Of late trains, Alpine lakes and Bavarian Motor Works

This is a post about the last two days, probably my only real vacation during this internship, and probably one of the best ever. Rachna has advised me to keep my posts small, but somehow i cannot do that.
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So, it all started on thursday morning which was anothe catholic holiday and i had taken friday off. The plan was to go to munich, newschwenstein and salzburg in the next 3 days and come back on sunday. i had rocky with me, and was supposed to meet CD at Munich. It was perfect till...........

Thursday began with us missing the first train as there was no bus from our hill to the railway station. So, while we walked all the way downtown in time for the second train, it got cancelled as somebody killed himself on the tracks. We hurriedly changed our itenerary but still missed our connecting train from Ulm as our train was running 30 minutes late. Another accident apparently. Talking of German efficiency.

Apparently, Germany had beaten Poland 1-0 by an 87th minute goal the night before. So, the late trains were an excuse for some people to drub the polish(" must've been some polish guy who killed himself in front of the train")......finally we reached Munich at 2 pm(instead of our original stipulated 10 am)...and to our delight, found CD waiting for us on the platform.

The city was hot...no not just any sunny day. It was actually hot, so much that motorbikes(which are usually preserved for the 10 such days in the entire year) were out.It is a rare sight to see motor bikes in Europe(for an indian i.e.) .

We started with the Olympia zentrum, with the famous olympic village, the open-air screens, the lake, the BMW building, the huge olympia tower............the city had everything promised by lonely planet- the sunbathers, the 1L beer mugs, the football craze, the craze with swimming....

We spent a lot of time there...just enjoying the sun and had a light lunch. Next stop was English garden which was much below my expectations. To begin with, it was just another garden that one finds in a city and the mosquitoes were discouraging too. So, we headed back and had a few one euro burgers. We topped it with some ice cream(nothing compared to my fav ice cream shop at tuebingen)....and headed for Marien Platz.

Marien Platz was boring too....maybe coz we guys were pretty tired by then. So, we decided to see the Arena before heading back home. The collosal Arena did leave an impression, but not enough to prep our already down body-language.

Sanket proved to be a great host. For the uninitiated ones, Sanket is this indian guy doing his masters with some company near munich. I found him through orkut and begged him for a place to stay for 2 nights( along with 20 other people i begged....yo orkut!). We had some draught beer to remove the fatigue(trust me, its my first in more than 3 months), and cooked some "white chhole" and "Alloo-shimlamirch". After the sumptous meal, all 3 of us headed towards his petite attic and slept like little babies.

Note to self: Never sleep with Chirag Dadlani again. His snores are, to say the least, psychologically disturbing.

We got up early the next day and were out in time to catch the first train for Fussen at 7. True to his name, Murphy came in our near-perfect plans. The state ticket that we were carrying was valid from 9 am. I knew this beforehand, but thought we would pass buy by telling the ticket checker that we came from jhumri-talaiya where no one knew German and who were the dumbest people god could ever make. Thankfully, CD showed them the ticket for Thursday(which was a holiday and hence the ticket was valid from midnight.) We were politely asked to get off at the next station.

So, there I was -in the middle of Bavaria(Bayern, remember Bayern Munich) in a small village called Kaufering sitting in the railway station cafe enjoying the sun, listening to songs, drinking coffee, taking arbit pics and waiting impatiently for the train to arrive. After 2 hours of wait, we caught the 9:30 train to Fussen.

Fussen was fun. That we were only 5 kms from the swiss border was told by the sheer no. of cows with big dangling swiss bells up their necks. We found two more indians, Abhijeet and Prikshit, and started the little trek up to Neuschwenstein.

Something about this castle. It is King Ludwig II's castle, built so that he could provide a platform to his opera artists to perform. It is a real fairytale castle, and the best tribute that it has received is that Disney copied the castle in its logo. The castle is well-preserved, only 120 years old, has simple, elegant yet capturing interiors( so unlike the gawdy french castles). And most of all, its on a steep steep hill overlooking a breathtaking gorge where a small brook makes fascinating cascades and a big whirlpool. For more details, check out Neuschwanstein.

The castle tour was only 35 minutes, and we guys were terribly hungry. I don't know about the others, but i ate atleast 5 cheese slices(thats a LOT of fat). The lake behind the castle is called Alpensee( which means Alpine sea, note all big water bodies in germany are called the sea). It was just the perfect swiss lake, meandering into the alps, with towering cliffs on all sides, and a small pebbled beach and a docking area on one side. We were enthu on boating, so we 5 hired a boat and tried our hand at rowing.

I ve always had a fascination for rowing. I always thought it was a tough sport, but i realised that it didn't require much of muscle effort. It was synchronisation which was the problem. Only abhijeet was the pro among us...and i think it was a bad idea to start your first rowing session with one pro and 3 amteurs . CD would say that i was the worst( he was the only one who knew swimming, and we weren't even wearing life jackets, and he didn't move his ass a tiny bit from the boat's end...didn't even touch the oars)..but i wud deny that. After much of 'chappu chalana', water splashing and some good rowing in flashes, we headed back to Munich.

I am sure you can guess what came next. The food ofcourse. WE guys were dying of hunger(what else do you expect from a group which has Chirag the great Dadlani and me)?? Cd got a Salami burger. I took a cold cheese sandwich(with Brie literally hanging out of it) and Rocky tried that too. Poor guy, he wasn't accustomed to eating cold sandwiches and european cheese.....I finished half of his burger :D. Was begging for some more.

We finished the day in style, at the Stamberger lake. It had started to drizzle a little. The lake was big, it was Friday evening and a Latino party was on. Rocky caught one of his Rajnikant( or should i see Sandy bhaiya's fever) and started clicking arbit photos of him in arbit poses. Then there was a little conversation between CD and two German girls, which i will recite in another post.

We reached Sanket's place at 9 am, cooked some pasta and had a little wine to go down with the Italian food. We also saw a little bit of Fanaa and a little bit of Darna Zaroori hai( Sanket had specially got these movies for us, but it was too late and we were too tired for anything.)

Next day was Munich again. We hit the MarienPlatz directly and were there just in time when the churches ring their bells simultaneously and the knights on the balcony of the city's main monument fight depicting a tradition that has been preserved for centuries . We spent the next 2 hours shopping, window-shopping, checking out arbit food joints, taking even more arbit snaps and even more arbit poses and arbitrarily passing time. Finally we bid CD goodbye at 12 while Rocky and I came down to KArlplatz to check out the streets there.

I was hungry again and decided to fill myself up. So i went to McDs and hit myself with 2 burgers, a coke and french fries and we came out to a world full of thousands of brasilian revellers.

What a sight it was!! Right in the middle of the city which literally 'worships' football. There were roadside Karoeke shows, scottish bands playing the bagpiper, and thousands of people sporting the yellow jerseys singing "Brasil.......lalalla...". The atmosphere was just intoxicating. WIsh we could have spent some more time there.

Munich would go down as one of the most memorable trips ever(after Shimla, and Konstanz). There is nothing special about the city-it is just too international. But it has everything a european city can boast of - good cafes, cheap pizzerias, beer gardens, a mix of languages, lakes , gardens, sun-bathers, gothic churches, world-famous museums and an enviable public transport system.

Viva La Deutschland!!