Weekend 10: Munich, Germany

I can't believe that this was the last full weekend of travel for the summer as we lead into finals this weekend. This weekend was just Mary Margaret and I exploring the wonderful city of Munich! We took an overnight train (per usual) but this time (for the first time all summer) we didn't have couchettes. A couchette is the compartment with 6 beds (3 per side) -- and by beds I mean wooden planks pretty much. But never again will I say something bad about a couchette as we spent this night in a "sleeper car" which is just a compartment. NOTHING remotely related to making sleep possible. I won't even call what we did in that car "sleep" because that would just be a downright lie. We arrived about an hour and a half late in Munich which actually worked out very well for us because that put us there about 9 instead of 7ish and things were actually open when we got there! So we dropped our stuff off at the hostel and checked in which was great since we would head off for the day and not return until about 9 at night!

We grabbed a map and decided to wander towards the Deutsches Museum which is supposedly the largest science and technology museum in the world (welcome to an engineering nerd's dream!) On our way there we stumbled across the Glockenspiel. We hovered around for awhile as it was almost 10 at this point and we assumed it would go off. After 10 AM came and went and the Glockenspiel didn't do it's spiel (pun intended) we consulted my travel book and found that it goes off at 11, 12, and 5. Oops! We kept wandering and found a farmer's market! It reminded me of being at home with my mom -- we went to a bunch last summer around Atlanta. :)

Spices, etc. at the market

Some very strange looking fruits 

Then we finally found the Deutsches Museum and spent almost 5 hours there! It was amazing -- there are 8 floors and about 65 rooms with different themes, etc. Some of the rooms were about physics, ceramics, aeronautics, nanotechnology, and SO much more.

The Museum! and tiny little us in the bottom of the picture excited about the museum 

I found a Siemens sign! 

Just playing with some touch screens :) 

Foucault's pendulum -- it knocks over little blocks with the rotation of the earth. We watched it for about 10 minutes until it knocked over a block 

An organ concert -- one of the things on my summer bucket list -- in the Musical Instruments room!

The photography room -- with a bunch of cameras 

Playing with a camera machine in the exhibit. you're supposed to make your own postcard with your picture and pay for it -- we just played with the machine 

The weaving exhibit -- exercising my PTFE 3720 skills and weaving some twill

A Lego Tower Bridge! 

Playing with a mobius strip in the "math closet"

using the giant compass

After we left the museum we took the subway over to the BMW Welt which is the showroom of a bunch of cars. 

Don't worry Mom, this is probably the only time you'll see me on a motorcycle! 

Me and my new car ;) 

After this we took the subway back into the main area and walked over to the English Garden at which point it promptly started raining so we went to the Hofbräuhaus a bit earlier than planned which was fine with us since we were hungry and tired!

Our glimpse of the English Garden before it started raining

We were a bit overwhelmed upon our entrance to the Hofbräuhaus since it was incredibly packed with zero instruction. Turns out you wander around till you find some open space at a table and sit down. We finally found a spot and soon learned you must flail your hands around until the server in your area notices you are sitting there and would like some assistance. So we arrived, found a spot, flailed our hands, ordered 2 pretzels, 2 liters of radler, and 2 English menus. One great thing about the Hofbräuhaus is that misery loves company. We bonded with the other 2 couples at our table -- one of which was Russian, the other we aren't quite certain -- over the fact that we all needed something and couldn't ever seem to get it! Finally after 30 minutes we got our menus and were able to order something! It was pretty good and definitely a fun experience! 

With our lemonade beer (aka radler) which went quite nicely with our sausage and potato salad dinner. mmm...German food! 

 Liter of radler victory picture! 

After this, we headed back to the hostel for some nice warm showers and an early bedtime since we'd been up and going since 9 with very little sleep. 

Sunday, we took a 2 hour train out to Fussen where we caught another bus that took us to the start of the hiking trails to Neuschwanstein Castle. This is the castle that Walt Disney supposedly modeled Cinderella's castle after. On the train ride we listened to a couple kids play a game of (from what I deciphered) "Raz-va-SHIT" which I believed to be a form of rock-paper-scissors that I found to be absolutely hysterical. We made it there and got off the train onto the bus with all the other tourists. We waited in a line to get tickets into the castle until a tour guide told us that the next tour would be about 4 pm. It was 11 AM. We opted to not go on the tour inside the castle and instead grabbed some lunch, hiked about 40 minutes up to the castle, walked around inside (the courtyard) as much as we could, walked over to Marienbrucke which is a bridge that provides a stunning view of the castle. 

Me and Neuschwanstein Castle 

the castle from Marienbrucke 

One thing that we've witnessed in Europe is what one can only describe as glamour shots in front of various monuments. Not even mentioning the European smile (what I refer to as the I-look-pissed-to-be-here smile), we've seen a good amount of seductive posing, etc. in front of said monuments. We decided to have a little shoot of our own. Here's a particular gem of Mary Margaret from our shoot on the bridge: 

After we hiked back down towards the castle, we stopped for some hot chocolate, and opted for the horse drawn carriage ride down the mountain. We were going to do that up the mountain but decided to hike since we wouldn't be going inside the castle anymore. We took the bus back to the train station (again with all the other tourists) but this train ride turned out to be quite fun for us! We found a study abroad program from LSU and it's an engineering program! There are 13 of them and they go on factory tours, etc. while taking various classes in 5 weeks. The faculty leading the program are a German teacher who guides the 6 other history students and an Industrial Engineering professor who guides the 13 engineering students! So we ended up chatting with them the whole 2 hour ride and then they invited us to join them for dinner where they were meeting up with the history students. It was a lot of fun and I'm really glad we met them! They were headed off to catch a train to a nearby town where they're staying for the next 2 weeks and we still had 3 hours to kill before our train so we started wandering around and stumbled upon a movie theater. We decided to go inside and see if they had anything in English -- they did! An Australian film called "A Few Best Men" which was like a combination of Bridesmaids and the Hangover. It was really funny and I finally got to see a movie! 

Me and my seat! They actually give you a row and seat number

We're excited for the movie!

The movie got out in a perfect amount of time to get back to the train station, grab our bags from the luggage lockers where we'd stored our stuff that morning, and onto our train. Thankfully we had couchettes this time and I slept quite soundly on our way back to Metz! Now it's dead week which is filled with lots of finals studying. But good news -- I'm satisfied with my MSE grade so I get to exempt which takes my finals count down to 2! AND they're on separate days! This weekend I'm hoping to take a day trip to Luxembourg so hopefully I'll get to post about that soon too! 

I can't believe my time at GTL is coming to a close -- it's been such a great summer but I can't wait to see what the last few days have in store for me :)