Day 3 in Germany

This has been an amazing day!  We traveled outside of Munich to the German Countryside and made two incredible stops.  The first was at a church they call the Church in the Meadows.  It was built for the farmers in the area and it is beautiful.  The second stop was at Neuscwanstein Castle.  It was built by King Ludwig II and is called a fairytale castle.  The one thing I found really interesting is it was never finished.  Ludwig went into debt and upon his death, which is a mystery, his family halted construction.  The family decided to open it up as a tourist attraction in an attempt to pay off its debt, which only happened in 1920...the castle was built the late 1800s.

We also took a quick walking tour, to make up for what we missed the day we flew in.  We go back tomorrow to go shopping.  Tomorrow is also the somber part of our trip as we will be traveling Dachau.  I have a ton of pictures, of course, I will try to get a link up so you can see more than the two or three I post here.

Two differences we have run into here is that you have to pay for wifi.  That has made it difficult for everyone to communicate with people back home.  You also have to pay 50 cents to go to the bathroom.  Even at some restaurants.  Another difference is the gas prices.  I took a picture of one of the signs.  Don't let it fool you, it's 1.44 Euro a liter...so do the math and it's like $12 a gallon.  (That's a guess as I don't do math if I don't have to. :)  The prices of most things are quite higher than back home.

Traffic is horrible here.  There are 2.5 million people in Munich and I'm pretty sure they are all out at the same time.  The bike traffic is rather heavy as well.  Two pictures you will see in my web album is one of the building with the word Voksbad on it.  That is a bath house.  Another picture shows a building with a vinyl covering over the scaffolding that is up restoring the outside.  It was actually the residence for the royalty when they came in to Munich.  Anther picture is of our tour bus.  It's a Mercedes Benz!  Not kidding.   We also got to see the Alps today, so there are pictures of that as well.

Anyway, I hope all is going smoothly back home with our friends and family.  The time difference is hurting our chances to Skype with anyone who works.  For example, it is 9:22 pm here and 2:22 in Prentice.  In order to Skype with my husband, I would have to call at midnight.  It's not going to happen tonight, the walk up to the castle was a beast!

The Internet was really slow and I ran out of time so I didn't get any pictures posted, but here are some from our awesome time.

Inside the Church in the Meadows

The Alps...Yellow Castle is Ludwig's Ancestral Hunting Cabin

Neuscwanstein Castle

The kids and me withe the Alps in the background to the right.