München

Although we had planned on hiking for our last day in Interlaken, we woke up incredibly sore from canyoning and the weather was dreary so we had more of a relaxing day instead. We took a walk through the town and window shopped for things we could never afford. We also took this opportunity to book the rest of our lodging so that we have one less thing to worry about from now on!

On Friday, we woke up early and hopped on our train back to Munich. We used AirBnB again and stayed in an apartment with a middle-aged man named Christian and his 20-year old daughter. When we got there, Christian took us on a two hour tour by car to show us the spots that we should see. He dropped us off at the English Garden, which is a beautiful stretch of land that people flock to for picnics, frisbee, soccer, and many other outdoor activities. We made our way to the Chinese Tower (which is in the English Garden) and decided to eat dinner at the biergarten there. The atmosphere was very traditional of Bavaria, with lots of currywurst, bratwurst, potatoes, saurkraut, cheese, pretzels and of course beer. We felt like we were in heaven with the mashed potatoes!

Our next stop was Hofbräuhaus, which Christian had introduced to us as a place like Oktoberfest that is open 365 days a year. It was basically a massive party inside of a pub. We ended up seeing a guy wearing a UM hat, and found out that he had also just graduated and was here with his friends who live in Germany. We hung out with them and had more beer before heading back to the apartment.

Yesterday, we visited Dachau, one of the first and most well-known concentration camps. Words will never be able to describe the emotions of being in this atmosphere. After walking through the museum and learning about the history of the camp, we watched a documentary about what it was like while in operation. We finished by walking through the grounds and seeing the places that had been depicted in the museum and film. It was shocking to see the magnitude of evil that humans were capable of, especially toward other humans.

Afterward, the weather was pretty miserable so we decided to check out the more affordable shopping area. On this single street, there were four H&M stores! Before heading back to the apartment, we went to a grocery store and were very excited to have enough affordable food to make three full meals! Unfortunately, Christian's washing machine had broken the previous night (just our luck) so we had to use the coin-operated one in the basement. This was another exciting event for us, because we had not had access to a washing machine since Florence (where it had broken after we had only washed half of our dirty clothes)!

At this point, our luck ran out. Of course. Colleen's clothes had made it through a full wash cycle and were in the dryer at the same time Rachel's were in the washer, when a fuse blew. So we had no choice but to hang our clothes up to air dry overnight and hope for the best. When we woke up, no progress had been made.

Today, we went to the Olympic Stadium and walked around while the X Games were going on. After a few minutes we stumbled across an Indie style market. Rachel got a(nother) new purse and Colleen bought a jacket! Then we returned to the apartment to make lunch and pack up. Our clothes were still nowhere near dry, so we are currently sitting on our train to Munich with bright blue garbage bags of wet clothes.