To Berlin

After being told repeatedly that there would definitely be internet access on my 6 hour train ride from Munich to Berlin, there of course was no internet access on the train...I was planning to write this up on the ride but I couldn't so bare with me on this one.

Over the past couple of days we did some more exploring in Munich, including a visit to the Olympic Park from the 1972 Olympics (the Stadium itself was closed because there was some mountain biking festival happening there when we went...almost got run over by several drunk mountain bikers. We also went to the Hofbrauhaus for dinner, which is THE famous biergarten in Munich.  I know I wrote about the Augustiner Biergarten last time, but this was like Augustiner x 10.  Much louder, people were much drunker (including me) and I thought the beer was actually better too (then again I was drunker, so take it with a grain of salt).  The food kinda sucked actually, but it's more about the atmosphere there

On Friday we went to Neuswanstein, which is the castle that King Ludwig II built that inspired the design of the Magic Kingdom Castle in Disneyworld.  It was pretty cool, except its sorta disappointing in that the interior was built to be 100% modern (in the late 1800s) including phone lines and giant plate glass windows, and it's also unfinished because Ludwig ran out of money during the construction.  Still, impressive from the outside and pretty nice inside.

 Today was the train ride to Berlin, not much to say there.  I will say that the food in Munich grows very old very quickly.  Pretty much, you're forced to eat super heavy food like potato dumplings, sausage and sauerkraut all the time; the other options are pretty lacking except for the Italian place we found by chance, especially with the whole E. coli thing going on here.  The international food of Berlin will definitely be a welcome change.

I realize that this might be starting to sound like a travel guide, which is exactly what I've been trying to avoid, so I'm gonna try to throw in some editorial comment about something I see here or hear about from back in the States whenever I can.  Feel free to tell me I'm dead wrong and/or discuss.  Last time I touched on the kids wanting to seem Americanized, and I actually want to go after that one a little more.  It's really odd because whenever you ask for an English menu at a cafe, or are heard speaking American English, the Europeans automatically give you a sneering look as if to say, "oh, it's a dumb American."  They get especially mad when you try to rush cafe or restaurant service so that you don't end up spending 3 hours drinking a cup of coffee.  I understand that there is an appeal to hanging out for a while and taking it all in, and when I have time I'm all for it.   But sometimes I do have things to do.  They seem to think their way is much superior but then they still lust after our culture, music, and clothing.  Really weird.

I'll get some pictures posted on here when I'm not afraid of crashing the internet I'm using so I'm not assaulting everyone with a wall of text every time