I took the train from Mannehim to Munich Airport. 5 hours!! A really long ride, but time passed fairly quickly, and trains are always so much more comfortable than buses, so no complaints.
Waited for another 2 hours at the airport for lc :/ He arrived at about 7pm and we had dinner at Airbräu, in the airport. I had a 1/4 roast duck with red cabbage, potato dumpling with breadcrumb in butter and cranberries (12.40€), and lc had a 1/2 grilled knuckle of pork in a traditional Bavarian beer sauce, served with pretzel dumpling (12.10€). The price was very reasonable for an airport restaurant, and both dishes tasted great! I think the main difference between a German pork knuckle and a Czech pork knuckle is that the German one has crispy (and hard when cold) skin while the Czech one has the normal softer and chewy skin.
We got to our apartment really late! We stayed at Harras, which has direct U-bahn and S-bahn to the Marienplatz (city centre) and the Hauptbahnhof (central train station) I thought it was a pretty good location, since the train rides only took about 10-15 minutes. The U-bahn runs underground, and has a better frequency than S-bahn, usually about every 5 minutes during peak hours, and every 10 minutes during non-peak. I think it covers a smaller region, mostly in the heart of Munich. The S-bahn network is much larger, but I personally disliked it because of the lousy frequencies of about one every 20 minutes.
We stopped over at Marienplatz before going to the apartment.
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| The Neues Rathaus (New Town Hall) |
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6th November 2014
The Deutsches Museum is the largest Science and Technology museum in the world! It was really very huge, and covers 50 different fields of Science. The entrance fee was only 3€ for students. I don't think it's possible to finish looking at everything in 1 or 2 days. We just went around looking for things we were most interested in, such as planes and ships. You could take a look at the available displays.
I thought the museum was quite amazing, but the downside was that most of the descriptions were way too technical... Only professionals would be able to understand them.
We had lunch at an Asian restaurant near the museum. We both had curry, but the curry was quite weird and way too sweet!
It was raining and cold, so it was actually a pretty bad day for the walking city tour with Sandeman, but there wasn't any other choice, so we just stuck to our plan. The tour was quite good as usual, but I found the guide to be a bit too draggy and unnecessarily trying-to-be-funny-and-interesting. And he openly asked for tips from us (and even named how much we should give), which was quite weird...
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| I don't know why, but he kinda looked like Mao Zedong lol. |
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| Came across this huge diamond of 28.88 carats :O |
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| So the legend goes that if you touch her boob, you'll find the one soon! So awkward. |
We joined the Sandeman Beer Challenge, which cost 11€ per person. It includes a tour to 3-4 beer gardens / pubs, and 2 free beers. It turned out to be a complete disaster. We thought that we could get to know the beer culture better, like how and where did it originate from, how are beers brewed, special breweries in Munich, etcetc. However, all we got was a pubcrawl.. The free beers were just bottled beers that you could get from any supermarket for maybe 1-2€. Everything else that you order in the pubs cost you extra! We had a really boring time there, and the guide couldn't even speak English properly. She only spent about 1 minute talking about each pub we went, and then the rest of the time was just drinking and talking. And no, we didn't have the chance to socialise with other people since everyone went with their own friends.
The only thing I learnt was that in order for breweries to sell their beers during Oktoberfest, they need to be located within the Munich city, close to the Oktoberfest site. And the beer hall as shown above in the picture, which originally had its brewery outside the town, had to move its brewery. The rental is higher of course, but they managed to earn much more since 30% of their annual sales come from the one month of Oktoberfest. Pretty amazing huh? I find it really strange that some people can love beer to such an extent. It's crazy how they can gulp down pints of beer within an hour. I don't think I like any drink this much, not even Coke.
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7th November 2014
Refer to my post on Salzburg :)
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8th November 2014
Refer to my post on Neuschwanstein Castle :)
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9th November 2014
Another early morning for us!! Can't believe we had to wake up early EVERY day for this trip T.T We went to the Dachau Concentration Camp for a 2.5-hour tour. For entrance fee of 3€, you could have a guide bring you around the camp and share about its histories. Well, I think it's really worth it. There are 2 tours everyday, one at 11am and one at 1pm. Be sure to get the tickets at least 15 minutes before the tour timing.
The tour was good, and we learned a lot about the painful history of Nazism. The most memorable things we saw were the reconstructed barracks in which the prisoners used to live in, the torture chambers, and the gas chambers.
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| The camp was pretty big and empty, so I can imagine how hard it would be for anyone to escape. |
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| The gate had been stolen just a week ago. |
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| The prisoners slept in these beds, separated by just a thin piece of wood, and the bunk bed has 3 levels. |
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| The gas chamber was disguised as a shower room. |
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| Crematorium |
9th November, the day we visited the camp, was coincidentally a very important day in German history. In 9 November 1938, Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, occurred. It was a large-scale pogrom in Germany and Austria that resulted in the deaths of over 400 Jews, as well as the destruction of their properties. 30,000 Jews were captured and sent to concentration camps.
I like how the Germans are so open about sharing what happened during Nazism, even though obviously everyone views them as the bad guys. At least they recognise their mistakes. You can get a virtual guide of the camp on its website.
We had currywurst after the tour. We wanted to go to Nymphenburg Palace, but there wasn't much time, and we had seen a fair share of palaces and castles these few months. We thus went straight to the BMW Welt to take a look at some amazing cars.
We got back to Marienplatz to have pork knuckle at the Haxnbauer. Saw some amazing reviews on Tripadvisor. The price was not very cheap actually, but the pork knuckles were really quite good!
Lc had 1/2 pork knuckle served with coleslaw with bacon (17.20€) and I had slices of pork knuckle with sauerkraut and mashed potato (15.50€).
We had our final stroll along the streets, then went home to rest. Such a tiring trip!
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10th November 2014
There were some hiccups on the way to the airport, because the U-bahn was really crowded in the morning and we couldn't squeeze on. We went over to the S-bahn platform but due to the lousy frequency we had to wait for a really long time. Lc almost missed the check-in, but fortunately he managed to do it.
I got home by train. Met a Singaporean couple on the way who were traveling in Munich and heading to Düsseldorf for some conference (for work). Nice to hear some Singaporean accent once in a while :P
I liked Munich a lot, and Neuschwanstein even more. I think it was a really great trip apart from having to wake up early everyday and the lousy Beer Challenge :P
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