Estamos en Munich!!!!!

I know, I know; I'm really late with getting this update out. I offer the excuses of having had a midterm on Thursday and being sick now. Well, here's Salzburg and Munich in one word: AWESOME.

Here they are in quite a bit more:
Our trip seemed doomed from the start. Last Thursday afternoon, right before Chen, Keshia, Lauren, and I were headed off to the train station, Keshia got a phone call about a family emergency, and decided not to come. Lauren and I headed off as planned, and Chen stayed with Keshia for a bit and planned on meeting us at the train station before the train left. Once Lauren and I finally made it through the big long line at the ticket counter, we had about 10 minutes to spare before our train was supposed to leave. So far, so good. Lauren went off to find Chen, and I was left alone to deal with a sour-looking old man behind the desk labelled "international departures." I handed him the reservation paper and asked for the printed tickets. He said no. I asked, "what do you mean, no?" He said "come back tomorrow." Then my inner obnoxious American came out and started getting angry. "NO I am NOT coming back TOMORROW!!! The train leaves in TEN MINUTES! I already PAID for those seats and I am getting on THAT train!" He sat and argued for another five minutes, and then finally said "okay I'll see what I can do." He took my reservation paper, and disappeared. Disaster #1. Chen came and found me with one minute til the train was supposed to leave, and I was in a panic. After quickly explaining the situation to her, she said "okay, now's not the time to argue. Let's get on the train anyway." So, with visions of being tossed out of the train somewhere in the Alps, the three of us ran toward the train and managed to get on just as the doors were closing. We found our seats as the train pulled out of Venice. When the ticket man came by an hour later, I calmly explained the situation. Disaster #2. He gave me an I-don't-believe-you look, but said he would come back later to sort it out. However, a random person (disaster #3?) saved us. At the next stop, someone started talking in Italian quickly over the intercom. I didn't pay much attention to it until I heard in English "...are stopped indefinitely. We will pass along details as they come." Immediately I recalled Amy (another girl studying with us) talking about when she went to Cinque Terre, and how a woman committed suicide by jumping in front of the train, stalling them for five hours. I dismissed the thought though, thinking, "how many people would have that idea??" Apparently it's popular here-- someone had collided with the train in front of us, and we were waiting for the mess to be cleaned up before we would be allowed to continue our journey. (It wasn't clear whether the person jumped or it was an accident). At any rate, the ticket man never did come back. Thanks to the delay though, we arrived in Salzburg at 6AM instead of 4AM, which was comforting to three girls travelling alone through places where they don't speak the language at all. Once we checked in to the hotel, it was time to go on the Sound of Music tour. Lauren, Chen, and I felt bad going on it because Keshia had been the one who was really excited about this portion of the trip, and she didn't get to enjoy it with us. The views over the lakes were gorgeous, but we spent too much time on the bus and not enough time at the locations. When we arrived back in the center of Salzburg, we met up with Sayaka, a Japanese student who was travelling by herself. The four of us walked through the Mirabell Gardens to the historic city center, where we visited Mozart's house. I loved his house. They had a large collection of his instruments: two organs, two harpsichords, a piano, a violin, and a horn of some kind, and they also had letters he wrote and even some original music. I guess you have to be a music nerd like me to find all that as interesting as I did. Anyway, after that, the four of us stumbled upon a rather large fortress (not the Salzburg Fortress, but a different one). This one had a lot of pretty nature trails to explore and talked about the ancient history of the area. Lauren and Sayaka weren't as into the "hiking" bit as Chen and I were, so they decided to go shopping while we explored the historic city center (and ate an obligatory ice cream). We met up again with Lauren and Sayaka for dinner at an Asian fast-food-type place which was pretty good. The next morning, Lauren, Chen, and I set out bright and early for Hellbrunn (which means "Springs of Hell"), the pleasure palace of Archbishop Markus Sittikus. It was built in the late 1500s, and this man was a hysterical genius. The gardens of this palace are gorgeous, with lots of fountains and flowers everywhere. We were herded into a circular area with a stone table and stools with little holes in the middle of the seats. That was where the archbishop would entertain his guests. He liked to get them good and drunk, and then he would surprise them by turning on the water, which would squirt out of the seat and drench their bottoms. The best part is, at that time it was considered a crime to be standing in the presence of a seated archbishop, so they had to literally grin and bear it. After a demonstration (using some very eager little boys as the "guests" and a very reluctant older woman for the "archbishop"), we moved on to other exhibits in the trick gardens. I made good use of my raincoat that day-- in one room, water "rained" from the ceiling, and outside of another, a deer head mounted on the wall spouted water through his mouth and antlers! Out of the entire trip, Hellbrunn was by far my favorite place. After Chen and I quickly toured the inside of the palace, the three of us headed back to the city center, where Lauren went shopping again and Chen and I headed up to the Festung Hohensalzburg (the Salzburg Fortress). We discovered that we get along really well together because out of the whole complex, we liked the toilet (it protrudes out from the side of the turret....and opens at the bottom. In the words of our tour guide, "bombs away!") and the torture instruments. They had several very funny-looking masks, thumb screws, a huge pointy wheel that was dropped on criminals until they were squashed to death, and other unidentifiable objects. Too bad all the descriptions were in German, because it would've been really good if we knew what they were used for and what crimes deserved which punishments. Anyway, once we met back up again with Lauren, the three of us went to the train station and hopped on a train to Munich. I like travelling on trains-- the scenery was so pretty as we crossed the Alps. Oh, here's a random Sound of Music trivia fact: that mountain they climb over to "escape into Switzerland" at the end? It would've led them straight into Nazi Germany. And another one: the mountain that Maria runs down at the beginning actually takes 3 hours to hike up. Well, unless you're Maria, because it took her only 3 minutes to run down it and enter the abbey again. Okay now back to the trip.

We got to Munich on Saturday night, and obviously everything was closed, so after checking in at the hostel we walkded around and found ourselves in the middle of the old town. Lauren got very excited because there's a huge Zara (her new favorite store) and an H&M spanning two blocks. We wandered past all the main sites at night, and then ate a quick dinner and went to bed. The next morning we got up early and went to Dachau concentration camp, which took us several hours. There was a lot of information to take in, not only about that particular camp but also about Nazi Germany and even the lead-up to the war. The only parts of the camp that were original were the gas chambers (which were never used for mass killings for whatever reason) and the crematorium. I think the most chilling for me was a "shooting range" tucked away in a forested area: there were trees with ivy crawling up them and wildflowers all over, and a bare concrete wall with a sloped base that ended in a 6-inch ditch about 8 feet away, which was apparently dug to collect the blood. The rest of the camp was reconstructed and somehow just didn't seem realistic enough to have a shocking effect. Around lunchtime we went back to Munich, and I ate a weiner schnitzel at an outdoor restaurant, listening to classical music played on the marimba (a xylophone-type instrument) and rock music played on an accordion in the square. We watched the Glockenspiel, which is a bell tower of a church that plays three times a day and has moving marionettes. At the end, a German rider on a horse jabs his lance through an Austrian one and then other marionettes dance. It was....interesting. Then we walked around some more and found ourselves in the gardens of the Residenz for a while. We didn't get to go in anything because it was Easter Sunday and rather late in the afternoon, so everything was closed, but it was still nice to just walk around and see it all (of course, while eating Haagen Daz rum raisin ice cream...can't go to Germany and not eat Haagen Daz!). When we got back to the hostel, we were exhausted, and the next morning we got up and went straight to the airport and came back to Venice. It would've been nice to have more time though-- I could've definitely spent another day at least in Salzburg, and we didn't really see much of Munich.

Here are the pictures:

http://williams.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2015212&l=cd6ff&id=3901306

And here:

http://williams.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2015213&l=0acf8&id=3901306


On other news, on Thursday morning I put on my favorite pair of jeans and they ripped in a very unconvenient location, which made me very sad. Then I had to take a midterm for my Representing Renaissance Venice class, which I finished 30 minutes early. I think it went well. Today, Friday, Keshia, Chen, Caitlin, and I were supposed to go to Ravenna, but sadly the train workers are on strike. I'm convinced it's because the police are too lazy to clean up whenever a body collides with the trains, so the conductors probably have to do it. Anyway, they should be off strike tomorrow, so those are the plans for Saturday. Today I ended up sleeping a whole lot because I accidentally took two Tylenol Cold PM in the morning, thinking it was the AM one. Oops. I did manage in my foggy state to get a bit of work done on my presentation on nuns coming up on Tuesday, which was good. Hopefully I'll finish that either tomorrow on the trains or on Sunday. I'll be busy this week: on Monday, Leslie Davis from Duke study abroad will be visiting and she offered to take us out to dinner, then that night I have a make-up class since my professor was sick a few weeks ago, Tuesday's my presentation, and Wednesday is my Italian midterm. Then Thursday night Keshia, Chen, (possibly Caitlin), and I are leaving for Budapest for the weekend!


*Edit: I just realized I didn't explain the title. Well, on Saturday night as we were wandering around Munich, a random guy came up to us and asked with an accent if we spoke English. He then proceeded to ask us what city we're in. I answered "Munich." His eyes grew wide and he turned to his friends and said in Spanish, "Do you know where we are????!!! We're in Munich!!" His friends laughed and said, "so?" He kept protesting though, because apparently they were supposed to be in some other city. All of them were clearly in an altered state of mind. Chen, Lauren, and I found it rather hilarious.