Munich (aka Munchen) Germany

As I stated earlier, I will be/have been traveling quite a bit this month. It's kind of funny how it all worked out...I mostly chose to travel on the weekends and just take a friday or monday off but then it turned out there were so many holidays...that I haven't really missed "too much" work !!! Thats been good for me so I dont always have to ask for days off...if its already a holiday Im really not expected to be at work...though i have gone in a few weekends I have been in eindhoven to make up for any days that I miss that aren't holidays. confusing yes. important no. haha

This past weekend I made it out to Munich Germany. It was kind of a "ghetto" route I had to take- train to Dusseldorf Germany and then fly to munich germany. The flight from Dusseldorf to Munich was all of 55 minutes, but if I took a train straight to Munich, that would have been about 6 hours from Dusseldorf..and over 200 euros (which is WAY more than my flying) because I finalized plans to munich about 1 month before. (apparently you have to buy these kind of "long distance" tickets like 3-4 months in advance if you only want to pay about 60 euros round trip). SO.. yeah, it was a lot of train, airport, train, bus... traveling this weekend, but it was SO worth it because I got to meet up with my high school buddies April and Reuben, AND meet some of April's friends (who were SOOO cool!!) Shigs and Christina.

SO back to the point... while in Munich, we toured the city, went to Dachau concentration camp, and Neuschwanstein Castle. Pretty productive 3 days! The city of Munich is nice (not as clean as stockhom), but it has all the aspects of a typical european city- pedestrian shopping area, big churchs, lots of monuments/statues, and nice parks. the one thing about munich is...they had beer gardens EVERYWHERE! hahaha just like we saw at busch gardens (VA). Dachau camp was really neat to visit- totally worth it, and really sobering experience. It makes me feel SO lucky to be alive today rather than back then. And after that, i now want to see Anne Frank's house in Amsterdam! And WOW, Neuschwanstein castle... beautiful!!! It is the castle the Disney castle is inspired by!!!! And we even went hiking around the area- saw waterfalls, waded in the water, got lost in the forest, saw loads of cows, and went tobaggan riding!!! It was really neat. Definitely recommend a trip out there!!! (despite the 2 hour train ride to the castle from munich).

Here's some pictures to convince you of the "awesomeness" I experienced in Munich. Enjoy!

The pictures will come in "parts" since there are just too many to decide on.

Here are pictures from Dachau Concentration camp:

Front entrance- after you enter through the gate, you had to give up
your identity, possessions, and your opinion(?) [not sure about the last thing]

The clothes they had to wear and the locker they had:

Concentration camp grounds:

Crematorium:

This is the room the gas was sent instead of "water for showers"

edges of camp: with the electric wire fence

bunk beds:

memorial at the campsite:

me, looking like a nerd with the audio guide
(reuben was SO insistent on getting this):