aventuras de alyssa

Onto the next adventure to Munich, Germany for Springfest! Springfest, also known as Frühlingsfest in German, is the smaller, less famous sister festival of Oktoberfest! It wasn’t very crowded, there were hardly lines for the beer tents or rides, and there were less tourists! It was perfect, but I’ll definitely have to go back to experience Oktoberfest too.

As mentioned in my last post, Tonisha and I stayed at a hostel in Madrid Thursday night because we had to be awake at 4:30 am for our flight to Munich – I think we’re crazy! We had smooth sailing to Munich and after an hour’s train ride to the hostel, we arrived to meet our group leader Garrett. We traveled with Bus2Alps, a tour guide company that offers long weekend trips to European cities for students traveling abroad. Garrett took us to a nearby shop to purchase our dirndl’s for Springfest. It was a bit overwhelming, but the people in the shop were helpful and we found options that we liked! They kept saying we were late though – late to the group and then late to the festival (and it was only 2:30!).

We got to the festival around 3:30 pm and there weren’t many people in the tent so we grabbed a table and ordered our first beer. Garrett joined us for a bit, along with the Bus2Alps camping guide. They left and it was time for us to move because we were sitting at a reserved table. We were wandering around when a table asked us if we wanted to join them – it was perfect! They were all Germans from Hamburg and we had a really fun time, dancing on the benches and Prost-ing all night! There’s a special song the band sings every so often that everyone else starts singing and Prost-ing to called Ein Prosit. It was stuck in our heads all weekend. The beer tents close at 11 pm, so we left and Tonisha had me go on this ride where people popped out and scared you! I almost died of a heart attack!!! I made her go on a spin-y ride that made her nauseous, which wasn’t the best idea! After the rides, we went back to the hostel for a full night’s sleep.

Saturday, we had to get up bright and early and much to our surprise in the morning, our room had 7 other girls in it now! They had all arrived late in the night and we were so tired we didn’t hear them come in. We met up with our tour group to Neuschwanstein castle. It was about a 2.5 hour train ride to the castle through the Bavarian countryside, which was absolutely beautiful. We could see the Alps! There was a threat of rain all day and luckily, it didn’t start raining until after we left later in the day. Our tour guide, Matt, was from Vancouver and educated us all about Ludwig II, the king who built the castle. He was really cool to learn about – a lot of people think he was crazy and deranged, but I’m with the camp of people who think he was misunderstood. His story is quite sad – he was a romantic and built the castle to be an embodiment of a fairy tale. Every room had legends on the walls about romance and it was ornately decorated (couldn’t take pics inside). The castle was intended for Ludwig II alone, not to be shared with guests or entertaining. He wanted to live within a fairy tale and he got his wish for 170 days, before his untimely death. Anyway, I could go on and on about him because I was enchanted with the story, but I don’t want to bore you so I linked the wikipedia in his name above and I’ll move on now 🙂

We walked up to St. Mary’s Bridge, which offers the most breathtaking view of the castle. I really felt like I was in a fairy tale and I think it’s my favorite thing I’ve seen in Europe so far (besides the Alhambra in Granada, which I think will always be #1). Fun fact, the castle is the inspiration behind Sleeping Beauty’s castle, my favorite princess! We hiked back down the mountain and met up with the group in the little town before heading back to the train station. The town is small but very cute, as is everything else in Germany. I was completely in love with the landscapes and towns we saw on the train and I know for sure I’ll have to go back to Germany.

We got back to Munich around 6 and ate some Chinese food  for dinner in the train station because we were starved and had our fill of German food for lunch. I had more chicken schnitzel for lunch 😀 We went back to the hostel to freshen up before heading to Springfest again. All of the girls were in our room and they were really nice! They’re studying abroad in London and were from all over the USA. I felt a bit old!! Tonisha and I left for the festival and tried to get into the other beer tent (there are only 2), but it was already 9 pm and the guard at the door said they weren’t letting anyone else in since it closed soon. I messaged our friends from Friday, and they tried to get us in as well but didn’t have any luck. So, we remembered from Friday that the other tent had a back entrance from the bathrooms and we snuck in there!!

It was a lot more crowded and we ended up running into the girls from our room! We miraculously found a table big enough for all of us and enjoyed the last hour of the festival together. We continued the party back at a hostel next door and heard some live music. It was a long, fun night!

Sunday morning, we walked around a bit to see a few churches in Munich, Marienplatz (the main square), and we wandered over to the original Hofbräuhaus! We have one in NYC that we’ll go to after work for liters of beer and I was really excited to visit the original one! We had a small beer (didn’t go for the liter after how many liters we’d already consumed during the weekend) and a pretzel, which I really wanted to be good but it was sooo dry. There were German musicians playing and we ended up sharing a table with a couple from SoCal and their German friend!

We only had a few hours left, so we took the train to Dachau, the very first concentration camp that was created before WW2. It was incredibly sad being there and I tried very hard to fight off the tears, but a few squeaked out. To be walking where the Nazis brought hundreds of thousands of innocent people and murdered them was a surreal experience. There was a replica barrack – all of the originals had been torn down but concrete blocks sit now where the barracks once were – that showed the worsening conditions when more and more people were brought to the camp. The beds got considerably smaller and the washing facilities were not made for the amount of people the barracks held. The most incredulous thing to me though was that on the walls, there were stories from survivors, who wrote that despite the ungodly conditions, the Nazis still expected everything to be clean. If there was a drop of food on the prisoners clothes or something spilled on the floor, they were subject to beatings. Holocaust Remembrance Day was the day before we had gone and there were wreaths of flowers from various countries lying outside of the museum. As the memorial says, “Never Again.”

We arrived back at the hostel and had to head straight to the airport. We got back to Madrid at 10 pm and our bus back to Valladolid was at 11 pm. We had a long ride and finally got back to Tordesillas after 2 am! Monday was going to be an exhausting day, but it was well worth it for the amazing weekend in Germany!!

Also, I tried to find another Blochlinger, but was unsuccessful 😦 All the Germans we met thought I was German and tried speaking to me in German, but I had to break the news that I’m just an American!!