One of the major perks of being in London is the ease of travel. It is so easy to travel between different countries in Europe, we can literally just get up and go somewhere for a few days. London is a prime location to travel from because of the various international airports in the area, easy access to the Chunnel, and trains and buses to travel on to your destination. A friend and I took advantage of London’s location on the first possible weekend. The first weekend after classes started we decided to take a short little trip to a completely different country. The two of us were done with classes by Wednesday afternoon and so, following the end of class, we left to go to Munich, Germany the Bavarian capital. In total we were gone for four days, two of which were physically spent in Munich, while the other two were left for traveling. We stayed in a hostel, which was a first for the both of us, for the three nights we were there. In a way the hostel was not that different from a hotel, the staff members were nice, the rooms were a decent size, and the location was convenient. The new thing of where we were staying was that we shared a room with four other people, it sort of felt like staying in a dorm room with a few more girls than normal. While in Germany we went on two tourist excursions on each of the days. The first one was the Neuschwanstein Castle in Schwangau, Germany and the second was the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site. Both of these were all day trips, it was really fun to be out an exploring things for an entire day. Each of the tours were basically history lessons about the sights that we were visiting. I learned that King Ludwig was a social recluse who liked spending time at the opera house watching plays and listening to orchestra pieces. His favorite composer was Wagner, who the king grew very close to and who was Ludwig’s only friend in his life. It has become known that the rooms in the castle were based off and decorated in the view of the operas that Wagner wrote. King Ludwig is considered to be the last true king of Bavaria. The following day we went to the Dachau memorial site. It was an amazing opportunity to be able to witness the site. Not only was it educational, it was very sad but moving.
