Alex is abroad in Munich, Germany, until August 2009.

Wednesday was the first of many excursions that I am taking with my program.  These are the days when we get to legitimately skip class and visit interesting and beautiful places all over Germany.  This week was our church and castles trip, and it was quite an experience.

All 25 of us sleepily made our way to the bus, parked just outside the dorms, at 7:15 am.  After finding a seat and trying a variety of positions, I finally found a comfortable way to sleep, and the bus was silent for the two hours it took to arrive at our first stop:  Der Große Gott von Altenstadt Church.

Roughly translated, the name of this church means “the great God of Altenstadt.”  Not very creative: the church is situated in the little town of Altenstadt, hence the name.  We all piled off of the bus, half-asleep, and wandered our way up a set of old stone stairs, through a brick wall, and to the doors of the church.  The old wooden doors (which were twice my size!), creaked open and I peered inside: then I was awake.  The old church is rather small and simple, but absolutely beautiful.  The morning sun shone brightly through the center window above the altar, and I spent twenty minutes exploring this small space, admiring the old frescoes.  It was too soon time to go and we all climbed back on the bus.

I was awake for this section of the ride, and as we drove through the expansive, green German countryside.  The fields to either side of the bus became larger, speckled with only a few old houses, and some wooden fences.  After an hour we were at our second stop: The Weißkirche Church.  This was an incredibly artistic church, situated upon a small hill just outside another little German village.  We tiptoed inside as a service was going on, and were overwhelmed by the towering ceilings, coated with ornate paintings, and the gold columns.  A small population of elderly Germans was sitting, listening to the service, but at this particular location, I was more interested in the view behind the Church.  There was a small wooden fence, and past it was a picture-perfect view of the beginning of the Alps and the German countryside.  I bought a coffee from a small café, and sat watching the horses and cows.

The church portion of our trip was complete: onto the castles!  As I watched out the windows of the bus, the paths became more winding, and the land rose around us as we started cutting into the foothills of the Alps.  After a half hour I got my first view of our third destination: Neuschwanstein castle.  It looked like a small toy castle that someone stuck about halfway up one of the foothills.  Once we arrived and parked the bus at the bottom of the hill, we began hiking to the top.  And when I say hiking, I mean hiking.  It was a very steep gravel road and it took about 30 minutes to get up to the castle.  After huffing and puffing my way up the hill, exhausted, I looked up to see nothing other than Cinderella’s castle towering over me.  It is an outstanding sight, and made me feel quite small in comparison.  It was raining lightly as we waited our turn to take a tour of this castle.  We then joined a group of Germans and met a tour guide in a waiting room in the castle.  She took us on a disappointingly short tour, and then dropped us off at the exit.  Needless to say, the outside of the castle was much more impressive than the inside, and I then understood why our program leaders said that Neuschwanstein isn’t that exciting.

After running the rest of the way back down the hill we had a picnic next to a small lake nearby.  A few of us, brave souls, jumped into the ice cold water and swam the length of the lake, with ducks by our side.  Freezing and wet, I got back onto the bus and slept on the way to the second castle.  It took only an hour and we were at Linderhoff castle, which looks more like a summer palace.  It is situated at a much lower altitude, much to my delight, and is surrounded by a breathtaking garden, full of fountains, flowers and lots of shade.  The inside of this castle/palace was very small but just as ornate as the Weißkirche, complete with a cave beneath it that had a heated pool for the king.  By the time we were finished with this stop, we practically crawled onto the bus, bemoaning the fact that we had one more stop left: a monastery on the way back to Munich.

Once we arrived there, however, we were all glad that we went.  The monastery was enormous, and as we opened the heavy wooden doors, we walked into the nightly singing of the monks.  Their deep voices filled the cavernous cathedral, and we all sat, exhausted, and dirty from a day of exploring, enjoying this musical experience.  When they were finished and we walked back through the wooden doors, our program director was leaning against a pillar, smoking a cigarette, with 25 shots of Schnapps sitting on the cement wall behind him.  He handed us each a plastic shot glass and toasted to our coming year in Munich.  The shots warmed us up, and put us to sleep as we made our way back to Munich.

A long, dirty, sweaty, sight-filled day with castles fit for a king, but one of my favorite in Munich so far.

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