Goodbye Polish luxurious hotel rooms, fine food and grumpy service people - hello Germany!
We flew to Nuremberg and immediately made our way to our hostel. The experience was weirdly science fictiony; all services were completely automated. There was no receptionist, we just followed online instructions by putting in a code to get our key and went to our room. The whole hostel was supposedly completely booked out but we never saw anyone because there was no common room. Everything was so streamlined and efficient due to this automation that all we could hear was the faint footsteps of people walking in and out of the hostel. Overall it was a weird experience that I think will become more commonplace as technology infiltrates more of our lives in the future.
My first impressions of Nuremberg were pretty disappointing, it seemed grimy and beaten down with very few people. But once we actually bothered to walk towards the city center everything changed. Despite being bombed by the British in WW2, beautiful castles, walls, churches and fountains were found everywhere. It was a very lively place with plenty of live music, street stalls and Bavarian pubs open everywhere. We went into a traditional restaurant and ordered a some wheat beer and food. I thought I ordered burger since there was an item on the menu called "Nuremberger", but later found out to my disappointment that that was just the way Germans spelled Nuremberg.
We decided to stay in Nuremberg a second day because there was still a lot left to explore. Instead of going out to dinner, I made a cabanara in our room. (I didn't want to risk ending up disappointed with another nuremberger). We joined a free tour, entered a few museums and enjoyed a few crepes.
The next day we took the ICE train to Munich. I'd been to Munich a few times before so the mixture of beautiful and grimy didn't surprise me as much as Kaz (our hostel was located adjacent to a stripclub). We went on a huge walk around the nearest park. It was beautiful. There was a strong river flowing through the center of the park. We saw surfers who were riding artificial waves caused by the river flowing through a narrow canal. It was amazing and a bit embarrassing to watch these Germans perfect surfing in an almost completely landlocked country. To finish off the day we went on a desperate pilgrimage to a beer garden. We found one called "English Garden" and reluctantly went in our of desperation for food. However, when we got in we were served amazing German schinitzels and pretzels! It turns out that English Garden is the just the name of the park we were in - whoops.
The next day we met up with Sebastian (Basti) and John to begin our hike to the Watzmann! We drove down in Basti's scoopy do style mystery machine, took the ferry across and began our hike. It was wonderful! Wonderful weather, and fantastic views. We stopped off at Watzmann hut (a conveniently placed stopover located only 2 hours away from the famous summit) and enjoyed a very delicious beer and some food. I was briefly humiliated by ordering some fresh milk at the bar to go with my Tim Tams. The bar tender kept assuming I meant wine and a nearby camera crew decided to film my petty attempts to correct him. The next day we headed for the summit. It was phenomenal and incredibly scary. Only photos can describe it.
After the hike, we were incredibly sunburned, exhausted and sleep deprived. A perfect opportunity to catch a 7 hour nighrider train to Cologne! We arrived in Cologne, and after some mcdonlads and museums, and some temporary travel difficulties to get back to Delft (blabla car = worst way to travel ever), we were on our way back to Delft.
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