has a fantastic arty vibe and they love beer, why not? My taste buds have definitely warmed to the taste.

Well that was the end of our May adventures and again the end of a well overdue blog update.

So be sure to keep posted,

H xxx