Munich

We've recently posted the Berlin and Papal Election posts around the same time, if you haven't read them check them out!

We took a train from Berlin to Munich. It was a 6 hour train ride (and was much, much more comfortable than a flight), but went by surprisingly fast. We arrived in Munich in the early evening, so we didn't do much on our first day other than visit the BMW museum and Olympic stadium.

BMW headquarters

Motorcycles throughout their history

View of the stadium. (The cloth looking covering is actually all glass, it makes for quite an interesting design)

Olympic pool

Inside the soccer stadium

 Our Munich hostel was located directly across the street from the train station and it was only a 5-10 minute walk to get to the city center. The city center had streets with tons of shops and restaurants. The best part about the city center was that no cars were allowed--it was a pedestrian only zone.

After getting situated at our hostel, we set out to eat dinner at the famous Hofbrauhaus. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Hofbrauhaus, it is a famous beer hall. Beer halls are extremely popular in southern Germany and are famous for their Bavarian food and lively atmosphere. We had to wait outside in a massive group, and eventually we were all let in at once. You have to search the massive beer hall (it's 3 stories and holds up to 3,000 people) to find a seat. The inside consists of long tables and you sit with random people. We found a seat fairly easily, since March isn't high tourist season. We ordered beers, a bread basket, and some delicious food. After dinner we walked around for a little bit and then headed to the hostel. We were pretty tired from exploring Berlin, so we went to bed early.

Pork with potatoes au gratin

White sausage

Famous beer

Picture near the entrance

On our second day in Munich, we woke up early and went to the train station to meet a tour group that was leaving for Dachau Concentration Camp. The train station hosts multiple kiosks and small bakeries where we got breakfast every morning (usually coffee, fruit, a pretzel or bakery item). Fruit cups seemed to be very popular in Munich and all the kiosks had delicious fruit cups for only a euro. I was excited to have some fruit after eating all the food we ate in Berlin.

We left with the tour group heading to Dachau around 9:30 in the morning. We took a train from the train station to the city of Dachau, where we took a bus to the concentration camp. Dachau Concentration Camp was one of the first concentration camps built and it served as a basis for most of the others. Dachau began as a work camp for political prisoners. It started off with acceptable conditions and very little cruel treatment. However, as the war progressed more groups of people were sent to the camp, such as Jews, Homosexuals, and what the Nazi's deemed criminals. The conditions worsened as the war went on and as more people arrived at the camp. Dachau was built for 5,000 people...by the end of the war it was overflowing with over 30,000 inhabitants. It was very emotional and eyeopening to be at the camp and learn the history.

Gatehouse entrance to the camp

"Work will set you free"

Barracks (contained 13 rows of two long barracks)

Early beds, later removed dividers and overflowed with people

Guard living quarters

Later that day we went to Nymphenburg Palace, which was the Bavarian royal families summer palace. It was modeled after the French Versailles palace and was quite impressive. It is hard to tell from the pictures how amazingly large the palace was.

The king at the time went around all of Bavaria in search of the most beautiful women, he brought an artist with him who hand painted a portrait of every single one to create a room filled with the portraits.

The back

The front

View across the lake, gondolas took guests around in front. The buildings actually wrap all the way behind where we took this picture

We ate at a different beer hall called Augustiner for dinner. It is more low key than Hofbrahaus, but had just as good beer and food.

Wiener schnitzel

Streusel

Day 3 in Munich consisted of a day trip to Fussen, Germany where we toured castles. It was a 2 hour train ride to reach Fussen, and then a short bus ride up to the castles. The first one we toured was the Hohenschwangau castle. This was the older of the two castles, where the royal family would spend their summers. The second castle, Neuschwanstein, is much grander and was built by King Ludwig II (who grew up as a prince in the first castle was saw). He built this fairy tale castle once he became king. Neuschwanstein  is the castle that Walt Disney based the Magic Kingdom castle off of. Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take pictures inside the castles. However, the view from the outside was pretty incredible. The castles were situated across from one another in the German alps, and both overlooked a large lake.

Hohenschwangau

Overlooking the lake

Hohenschwangau

Neuschwanstein castle

Bridge behind the castle

Neuschwanstein castle

Neuschwanstein castle

Rhubarb and strawberry pie, one of Stefan's favorites 

We were starving by the time we got home from Fussen and we headed to Augustiner for a final Bavarian meal. The next morning we left early to fly back to Rome. It was quite a change going from Germany back to Rome, especially in regards to the weather. In Rome it was almost 70 degrees and sunny..completely different from super cold and snowing!

Berlin

We are a little delayed in updating the blog after spring break, but better late than never! Let us preface with letting you know that we ate lots and lots of food, and the pictures corroborate that. We have a saved map of our favorite places if anyone is interested in where we traveled (http://goo.gl/maps/Vkak2)

The first part of our spring break was spent in Berlin, Germany. Berlin was quite a change of scenery from Rome, where the weather was warming up for Spring. Berlin, on the other hand, was covered in snow and snowed most of the time we were there.We arrived in the afternoon and had to take the city bus from the airport to our hostel. This bus was supposed to go directly to the hostel, but about halfway through, the bus driver stopped and told everyone to get off. We still don't know exactly what happened, since the bus driver spoke in German. Luckily, he dropped us off at the main train station, so we were able to go inside and get directions to the hostel from there.

We eventually made our way to the hostel, which was in an amazing location in the city center. The hostel was decent. Our room was very small, but had everything we needed. We had to share bathrooms with the rest of the hall. The showers were pretty awful. The lights were motion censored and would randomly turn off after the time ran out, since you were no longer in the sensors line of sight. The water was the biggest problem. The faucet was one of those where you press it and water comes out for about 10 seconds, then turns off. This resulted in you trying to shower and constantly pressing the faucet to keep the water going, and if you didn't press it in time the water would turn off on you.

We forgot to take pictures so this is from their website

After dropping our stuff off at the hostel, we made our way to Curry 61 for lunch. Currywurst is a very popular street food in Berlin. It is a curry sausage sprinkled with curry powder and then topped with a curry tomato sauce and served with french fries. It was very cold in Berlin and we were really hungry for lunch, which made the warm currywurst even more tasty. On our way back from Curry61, we came across a little market, and saw a stand where a woman was serving homemade streusel. We got really good apple streusel with vanilla sauce. Next, we went to visit the Brandenburg Gate, Berliner Dom, DDR Museum, and Reichstag.

Currywurst with ketchup and mayo

Streusel

Berliner Dom. One of the largest protestant churches

Brandenburg Gate

The German parliament building the Reichstag

Visiting these sites took up the rest of the afternoon, and then we made our way to Bejte, an Ethiopian restaurant, for dinner. The restaurant was small and cozy. We chose to sit at the traditional, Ethiopian tables, instead of the typical restaurant tables. The traditional section consisted of benches with pillows and stools. There is a round table in front of you where the food was served, and you set your drinks on a table to the side. I ordered Ethiopian mango beer, which was delicious. Stefan had a traditional Ethiopian beer, which was also really good. We didn't understand the menu because it was in German/Ethiopian, so we weren't sure what to order. Our waiter, who was the owner, spoke English and was extremely nice and helpful. He recommended the platter for two that consisted of meats and vegetables, which is what we ended up ordering. The food was incredible, and I wish we had time to go back there again.

Mango Beer

Our food

Day 2 in Berlin consisted of a lot of walking. We made our way to Checkpoint Charlie and then to the Topography of Terror (an amazing exhibit on the Third Reich). After visiting both those sites, we headed back towards our hostel. It was Easter and right around the corner was a festival. We stopped and got a bratwurst and potato pancakes with applesauce. We then made our way to Dolores Burritos (like a Chipotle). We have been deprived of "Mexican" food and just had to jump on the opportunity to eat it. Afterwards we walked around the city exploring a little more and thawed out at our hostel. That night we tried a Vietnamese restaurant, where we ordered spring rolls and wanton soup. Unfortunately  we were so full from all the food we had eaten earlier in the day, we didn't have the appetite for an entree but wanted something warm.

Checkpoint Charlie

Potato Pancakes with Applesauce

Delores

Day 3 began with us sleeping in and then walking around. I haven't mentioned this yet, but there was a Dunkin Donuts right by our hostel. I was thrilled to be able to order a bagel with cream cheese and most importantly, a black coffee, since all you can find in Rome are stronger coffees (the caffe americanos we have tried have not been very good). It was also so cold all day, that we stopped in again in the afternoons to get a warm drink (usually Chai tea for me)...of course we also got a doughnut. So, after getting my morning coffee and bagel, we decided to walk around for a bit and then make the trip to Mustafa's for a Doner Kabap. It was the best Kabap we have ever eaten, filled with meat, vegetables (cucumber, lettuce, tomato, onion) and sauces. On our way back from Mustafas, we stopped into Ritter Sport, a chocolate company. You can make your own chocolate bars there, and we each made our own. Much of the day consisted of walking around trying to burn off all of the food we ate.

Kebap

Chocolate bars

After leaving Ritter Sport, we headed to the meeting place for a 4 hour walking tour. Our guide was very nice and knowledgeable. He took us to many different sites in Berlin and gave us the history. It was so cold out, and I was freezing the entire time, but in the end I had learned a lot and I'm really glad we did the tour. We ended up visiting a few sections of the Berlin wall, museum island, the area hitlers bunker was located, and quite a few other preserved former soviet sections of East Berlin.

Art museum

Another museum on museum island

Jewish Memorial

TV tower

The tour ended right by one of the most famous chocolate stores in Berlin, so naturally we had to visit. We purchased an assortment of truffles and looked at the chocolate statues they had displayed. After leaving the chocolate store we went back to the Easter festival, which was still going on. We got a pastry and sat at picnic benches and listened to live music. While we were sitting in Berlin at an Easter festival, eating our pastry, and listening to live music, it started to snow..I thought it was a really cool moment.

For dinner we made a trip to "The Bird," a burger joint in Berlin. We both ordered to huge burgers and fries. Mine just had cheddar, but Stefan's had chili and cheddar. The burgers were served with english muffins as buns, which we thought was a unique idea. Both our burgers were delicious and quite filling. After leaving The Bird, we went back to the hostel to pack and get ready to leave for Munich in the morning.