Germany: 17th-26th december 2005: a summary!

i'm baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack!!

3 weeks of living out of a backpack, feels good to spread all my stuff out in my room, and not having to pack it up again every night.

germany was good, went with my friend div who's on exchange at imperial, we travelled with people most of the time as well. here are the highlights, excerpts from my increasingly hefty travel journal:

17th dec: leave imperial at 3am to catch a bus to stansted airport, where our ultra-budget flight to hamburg is flying out from. we left the imperial union 'end of term' party at 2am. i fell over, and due to hefty backpack on my back, and a day pack slung across my front, i rolled. at the end of the trip, the girls i was travelling with still claim that it was the funniest thing they had seen all trip. arrive hamburg. am dead from absolutely no sleep. we go walking around. christmas markets!! at the end of the night, when we finally make it to bed, i had been awake for 40 hours.

18th dec: christmas markets. had cookies. so good. and gluhwein- kinda like warm mulled wine. good. am freezing. at night we went to the reeperbahn, hamburg's red-light district. macdonald's was next to 'erotic heaven'.

19th-20th: cologne! the dom [cathedral] is huge. amazing. went shopping, bought pink leather boots. parky came to cologne! v. excited to see him again. ate in christmas market. raclette. curry wurst. mushrooms. sausages. so good. chocolate museum was good. went to the organ concert in the kolner dom. it was so cool. there were 2 of those huge church organs there adn a guy was playing them both. i was freezing cold.

21st: heidelberg to see lini!!!! went to schloss [castle]. saw lini! exciting to see IHers in germany. ate at christmas market. bratwurst. so good. so very very good.

22nd: we arrived at the station to catch the train to munich 45 mins early, but lost track of time and had to run to the platform, packs and all. my bag exploded, things went EVERYWHERE, which was unhelpful. luckily train 5 mins late. bavaria is so beautful. serene snow covered landscapes. everything so white and still. so beautiful. it was snowing heavily in munich. trust me. everything looks better when covered with snow. me, parky and div walked around munich. we walked into a courtyard quite near the middle of the city, where there was a park covered with a thick layer of snow, and had a snowball fight!!!! we made div stand in front of a tree with a snowball on her head, like william tell. then parky threw another snowball at her head and crushed the one on her head. i'm sure she wouldn't have done it if she wasn't so cold she couldn't think properly.

23rd: parky left for vienna. and me and div went out of munich to see schloss neuschwanstein, which is the castle that kind ludwig 2 built, that the disney castle is based on. it looks so much like a fairytale, it's incredible. it was snowing, as well, so teh surrounding mountains were all covered with snow. it was amazing. one of my fave things that happened on this trip. go back with wet feet but so happy to have been there and seen it. makes one believe in fairytales.

24th: francis, neighbour from melb, came with may and lee to munich, we stayed in teh same dorm, all 5 of us, it was so good that we managed to meet up in munich!!! div got a haircut in a dodge turkish hairdressers who didn't speak english. i made do with my dodgy german. went to hofbrauhaus, where beer is served in a litre mug, for lunch. me and div cooked mediterranean pasta with olives, red peppers, salami in a tomato sauce with feta cheese. happy christmas eve!

25th: we had spag bol for christmas lunch and steak and mash for christmas dinner. we sat around a lot in between meals. i went to church in the morning, there was a english-speaking church 2 secs from my hostel, how awesome is that!??!?!? i was so psyched.

26th: went to residenzmuseum, the old home of the bavarian kings. an amazing room called the antiquarium. then we went to dachau concentration camp. sobering and in marked contrast to the museum. made us think. had dinner at a cool restaurant recommended by a random woman on the train, then flew back to london.