I am so behind on this blog it’s insane! I’m sorry!! These past two weeks have gone by so fast and have been so busy! So let me start from where I left off…

After my wild weekend in Interlaken, I spent the next week trying to recover (physically and mentally). I was so exhausted from the trip, I tried to catch up on my sleep and help my body slowly recover from the bruises and scars that I had accumulated during night sledding… and for the record I still have a bump on my leg with an internal bruise (or something of the sort) -__- how fabulous! But on Friday we were back on the road again and this time out of Switzerland (yay for cheaper prices!) and on our way to MUNICH, GERMANY!! When I think of Germany I picture Oktoberfest, bratwursts, liters of beer served by beer maids and women named Helga… and all of it was true (well, kind of). 

Once school ended on Friday, we ran back to the Montarina and finished packing our bags to make it to the train station in time. Once again we were going with a HUGE group which always makes for quite an interesting time :) The first part of our train ride to Zurich was about 2 ½ hours which wasn’t bad, but the almost 5 hour train ride from there to Munich was a little painful at times. Luckily our 2.50 CHF bottles of wine helped the misery :) Most of the trip was filled with playing “games” and chatting with everyone around us. Finally we get there at about 11 PM at night and we are all so excited to see what the Munich night life is allll about! After lots of confusion and commotion, most of us end up at the bar next door until about 4 AM (when you start late, you end late….) and then finally made it home and got to sleep before the sun came up. 

The next day I somehow pulled myself of bed (a small miracle), and to my surprise, IT’S SNOWING. Oh fabulous -___- And in case you don’t know me very well, here is my outlook on the snow… I HATE IT. I like it for about 20 minutes, and then I get cold and that’s the end of the happiness. So as you can imagine, I was not too happy about our new winter wonderland, but I put on a couple pair of socks, my boots and we all headed to the free tour. During the beginning of the tour we saw the Marienplatz which is the main square of the city. In the Marienplatz, they have the New City Hall, Old City Hall, Glockenspiel and the Mariensäule which are all beautiful and fascinating to look at! We got about half way through when I realized I couldn’t exactly feel my feet anymore, so Kira, Lindsey, Tara, Olivia, Gina and I decided that we should call it quits. We found a cute like restaurant/ bakery close by which served as the perfect location to get warm and get a good lunch! After my delicious meal, we got all our stuff together and decided to take our own little tour. We went into the Old Town Hall which had been partly turned into a small toy museum. My favorite little exhibit was of the Barbie dolls, which had different dolls from all different periods with all different outfits on. They were so adorable! We were also able to pick up some good souvenirs (I can’t say them because some are gifts) and see all the sights we wanted to! While we were walking home from our small tour, we came upon a huge demonstration in the middle of the road. There were policemen and other authority figures everywhere! When we asked the man standing next to us what was going on, he explained to us it was a Neo- Nazi demonstration. It was one of the most unreal things I have ever seen as they started to chant in German and everyone watching them started yelling and whistling back. You always hear about stuff like this, but actually seeing it was something else entirely. 

Once we got back to the hostel, we started getting ready for our night which included a beer challenge! This included a free beer at the beginning, being taken to 4 different bars or beer halls, and a free beer and shot of jaeger at the end. We were again forced to walk around in the cold -___- But this time it was almost worse, because as we are slightly jogging to the first bar and we were given a beer that we practically had to chug… how someone didn’t throw up is remarkable! Our first stop was a bar which was famous for their wheat beer…. Eehhh not my thing so much… but I finished it and then we moved on to the famous beer hall, Hofbräuhaus. This place was packed! Everyone was sitting at long tables and men and women dressed in traditional costume were running around with liters upon liters of beer in their hands. A group of us finally found a table next to a couple (poor them…) and we started to drink again! In the middle of our time there, a huge parade marched through the entire beer hall playing music and dancing, it was crazy! And then we were on to our next place, the Augustiner. This place was a little smaller and we actually all got kicked out from the restaurant top floor for being a too rowdy and we were sent down the bar area… oops! By the time we got to the final bar, which was actually the same bar we were at the night before, I was so full from all the beer and so tired, I called it an early night and headed back to the hostel at around 1:30ish (lame, I know)… 

On Sunday morning, we headed to Dachau, Germany which was about a 30 minute train ride away. In Dachau there is a concentration camp which was used by the Nazis in World War II. We decided that we weren’t going to do a tour and decided to walk around by ourselves. We are all taught about what happened during the war and have heard stories of the camps and see pictures, but actually being there and seeing where they lived and what the conditions were really like, put things into perspective for me. And what blew my mind even more is that this didn’t happen hundreds of years ago, this happened like right before my parents were born! How in the world was this okay?!! After Dachau, we jumped on a bus back to Munich and spent a little more time wandering the city and taking it all in before we unfortunately had to go back to Lugano. But it is crazy how after each weekend, once we hit Sunday afternoon we are all so ready to go back to the Montarina and sleep in our own beds! Munich was an AWESOME city and I would definitely recommend anyone to go there :)