Munich in the Spring

We were last in Munich at the end of January, and it was COLD. The lows were single digits, the highs weren't much higher. It snowed, it was windy, and even though we really loved the city, the weather was pretty miserable. 

Trip number two to Munich was thankfully a lot more pleasant. It was warm to the point of being hot, sunny most of the time we were there, and as it's spring, things were blooming and quite pretty.

We took a FlixBus from Muenster to Munich that left at 9:15pm and arrived at 8am. Miraculously, we did get a little sleep, despite the rather loud group of teenagers who woke up and basically yelled in our ears every time we made a stop. We dropped our bags off at the hotel (Hotel Anteres) until our room was ready and then walked around a bit, finally finding a cafe with wifi to sit at while they prepared our room. 

Carson asked for this picture of himself with a tiny car

Once we got to the hotel, I took a long nap and Carson got ready for the symposium. I got caught up on all those missed hours of sleep (I slept for five hours) and when I woke up, it was almost time for Carson to head back. He brought take out Thai food (that was unfortunately not so tasty) back with him for my dinner.

The next day, we had lunch at an Italian restaurant with the other attendees of the conference (there were I think less than 15 people total, so it wasn't a big group). The food was pretty good, and better than that, we got to sit in the sunshine.

After we parted ways with the group, we went over to the university, where we walked through the museum dedicated to the White Rose Movement, an intellectual resistance group begun at the university. Most of those in the group died, but they died doing what they believed in, and it was humbling to read their stories.

There is a monument outside dedicated to the White Rose group, with leaflets scattered on the ground (permanently).

Carson had to head back, so I walked around by myself for a little while. I walked past Odeonsplatz and down to Marionplatz, where I did a little needed shopping and errand running for a few hours until Carson finished his next thing and met me back at Odeonsplatz. We went back to Marianplatz and then thought about going to the Residenz Museum, which we missed last time we were in town, but it had already closed. So we just walked around until our feet were tired, and then headed back to the hotel.

People were lining up for a show at the Residenz Theatre (I think it was Alice and Wonderland ballet)

And we decided to sit and talk for a little while in the Hofgarten across from the Residenz.

Another car that Carson wanted his picture next to.

We did takeout pasta for dinner and ate in the room, tired after a lot of walking.

The symposium ended the next day, and Carson presented his paper successfully!

After he was finished, we decided to take the train to Fussen and visit Neuschwanstein Castle again. We didn't do the tour this time around and simply hiked up to the bridge up there. The bridge was closed the last time around, but it has a good view of the castle and surrounding area.

Hohenschwangau Castle

This picture was taken solely for the cute dog.

We took the steeper path to the bridge instead of the easier one past the castle and over to the bridge, just because we aren't that smart, I guess. It only took us 20 minutes of uphill walking though. I don't know if that saved us any time at all, but my calves were feeling it.

Once up there, the line to get on to the bridge was actually pretty long. You can't see me in this picture, but I'm just outside it on the left.

We made it out there, and the view was pretty great.

(Forever and ever)

We decided to walk down the less steep way by the castle before catching the 4:30 train (just barely!)

No room on our second train back, so we sat on the floor for an hour.

Back in Munich, we tried Mexican food again at a place near the train station - Taco Libre.

We walked through the Konigsplatz on our way back to our hotel.

A bike was coming dangerously close, so look at my eyes.

We walked past the Obelisk Karolinenplatz, a monument to honor the Bavarian soldiers in the mid 19th century.

Lots of lions all over Bayern.

 We walked through this sort of creepy looking underground pass-through to cross the street.

The next morning, we had breakfast - Carson loved this chopped bacon better than real whole bacon because he's crazy.

We made a super quick pit stop in the Englischer Garten just to see it before we had to run to our bus.

Carson had heard that there was a play wave in the park, and we were pleased to come upon it accidentally.

Our bus turned out to be late, so we could have stayed a bit longer in the gardens, but it took us longer to walk there than we'd anticipated.

We were on our first bus for about six hours, until we got to Mannheim, and then we had about an hour there before transferring to another bus that would take us to Muenster.

Hello, Frankfurt!

After roughly 13 hours of travel, we took our bleary eyed selves off the bus and walked home. It woke us up to do so, so we watched an episode on Netflix. We got up a little after midnight.

We really enjoy Munich and if we could choose another city in Germany to live in, that's the one we'd choose. It's beautiful there, we like the area around it, and we really wish we had more time to spend exploring Bavaria!