Holding on for Dear Life: Hiking in Bavaria

It's been a while since I've updated the old blog and I know my single reader (I'm looking at you, Mom) is probably wondering what happened. Answer: This past weekend I went to Füßen which is better known as the town in which Neuschwanstein is located. Neuschwanstein was the model for Disney's Sleeping Beauty's castle. There is also a ton of stunning scenery-- Füßen (which also means feet in German) is, logically, located at the foot of the Bavarian Alps.

Val and I decided it would be a good idea to explore the surrounding landscape, especially since the weather was amazing. Here are a few pictures that I took. Don't give me too much credit, we were just walking and we'd literally just stumble into a postcard-worthy view. It was very difficult to take an unattractive picture.

15.06 : We did some hiking around the Alpsee and Schwangau. The weather was spectacular and the water was frigid. Here are 2 of my favorite pictures, both taken at the Alpsee.

15.06: Recovery drink of choice after hiking day 1. King Ludwig II was the King that built Neuschwanstein. It seemed appropriate to try his beer. Also, it stormed like crazy this night, but we made it back to the Hostel  right before it really started to pour (Happy Sleep Hotel-- run by a nice Asian lady who spoke German but not much English,  who also gave us free ice cream, so we weren't complaining).

Coming down the other side of Tegelberg

Neuschwanstein from the Marienbrücke

16.06: This is when things got a little crazy. Val and I decided we would climb Tegelberg. It looked like a moderately difficult hike, so we were like, "Sure, we can do this. We're in good shape." Half way through, this hike turns into a legitimate climb. With cables and harnesses and whatnot. After I stopped panicking and Val convinced me to climb this cable-y section with no harness (or experience, mind you) we made it to the top of Tegelberg and signed our names in the log at this cave/grotto thing. It was intense, but completely worth it. I would do that again in a second.

Totals:

Beer: 7 (+1 Löwenbräu, +1 König Ludwig Dunkel, +1 Augustiner Bräu)

Lederhosen: 16 (+1 at Füßen, +4  servers at Biergartens have a penchant for wearing Bavarian clothes)

P.S. there are 2 things I miss most about America-- free wifi and air conditioning. I definitely will not take that for granted when I get back! It has been too hot here for the past 3 days for this 'no a/c' nonsense.

In which I walk about 15 miles

I'm inside writing this post and hoping the rain lets up somewhat so I can go for a run. Updates from this weekend: Valerie, Jiaming (who were both in the same German 4 class as I was) and I did some more touristy things around Munich.

Saturday was a beautiful day so we went to the English Garden (Englischer Garten-- it's basically the same in German), which is this beautiful park in the middle of Munich. We walked probably ~8 miles throughout the day, enjoyed the weather, and capped off our day with some delicious food at-- you guessed it-- the Marienplatz.

There are a few permanent waves along the Isar, which runs through the garden. Surfers take advantage of these waves even though the sign here says "Danger to life" and "Surfing forbidden."

I ordered the Wiener Schnitzel. I think this portion could serve a family of 4. It also came with a side salad. It only took me 2 sittings to finish and it made for scrumptious leftovers.

Sunday brought more adventures and more walking as we headed to Lake Starnberg (Starnberger See). Valerie and I really wanted to water-ski, but by the time we actually found the water-ski dock it was starting to look stormy and we opted out of getting in the ~60 degree water. Instead, we walked around the lake, took pictures and enjoyed some really excellent gelato in the town of Starnberg. We also found a castle-- or Schloss Possenhofen, I should say. Unfortunately, the gates weren't open, so I was unable to get a good picture, but here is a picture of the Palace I found on Google and here is a picture of Kaiserin Elisabeth who loved the castle and to whom an entire Museum in the town of Possenhofen is devoted to.

The (somewhat crooked) picture really doesn't do it justice, but if you look closely you can see the Alps in the distance. We're hoping to head to see Schloss Neuschwanstein sometime soon, so I'll get some actual pictures of the Alps whenever that happens.

It no longer appears to be raining! So I'm going to wrap this up with my updates to my beer and Lederhosen totals.

Totals:

Beer: 4 (+1 Paulaner Original-- also delicious)

Lederhosen: 11 (+1 at the Hauptbahnhof from this weekend)

Factoid

Fun German fact:

die Mutter = Mother

but, in engineer speak, die Mutter = nut (as in nut and bolt)

I have no further comment, but I'll let you draw your own conclusions about how this coincidence came to be.

More updates to come after this weekend! Going to the English Garden in the middle of Munich tomorrow-- a good chance to enjoy the nicer weather and find some beautiful Biergartens :)

More from Munich

I just finished my first week of work. I still don't really have much to do-- it's kind of glorified secretary work at the moment, but I'm trying to get the annoying paper-pushing done as quickly as possible so I can move on to the details of my project.
Another classmate from MIT came got here on Wednesday so we went and grabbed some more real Bavarian cuisine at the best place (that we know of) to get it; the Marienplatz. Expensive, but probably my best meal here so far. I think we'll wait until we get our first paychecks before our next excursion.

Beer 3: Schneider Weisse Sommer Blonde Weisse Bier (this one was really good-- my favorite so far)

Totals:

Beer: 3

Lederhosen: 10 (+2 from the U-bahn)

Marienplutz

First, a note on Bavarian accents. When you get on the U-Bahn there are several stops with the name '---platz,' but in Bavaria, Platz = Plutz. Hence, the name of this post is the Bavarian version of 'Marienplatz.'
The good news is, I'm allowed to stay here now that I have successfully obtained residency permit and I don't have to go back to the KVR for a while (yay!). Also, the sun came out for the second time since I've been here and it's about 70 :)

The bad news is, I have to go apply for my German tax confirmation form, or, as they say in German, a Lohnsteuerersatzbeschienigung. Not kidding, that is the word for it. This means another fun-filled trip to a government building in the wee hours of the morning (ok, like 7:30 am, but for an MIT student, that is asking a lot).

In other news, my friend from MIT arrived yesterday and we went to a German restaurant in the Marienplatz to get some authentic German food and beer! I didn't get any pictures at the time, since it was cloudy and getting dark, but I plan to go back and make sure I get some good photos of the Rathaus.

Here I am with Rostbratwurst and Sauerkraut with a 'Radler' 

Updates to the running tally on Lederhosen: +5 since it was a traditional Bavarian restaurant 

Update to the running tally on Beer: +1 (Radler--Augustiner Bräu)

Totals:

Lederhosen: 8

Beer: 2

Deutsches Museum: "Germany is a country of engineers"

Yesterday I decided I would kill some time at the German Museum (Deutsches Museum). This required yet another ride on the U-Bahn-- always dicey, since the Munich transit map is basically a tangled, colorful mess of lines that I've yet to decipher. On a brighter note, at least I brought my umbrella because I had to wait outside for an hour in the rain in a line to get in to the Museum. Admission was only 3 Euro, which is about the cheapest activity you can do in Munich, however.
So I got into the Museum, which is huge, and the first thing I noticed was that, sure, they had a lot of scale models, but the number of full-scale machines and boats and planes they had was amazing. I had a great time just looking around and seeing these old machines from the industrial revolution and admiring the mechanics (wow, I sounded like a huge nerd there). My mentor told me on my first day of work "Germany is a country of engineers." I don't know if I'm qualified to make a judgment as I've been here nearly a week, but after seeing the German Museum, I'd say that it definitely would appeal to any engineer.
I'm going to keep this one brief since nothing more exciting happened today, except I got a pre-paid SIM card so I can now use my phone to contact German numbers and use German data networks. Oh, and I found a hockey league to play with, but it's kind of far away :-/ (in Unterföhring) but, it will be a good way to stay in shape and hopefully meet some more people here!

 

This is the view of the Olympiaturm and BMW headquarters from my apartment building. As you can see, it's been quite sunny here.

The Deutsches Museum sits on an island in the middle of the Isar. It also has 2 observatory towers, but the Planetarium was closed :'(