first time out of munich

this had to come, because this was always on our minds, and came soon the following week itself. thursday being a holiday, we decided to take a trip to neuschwanstein castle. if u r a disney fan, and remember the castle that is shown at the start of disney cartoons, u have a fair idea of what it looks like. a result of some weird connection between 'mad' Ludwig and swans, this castle indeed presents a breath-taking view, when u look at it from marienbrücke, a bridge that ludwig 'gifted' to his wife on one of her birthdays. a typical example of late 19th century architecture, with tall turrets, and rising spires, supposedly this castle was never completed. gosh!! if that is true, i have no idea how much more beautiful did the creator wanted it to be. but nevertheless, here it stands.....

half a day spent there, back to munich in the afternoon, and planned to go to dachau. turned out that we were a little late, even for dachau, so returned back from the dachau railway station, roamed around in an area that we had now come to know as one of Munich's best, the 'triangle' circuiting Stachus, odeonsplatz, and marienplatz. being a public holiday, all that could be done was window shopping, which by know we had developed a flair for.

got up late after planning and innumerable printouts on saturday, but still decided to go ahead with the original plan of visiting nuremberg, Hitler's headquarters. reached there in 2 hrs time, and guess what, the first thing that struck me was the large indian population. i hadn't seen much of it in munich, so it was a kind of surprise. we got to docümentation-zentrum, the place that we had come to see, and spent some 3-4hrs going thru the history, the circumstances, the battles, and the repercussions. for someone who is interested in history as i m (okay, not a great deal, but so what??). at 2pm in the afternoon, the Congress Hall presented such a desolate appearance, with crumbling walls, flying waste papers, and an afternoon wind blowing across ur face, 70 yrs ago, it wouldn't have been radically different from this, except for the damaged buildings, which were a living proof of the great war. we went along the zeppelinfeld, the marchfeld, the größestr., and then decided to go back to the modern world. it was still some time though, as we next went to the famous kaiserburg castle to get the view of the entire city from 'up there'. it was getting late, so we came back, roamed around the place, had something to eat in McD's amidst sulking protests from ravi, and caught a train to munich in the night.

next day the story of the past two sundays was all but repeated, until we finally decided to get up at 11. not much to do, not becoz we didnt have much to do, but becoz we hadn't planned for the same. so we went to deutsche museum, got amazed at its sheer size. it was all the more interesting for us, becoz it shows the birth and subsequent growth of science and technology thru the ages, so fascinating to watch. another visit to that place is a necessity. since the evening was still left to us, we went off to the english gardens, and decided to come back there again someday with a bike. (do not loll ur eyes, a cycle is called a bike here)