Hallo!
Just got back from an epic 3 days road-tripping down to Munich and back. We started off in Essen, a city in west Germany where we had a mandatory internship trip for two days. It is also one of the capitals of German industry. If Germany was your left hand palm-up (yes, flip your hand over por favor it will help with the visual), Berlin would be underneath your pinky, essen would be underneath your pointer finger, and Munich would be on the heel of your hand on the far right side. So we basically trekked all over Germany this weekend in a massive triangle.
Essen was an interesting couple of days. We mostly did things that were related to the Krupp internship, like visiting the Krupp villa and meeting many of our internship sponsors. We also visited and had a tour of the huge Krupp steel plant just outside of Essen. I felt super high-maintenance at the steel plant though because we kept walking on steel gang-plank like things that were really high up and way too close to tons and tons of molten lava like steel. I became a big fan of sneaking away back to the bus - heights are just not my friend haha. Essen also means "to eat" in German, which lead to a lot of "Wir essen in Essen!" (we are eating in Essen) jokes haha. But we did eat super well in Essen - Stanford and Krupp definitely take care of you on the road : ) . Being in a hotel with half the Stanford in Berlin program all on the same floor also definitely led to some good and interesting times... there's not a whole lot to do in Essen past 9 or 10 as we discovered haha so we definitely made the best out of it on the 4th floor of the Holiday Inn Express. But it was someone's 21st birthday the first night we were there - we had too lol.
Friday afternoon me and my friends Angela, Ilias, Wesley, and Evelyn rented a car and drove to Munich!!!! An epic, epic adventure that I am so glad happened to fall together at the last minute. There is nothing like having your own car, your own space, being able to stop whenever you want and take pictures, and ultimately being able to see so much of the beautiful Bavarian countryside in a way that you could not in the same way on a train or a plane. We rotated drivers because all of us wanted a chance to drive on the Autobahn. There are still huge chunks of it that have no speed limits - it was crazy! Autobahn driving is seriously like a sport. Our rental car resembled more a go-Kart at times than an actual car haha... flooring it would make the car go up to full speed in about 10 minutes and it wouldn't go over 190 km (and only that if it were going down a hill lol). 190 km is about 110-120 mph. We hit some rough weather on the way there but were in Munich by about 11 pm.
We met up with our other friend from the program Nate at the Wombat's hostel in Munich. I don;t know what's with me and staying in hostels with strange animal or nature names - I stayed at the Flamingo hostel in Zakopane... the Dizzy Daisy hostel in Krakow... and now Wombat's lol. But anyways, there were six of us in the hostel which was epically awesome because the dorms are 6 people to a room. So we got the cheap price of a dorm but the convenience of having the room all to ourselves. Anddd our own shower. And I didn't have to put all of my luggage on literal lock-down because I wasn't sharing the room with strangers. Ahhh the things I've come to appreciate haha.
As soon as we got there everyone was stressed from driving in horrible weather and being on our best adult behavior in Essen. To remedy this tension we quickly assembled an epic collection of our leftover Essen alcohol on the hostel table and went to work. The combination of no dinner and 10 minutes of this left everyone feeling pretty good by midnight. We decided to do some exploring around Munich by night. We found some good late night food.. a pretty good late night club, and ended up in bed around 4 or 5.
The next morning we drove all the way out to the Neueschwanstein Castle - an epically goregeous castle that was used as a model for many of the Disney princess castles. It is in the middle of no where in the Bavarian countryside... but driving through that countryside was seriously one of the coolest things that I have ever done. It was absolutely breathtakingly beautiful and picturesque... we kept stopping to take pictures by the side of the road haha. Emerald green grass, wide open azure skies, smoke rising from stone chimneys - it seriously looked like something out of a movie.
The castle itself was amazing too. You see it as you are driving up to it - just this epic structure hundreds of feet above you. We parked and took a tram up to the top and proceeded to have some more epic photo shoots. You can see the Bavarian Alps from the castle as well as miles and miles of beautiful Bavarian countryside.. hopefully my pictures can give you some indication of just how amazing it was.
That night we went to the Hofbrauhaus - Munich's biggest and most famous beer hall. Walking in there I kind of felt the same sensory overload I did when I walked into the bazaars in Istanbul. A wave of noise hit me the second I walked in. So. Many. Huge. Beers. They serve them in liters at the Haufbrauhaus - beers literally the size of my head. I had to use two hands to drink mine haha. So many people .. so many great food smells... wurst and pretzels and potatoes and all kinds of heavy delicious food. The waiters and waitresses also all dress in the traditional male lederhosen and corset type things (I forget the name for what the girls wear). We had a great dinner of beer, pretzels, and wurst. That night the rest of the kids went out to this epic club complex on the other side of town, but I was so insanely tired I could barely see straight so I thought it best to go to bed early. Yes, I know I am lame Mom haha - you would probably have been able to go out : )
I also had to get up earlier than everyone the next morning to go to church. Bavaria is the only region in Germany that is super-Catholic, and so I really did not want to miss the opportunity to go to church in the only Catholic region of Germany. In Berlin I have to do epic google searches to find Catholic churches, but in Munich they were on every street corner. Beautiful, beautiful Catholic churches. The one I went to also happened to be across the street from a Starbucks - this is how I knew it was going to be a great day haha. I felt so at home in that church and was really happy I had managed to get myself out of bed to go.
This Protestant-Catholic divide in Germany has actually caused a great deal of division between Bavaria and the west of Germany - for many years Bavaria did really not like being ruled by the Protest north. They also are very much a distinct region and culture from the rest of Germany and as such have tried to secede many times. It ultimately has not worked out for many reasons but everyone in Germany still sees them as part of Germany but with a very distinct culture and religion.
I fell really hard for Munich and Bavaria in a way that I did not expect to. I think a lot of it was the unexpected Catholicness. As open as I am to other people, faiths, and cultures, the fact is that I was raised Catholic, went to Catholic school, and am thus inherently deeply engrained in that culture. Realizing how immediately comfortable I feel when I know a country/region is Catholic (Poland, Rome, Munich) has really made me realize this. I also loved how much Bavarians prize their culture and traditions. Men have been wearing those damn lederhosen for hundreds and hundreds of years haha. Munich was destroyed in World War II but the people were so attached to the town and the old architecture that they wanted to rebuild it in the exact style it had been before. Beer has been made in the same way with the same 4 ingredients since the 13th century. Munich was the birthplace of great German beer and the Purity Law in Germany that said beer had to be made this way. Great beer, fun people, beautiful architecture, beautiful countryside, beautiful churches - could I really ask for more? Haha. I really hope that I get a chance to return there over the summer.
Up next is a trip to the north of Poland in Gdansk - a beautiful town on the Baltic sea with traditions of amber and the birthplace of the anti-Communist Solidarity movement. MISS U ALL!!!!!!
Loveee,
Courtney
No comments:
Post a Comment