My visit to Munich

We went to Munich on 29th august 2014.

The first thing that we did to reach Munich was to take an IC train from Bonn central station or a.k.a. Bonn Hauptbahnhof to Frankfurt, around 10.00 am. Then we changed trains and took an ICE to Munich.

      Ø  DAY:1

There were many things in Germany that reminded me of India. For example, the petrol pumps in Munich were just like that in India. Then there was a metro. Ok, although it was way longer than the Delhi metro, it somewhat looked like it. It had a brilliant white colour, etc. The hotel that we were staying in was very beautiful. So was the room. There was a huge painting of a scenery on the wall. There were also numerous shops near the hotel, just like our home was in Pune. The feeling made me very homesick.

      Ø  DAY:2

ROAMING ON THE STREETS OF MUNICH CITY

The next day we went to a museum (whose name I couldn’t recall), where we took an audio guide for convenience. Then we went to the ‘Dachau Concentration Camp.’ There was this time- I think about 70 years ago- when Germany was in dictatorship under Adolph Hitler. This was the ‘camp’ where he would do some pretty bad things to Jews, that I don’t really want to go in detail of……

After the visit to the camp, we went to a Russian Orthodox Church, which reminded me of the Indian temples in India because they are shaped in the familiar conical shape, and they had some stone-on-stone structures, which were somewhat same as in India. They also had a huge bell. I think that that church would be one of my most memorable places. It was so beautiful.

Inside, there was nice music being played. There were many flags hanging from the roof of the large church. It had many attractive statues. As most churches, there was a place for candles, and in the very front, it had a huge candle, almost like 1 and  half feet long.

Ø DAY:3

ON OUR WAY TO THE EXTRAORDINARY CASTLE

The 3^rd day was the best day out of all the days of our stay in Munich. It was the 31^st of August.

We woke up early in the morning with great enthusiasm. After all, we were going to visit one of the most famous castles in Germany-the Neuschwanstein Castle (in German-Schloss Neuschwanstein). And also, it was the last day of our visit-not that we were eager to go, but still.

Anyways, once we woke up we rushed the station for our train to the castle. It was obviously not a direct train to the castle. It was to the place where the castle was located. We rushed mainly because of 2 reasons-(a) because it was a long way to the castle (and we had to roam and explore the place too), and (b) because we had to catch a train to Bonn in the evening.

  Well, anyways, we reached the rugged hill with the castle on top to find ourselves in midst of hundreds of cool clouds. Water droplets hung in the atmosphere, and I enjoyed myself thoroughly- slowly taking in the scenario of the high mountain range and the beautiful flora and fauna. We took a break. After all, we were kind of exhausted from the steep climb of the hill. We had walked for half a kilometre, and we had taken a ride on an electric car.

There was a small shop there, and the reasonable food to take was ice cream so we ate that, in spite of the very cold weather. After the short break of about 15 minutes (and after my parents got annoyed of me nagging them to finish their ice cream fast), we finally went inside the castle at 1.25 pm.

Until the time we entered the castle, I had never actually thought what to expect inside the castle. Till the time, I only knew that the idea of Cinderella’s castle in Disney land had been taken from his castle, but that was it. After entering, I realised that it was actually supposed to be a home for a king called Richard Wagner. The castle was decorated with numerous paintings. There were pretty lamps all around the castle (just like how castles are supposed to be). We saw the servant’s quarters and their single beds. There were paintings practically everywhere you looked- on the floor, on the walls, and on the ceilings too. But the main thing that got my attention was a gold painted statue. It was a statue of a random man, but it was well kept and polished you’d think it was pure gold, but it of course can’t be one.

ENJOYING THE BEAUTIFUL SCENERY WITH MY FAMILY

There was of course a room designed for a king. It had a king sized bed for the king with a height of 193 cm. There were also about 15,000 books in his room, which I guess is like a proof that he was totally in love with reading. People guess how Richard Wagner died. Some say he died of a heart attack, and some believe he just died like that, not by a heart attack. Personally, the room felt like a room ghost. I’m not sure how to explain, but here was this eerie feeling in the room……………

Well, anyways, moving on, we saw many other rooms. Probably for guests. They had multi-coloured and beautiful curtains. I noticed that the caste had several statues of swans. Some were made of crystal, too. There were plastic plants of plastic cherries too.

_After travelling and developing great curiosity in trap doors, secret passages and whatnot, I went to the gift shop and checked it out. They were selling puzzles, t shirts, bands, snow globes, etc. We bought a 1000 piece puzzle of the castle and a huge poster/pic. of it.

After that, we were on our way back to Bonn.