Deutschland

It was my dream to go to Germany because I had done a German language course in IIT. And the second reason was to buy a camcorder and mobile from there because I had heard that they are cheaper there. So a tour was planned for Germany in which we were to go to Munich and see the region around Bavaria.

We started at 1:00 pm on Friday and our first destination was Kalsruhe. A small but old and historical town of Germany it was worth a visit. We first went to see the Royal Place moving along the fence of a zoo (which we did not enter). The palace was closed because it was already 6:00 by the time we reached. We then sat down idly in the adjoining park and took rest. Then came the thought of looking for a night club (because our train was at 3:30 in the night). This brought us to the markets and to our surprise they were open even after 7:00. We went to a supermarket and had a delicious ice-cream (one of the best I had in Europe).

We then met two Indians who tols us about some night bars and so we set out to look for them. We had to catch up with the others (Pushp, Vishesh and CKD) so we met them at the pyramid (the city square) at 9:00 and then after having dinner again started our search. Finally we saw one open - 'Gina bar'. First I and Rishi went inside. We saw that there was a door leading us further inside. At the bar I was told that a drink is compulsory. So I first went outside, called Saurabh, Rizi and Vishesh and then we all were in the bar. All others ordered a beer while I ordered a Cola (worth 4 euros). To our dismay the inner door lead us nowhere and we were to sit and sip our drinks in that little place itself. The only girls near us were three above-50 old ladies who were coaxing Rishi to offer them a drink. I exercised my German skills a bit and then after sometime we slipped onto the road laughing about the whole episode.

Still there was a lot of time and nothing to do so it was considered wise to just move to and fro on the S-Bahn and get some sleep. Our train from here finally brought us to Stuttgart and then to Munich around 9:00 in the morning. Akash Gupta was standing at the station to receive us and the 'Bharat Milan' of CKD and Akash was kooooool !!

Dachau - A Nazi Camp
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The plan for the day was to see the oldest Nazi concentration camp of Dachau. It was not far away from Munich but we had to take a metro and then a connecting bus to reach there. In the bus stupid Pushp realised that he had left the travel passes at Akash's place. Anyways since we had reached Dachau, we made the maximum out of it - seeing the museum, the furnaces, the dorms and the gas chambers. The movie really opened our eyes to the horror of Nazi barbarism. In the evening when we were back in Munich, we rushed to the 'Mediamarkt' shop to see camcorders but since they were costly I didnt buy one. As the night fell, we went to Marienplatz (the city center) and saw a wine festival. Waiting for the last metro, we started playing Dumb Charades (not knowing that this would become our favourite on al future travels). The night was spent at an IITB friend of Saurabh's.

Garmisch-Partenkirchen
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Early next day we set out for Garmisch-Partenkirchen which was the base for going to Zugspitz (the highest point of Germany). I did not go to the top because the weather forecast was not good. So I spent my time touring the city, seeing churches, the river and window shopping. It was raining occasionally and so I finally sat down at the station to get some sleep. Around 3:00 I saw that Pushp and group had also arrived there. So we then waited for Rizi and group to come back from the top and then started back for Munich. In the evening we went to see the OlympicZentrum (Olympic Centre) where Metallica concert was going on. We climbed a hillock nearby to get a view of the entire city. It was beautiful with red roofs. Then we went to the Englisch Garten and saw the Chinese tower Bier Garten (it was huge and I has fun on children's slides). We were loitering around happily unaware of what lay ahead in store for us. We were told that we could not spent our night with the IITB guy because of his whim and so we would be spending at the Marienplatz metro station. So we sat down comfortably (I was reading Godfather) for the sun to rise.

In the morning I changed my clothes at the station platform and then we again took a train for our last visit to the castle of Neuschwanstein. We had to catch a train back to Munich and so we saw this one in a hurry. But the most enjoyable part of the day was feeding ducks and coaxing them to come out of the water. Once back in Munich, we knew that we had a long night ahead because we had to change a lot of trains to reach back Strasbourg. I will never forget the dash to a nearby market at one of the stations - It literally took the breath out of me. A new experience was a small station on the German border where there were just three platforms (1, 2 and 9). We also met a girl from Nancy at this station who clicked our pics with flowers. Our train was from platform 9 and we were really disheartened to see a two-coach train. Anyways on this train we made the historic ride of crossing over to the French border on the river Rhine and finally landed in familiar territory !!!!