Wednesday, May 29, 2024
Day 2 - Nuremberg + Munich Residenz
we were close to the rock
next to the dead jelly fish and shell
and a sweetie glow came
Spin Out - Hayden Besswood
The plan was for day 2 was to spend the morning in Nuremberg and the afternoon exploring Munich Residenz. A rather weird plan perhaps, why not the whole day in Nuremberg or a whole day in Munich? Surely there are things to do to occupy the entire day. Well, I don't always make the best decision. I usually try to explore as many different places as possible in the countries I visit, so that's how it went. To maximize the time, I needed to get to Nuremberg fast and the option for that is to take the ICE train, which is the faster and more expensive train. Annoyingly ticket price is not uniform and fluctuates depending on the date and time. I don't know why I get annoyed when it's exactly the same with airline ticket. Basically if you need to take German ICE train, book as early as you can. Looking at the cheapest pricing that I could wake up to, the schedule was to take the 06:47 train from Munich, arriving at 07:53 in Nuremberg (side note: I have this weird thing of wanting to call Nuremberg, Nurkie, in short). Then I would take the 13:01 train from Nuremberg, arriving in Munich at 14:06. The cheaper train would take longer time than that. 06:47 is hella early, seriously there were a number of days in this trip I woke up at 05:00 AM because I take a long time to get ready. Also seriously, I think I only wake up that early during vacation. In real life, I don't do that - really not a morning person. Anyways, got on the train and arrived in Nuremberg without any issue. Nuremberg main train station has like a mall attached to it. It's also busy like Munich main train station, but Munich main train station feels more chaotic. First order of business was to find the toilet - found it and was rather dismayed that you have to pay. Can I just put it on record here that I cannot with this whole paying for toilet thing in Europe and I come from Indonesia where you do sometime give money to use the toilet, but not in a mall-like place or places where you expect the toilets to come with the facilities and never with an actual barrier to stop you from using a toilet without paying no matter how high-tech they want to make it that you can pay with your card. I just don't understand the reasoning or the cultural thing in Europe. It never stops to annoy me when I encounter this. Okay enough rant.
Arriving in Nuremberg train station, one thing that somehow I didn't expect was how Nuremberg feels like a big city. I actually thought it would be a small town, but I think aside for the old town, it's like any other city? After finding my bearing from the main station, I started my walk by crossing the street to get to the other side - such a funny unnecessary sentence there :D One interesting thing about Nuremberg is perhaps the Documentation Center Nazi Party Rally Grounds museum, but I read it's being renovated and it's kinda out of the way, you couldn't walk there, so I decided to give this a miss. The plan for the day was to walk to Nuremberg Castle passing along several interesting things I had noted in my map, visit the castle, then walk back to the station also passing several other interesting things. The first point of interest is the Way of Human Rights which has pillars of the universal human rights. There's also a wall with the list of these human rights. Each pillar is inscribed with one item in different languages. I actually did not know what the list of the universal human rights contain and it felt good reading it. Perhaps the most interesting points for me are Entitlement to protection of privacy and Right to rest and leisure.
Below are some of the other things I passed on the way to the castle. It was a cloudy morning that turned into the drizzle as the morning went on. The church is the Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady).
I arrived at the castle just after opening time, 09:00 AM. Honestly I wasn't that excited to visit the castle, I just thought I needed to fill time. There is a well in the castle that seems interesting so I was kinda interested about that. When I got the ticket, the staff gave it to me under reduced price. I asked why reduced? He said because the well wasn't available that day. Urgh, I'm not sure if it's because of the weather that day or other reason. Oh well, some things are just not meant for you. So in I went to the castle. It's not very big and it's medieval looking. One of the first thing you enter into is the chapel and then there's exhibitions about the history of the castle and also some armory and weapons. The armory part reminded me of Edinburgh Castle and even there I was like mildly interested. Being early, there were not many visitors. There was an elderly man in front of me, we were together in the chapel and he went ahead of me and then I lost sight of him after that. I wondered what happened, he didn't linger in the rooms long and just left? In one of the room, I could feel the staff was looking at me intently as I was walking around. I was like, please don't let this be some bad racial profiling and please don't be mean if he's going to ask me to stop taking photo with you actually can do. Then I felt him walking and following behind me. I seriously felt uneasy. Then I heard, "What is that?" I was like huh, what? I looked at what I was holding, just my camera. "A chicken?", he asked. What? Then I realized he was looking closely at the llama keychain on my bag :D He said he's been looking at it :D I said it's a llama from Peru. I was so glad it's something harmless and something that I could laugh about.
When I finished the castle and got out, there's a light drizzle but I had umbrella at the ready and a winter coat on (learned my lesson from the day before) so I didn't feel too cold. The thing about the crazy plan to Zugspitze - it caused me to bring the winter coat and that came in handy for the rainy days in Germany like that day. I also had the chance to wear the beanie I crocheted. The next day I found out that the ridge that I did actually made a dent in my forehead when I took the beanie off, so that is so not cute but it felt good being able to wear what I made :D Anyways, umbrella at hand I decided to explore the castle garden which was empty except for me because yeah it's kinda silly walking around a garden in the rain. The buildings below are part of the castle.
After that, I continued on walking around trying to see the points of interests I had in my map. There's definitely moments of being lost in the rain. One thing I didn't realize during my studying of Nuremberg is that there's quite a number of bridges here. Google maps tell me it's the Pegnitz river that's running through it. The bridges from top to bottom are: Maxbrücke, Karlsbrücke, and the wooden one is the Hangman's Bridge.
In Nuremberg, I managed to eat the three small sausages in a bread. Maybe I was hungry, but I like it a lot. It was good. I didn't care much for the bread and that's where I wished I was travelling with my family or good friends because we could return back to the stall and buy more without me having to be embarrassed. I wonder if you could just buy the grilled sausages without the bread. Again with my people, I wouldn't be embarrassed to ask. Also something that I got to eat was pretzel filled with nutella. That was the only pretzel I had in Germany and I don't know if it's the same common pretzel as the others. Seeing pretzels, I just thought the texture is rather hard so I wasn't interested and I was apprehensive, but my nutella pretzel was soft and it's good. Well everything with nutella is good. This last picture is from St. Lorenz Church (St. Lawrence). I think it's the only church that I entered in Nuremberg. For other Nuremberg pictures, please go here. The pictures that I took have not been good, it's embarrassing. I did even worse with rainy cloudy days :(
Back in Nuremberg main station, I found out the train was coming in late. Gosh even the more expensive ICE train is not spared of delay. So I just waited in the train station, watching the so many people around. An older lady kinda confused me when she's trying to tell me something that I obviously could not understand. Turned out she wanted my empty water bottle. She's collecting them and that moment kinda reminded me of Singapore with the elderly still needing to do work like this. Anyways, train delay changed my plan a bit; initially the plan was to visit Munich Residenz museum and its treasury, but fearing I will ended up rushing, I decided to forgo the treasury. I got to Munich Residenz without much issue. Google maps indicated I was right there. The issue was where the hell the ticketing building is, arrrghh. Got a bit confused about this and had to walk unnecessarily here and there, but I found it. Copy - pasting from Wikipedia, The Residenz in central Munich is the former royal palace of the Wittelsbach monarchs of Bavaria. The Residenz is the largest city palace in Germany and is today open to visitors for its architecture, room decorations, and displays from the former royal collections. So it's rooms and rooms of many things as seen below. Statues, porcelains, vases, chandeliers, paintings, tapestries, lavish wall decorations, chapels (yes, there's more than one), you name it. Even a grotto decorated with seashells as seen below.
I read about people getting bored in the Residenz that they took the shorter route. You do see signs of shorter route (faster to the exit) and longer route. I took the longer route. I didn't mind it at all, tired as I was. I was like okay show me what's else, what's more though of course I didn't see everything in great detail. For pictures from the Residenz, you can go here. After the Residenz, the initial plan was to explore the English Garden but I didn't think I could make it there and back so I decided to drop that and walk to Marienplatz and then walk back to my hotel. There's a lot of walking that day, I clocked in more than 27,000 steps. I don't know how I did it and didn't know I had it in me. I was tired and there was pain, like when I bowed to tie my shoelace there was sharp pain that I had to bend and get down to do it. I think it's the walking without sitting down and carrying the backpack, but through it all somehow I kept going. Anyways, in Marienplatz there's the Rathaus-Glockenspiel / Clock Tower and I saw a lot people were waiting in front of it. So I thought it's perhaps going to perform soon - totally didn't remember it would do so at 5 pm and then it happened. At first the characters on the top were moving and when it's done, I thought that's it. I was about to leave, but the bottom characters started appearing and an uncle I didn't realize was standing next to me said something like, wait, there's another one. We ended up talking because he's friendly. He's Austrian who's been living in Germany for sometime. Told him I'm an Indonesian who live in Singapore. He likes Bali, Jakarta not so much, and he thinks Singapore dollar is strong :D I think he may have explained the clock a bit, but I forgot what he said. This kinda unexpected encounter is really nice. I don't get this a lot because I'm unfriendly but when it happened I do treasure it a lot. Side note: there's a line in the book that I'm reading currently, unfriendliness is another form of camouflage. Anyways, ended the day with roast pork and potato dumpling dinner. The potato dumpling was new to me but not bad. Didn't finish the roast pork because they're kinda tough and the portion was too much for me. Contemplated if I should have beer, in the end I did not even though the restaurant was just next to my hotel. Didn't have beer at all in fact in Germany. Did I miss out? Maybe, but I don't feel regret about it :)
:) eKa @ 8:58:00 PM • 0 comments
Saturday, May 25, 2024
Day 1 - Linderhof Palace + Neuschwanstein Castle
still like to leave the party early and go home, babe
and don't you know, babe
I'd rather sit here on my own and be alone, babe
Still Feel Like Your Man - John Mayer
Day 1 in Germany was spent taking a day trip to Linderhof Palace and Neuschwanstein Castle. These were all King Ludwig II's projects too and so along with Herrenchiemsee, I saw all his different palaces. Decided to take a day tour for this because it's kinda hard to visit both places on your own. Side note: back in 2011, when I was planning the Europe trip with Mau, I had a conversation with a nice guy who I will call RayRay here who visited Neuschwanstein, letting me know that it's the sleeping beauty castle :D 13 years ago I wasn't 30 yet, so craziness was crazier and I did check if I could squeeze Munich in. I couldn't and looking back, even that trip was too ambitious; truly it required the energy of 20 something, though I was in my late 20s then. When I finally got to Neuschwanstein, I thought gosh somehow I made it there. What's yours will be yours, really. On that same line, what's not yours will never be yours I guess and the pessimistic me wonder if there are things that are just not destined to be mine :(
Okay back to the trip. The day started pleasant enough and we started at Linderhof. The sky was still blue at that time. Arriving in Linderhof, there's a bit of disappointment because some statues and fountains were covered and I think some flowering bed are not done yet :( So the whole look was not that great, not a perfect visit. I think they said it's because these are covered during winter and they haven't fully opened it up for the summer season. Linderhof itself is quite small for a palace. To visit the inside you also need to be on a guided tour and no photo can be taken inside. So again, I only have exterior shots.
What I can remember is, while the rooms are small, it's still quite lavish. It's still very inspired by the French King Louis XIV. The King's dining room is the same as the one in Herrenchiemsee with the porcelain chandelier that I like and the small false floor with the lift mechanism connected to the floor below it for the staff to load up dishes for the King. Maybe the King was like this palace is nice and all but small, so let's make a new bigger one with Herrenchiemsee. After the guided tour of the inside, we had some time to explore the ground, but I didn't have enough time to explore all. There's some viewing point on an upper elevation, but with many things being covered up, the view is not that pretty. I can imagine it can be quite pretty if everything is working as it should.
After Linderhof, we made a small stop in Oberammergau. Apparently they have a long history of wood carving here, so there's a number of shops selling mostly religious wood carved statues or nativity scenes. Of course there's also cuckoo clocks shops. I have stepped foot in Germany twice now and I still have none of those :( My good friend, Emilia, has one in her house. I guess I don't have one because I don't have a house of my own :( I remember there's also a shop selling christmas ornaments, so it's christmas all year round for that shop, there are always christmas trees. Another feature of the town is that many of the houses have painted scenes on the walls. Wikipedia tells me this form of artwork is called Lüftlmalerei in German.
After that it was time to go to Neuschwanstein Castle. It's the same thing as the other King Ludwig II's palaces, you can only enter with a guided tour so tickets are bought with the timeslot of your tour based on your language. The guide gave us our tickets and told us to make sure to be there on time. I was a bit worried about meeting the time because this place is famous and there's many tourists, so I decided to just get hotdog and apple strudel to go. Apple strudel to go is not a good idea. Ate the hotdog while waiting for the shuttle. There are 2 ways to get to the castle which is located up high. A small shuttle bus or a horse carriage ride. The horse carriage ride is more expensive. Both methods do not seem to have fix timing, they would go if there's enough people. I chose the bus because it's cheaper and it also drops you off at a place near a bridge where you can take pictures of the castle and also the stop is at a higher elevation than the castle so you walk down to the castle. The horse carriage drops you below the castle so you walk uphill to the castle. In any case, the guide recommended to not wait for either bus or horse when we're done, but to walk all the way down when we're done to the parking area where our meeting point was. Many people seemed to choose the bus too, it's quite packed. Getting off the bus, I made my way to Marienbrücke (Mary's Bridge). There's a staff by the bridge and I recall seeing a counter by the bridge. I think the staff just needs to make sure the bridge is not overly packed. From one side of the bridge, you see a full view of the castle and on the other a small waterfall with a small stream. Seeing the castle from that bridge, it was where I got the feeling that it's remarkable that somehow I got there.
The bridge was quite full with people which did not make me comfortable; I was a bit scared I would accidentally dropped things like phone. I got to the end of the bridge and I saw there's a trail and people were walking it. I wasn't sure if I should do it but maybe I was too eager to get away from people that I did. I questioned myself many times upon doing it because it's drizzling and it's a hike up a trail which worried me who's not physical at all. I really asked myself if I should just go back because the trail is not very wide and falling and rolling down would be disastrous. Somehow I made it to a small viewing point. The first thing I saw was this frail looking elderly man who I saw on the bus walking back from it and I was quite stunned he made it there and made it way faster than me. A lady he was with did hold him but I thought it's amazing he made it and it kinda served as an inspiration that I should be able to do this too. Anyways, as mentioned the viewing platform is small and basically the castle just seems bigger from there. Seriously all pictures I have from King Ludwig II's castles and palaces are just the outside :D
I took my shots quickly and went back because it's drizzling and the thought of walking back the trail in full on rain scared me. I think even without the drizzle, the way the trail is just kinda too scary for someone like me. It's perhaps fine, but I have very little confidence of myself. On my way back, I met Indian parents with their very young kids. They managed to ditch their stroller somewhere. The husband asked how it was and I said I didn't recommend it with the drizzle and all. I cannot imagine them carrying their kids through the trail though perhaps they have parents superpowers. They heeded my advice though and turned back. Honestly though, you see my picture there, there's perhaps no point right? Below is a picture of the trees along the trail.
I had sometime to wait before my slot to begin, so I just waited around the compound eating the apple strudel. Neuschwanstein is very different from Herrenchiemsee and Linderhof. The theme here is medieval. I was told that the King was also very inspired by the operas of Richard Wagner so there's many influence there. I remember the rooms being rather dark. The King's bedroom here is so different. It's smaller and filled with religious wood carvings which makes it feel darker. Maybe the windows in the room were smaller too. The King is really rather eccentric that one of the room is a grotto, seriously like a small cave which I don't get. It's so weird, but okay he's a King with money to spend, so you do you I guess. There's also a big hall called the Hall of the Singers with a small stage on one end. One may think it's for performance or such, but they say the anti-social King didn't really mean it for that. There's a balcony on the castle which overlook the surrounding area and one can see the Hohenschwangau Castle which is the castle of King Ludwig II's parents. My pictures also show that apparently you can see the Mary's Bridge too.
It was raining quite heavily when we're done. Being the OCD I am, I googled the week weather forecast even before I departed and I actually packed an umbrella on this trip and brought it that day. I was still rather wet though. Last picture was a bigger look of the Hohenschwangau Castle from the parking lot. I guess if you're making a trip to Neuschwanstein Castle on your own, you may have time to visit Hohenschwangau Castle too and see what that's like.
Arriving back in Munich, I was actually quite cold because of the rain, like shivering cold :( So I decided to eat something soupy. Found a noodle place ran by Chinese. The portion there is really big. My noodle was so so and I tried my best to at least finish half of the bowl. When I was about to pay, they brought me ice cream, apparently it's free with the meal. I had to turn it down and turning down ice cream does feel sacrilegious to me, but I was cold, I just wanted to get back fast and get clean and warm. So that is day 1 about the castle and palace. Question, what is the difference between the two? I don't know. For pictures, please go here. I haven't been taking good pictures, I'm kinda embarrassed :(
:) eKa @ 12:43:00 PM • 0 comments
Tuesday, May 21, 2024
wrong, we'll get things wrong
but as long as we keep every promise we make, we'll stay whole
I know there'll be heavy days
but in every mistake there's a lesson to learn, so stay here with me
Sweet Symphony - Joy Oladokun & Chris Stapleton
My flight to Munich arrived around 40 minutes late. That's perhaps the beginning of me and the gods that's there in Germany getting off on the wrong foot. Let's backtrack, why was I in Munich? My pilgrimage to see the world this year took me to Munich, Prague, and Krakow. How did I come to that? Well, I was curious to see Auschwitz and I decided to set Krakow as my base rather than Warsaw. Then I found out there's a train connecting Krakow and Prague, so Prague was added. Then I found out there's also a train connecting Prague and Munich, and so Munich rounded up the trip. Initially, I had planned it so that I would start in Krakow, but applying for a Schengen visa in the Polish or Czech Embassy here is less straightforward than in Germany, so I started in Munich instead.
Arriving 40 mins late shouldn't be a big deal but I had such a tight plan that I wanted to do on day 0, so that 40 mins or so delay was not good. See, my head went crazy that I decided that I should go to Zugspitze, which was the highest mountain in Germany, on the day I landed in Germany. Why did I have to do it on the day I arrived? Well, Zugspitze was transitioning from their winter to summer season that they had maintenance days where the cogwheel train and the cable cars would not be operating on the weekdays I would be there. Upon finding this out, I actually resigned to the fact going there would not be possible for me, but then I read the timetable again and again and saw that they would still be open on the weekend, so if I was going to do it then it had to be that Sunday when I arrived. Crazy? Hell yeah, but darn when something gets in my head, I am the dog with the bone. To get there, I would need to first get myself to Munich, drop my things at the hotel, and take the train that would bring me to the nearest town to Zugspitze. There's a timetable that I had run through over and over in my head, it was tight. First thing first, getting from the airport to Munich main train station. I found the ticket machine (the red one), but for some freaking reason that machine doesn't accept me just tapping my card. It needed me to insert my card and enter the PIN number which I didn't quite remember because who still needs to do this in this world? Apparently in Germany, you still do. First attempt, it didn't work and perhaps I have to blame myself here. I must have entered the same wrong PIN, instead of stopping and checking my phone where I noted down what the PIN is. I tried again and again and got the message it's not working. Somewhere inside my brain, it's telling me the card must have been blocked by now - which was true by the way, but darn it DBS, it's not a 24-hour block and you cannot just do Internet Banking and unblock it yourself, it's a block forever until you call DBS to get it unblocked which I only did after I arrived in Singapore. Anyway, I wasn't going to risk my other card encountering the same fate, so okay gonna try using cash instead, but again the freaking machine only accepts bills lower than 50 euro and I didn't have enough smaller change. I was a bit pissed by then because I saw the train that I should take but now I needed to break my bill first and I saw it left :'( So I went to buy water and then I finally managed to get the ticket to the main train station. By this time, I saw the timing was getting really tight, but perhaps it could work - geez, I am so stubborn sometimes. I did see the combo railway ticket to Zugspitze in the ticketing machine, but I chose not to buy it then because who knows if I may get delayed further that would cause me to be unable to take the train to Zugspitze at the hour I should be there. Side note: I don't recall getting train ticket check in Germany, except for maybe the ICE train, so perhaps the bold move would be to get on the train without a ticket, but are you insane?
Arriving in Munich, I saw my hotel easy enough from the exit and was allowed to get in my room immediately. Love the room. It's spacious, big bed, I like it a lot. Then I went back to the station and I saw that the train is departing from a platform that's quite far on the other end, so I thought I would go nearer to the platform and get the ticket in the ticketing machine near there. I saw the train was there waiting, but the machine near the platform is a different one, not the red one and this machine doesn't have the combo ticket to Zugspitze. Ironically, this different machine allows you to just tap your card, arrrghh. There's no red machine nearby so I just have to watch that train go away, second time watching a train I should have been on just went away :'( Could I just take the next train? The next train is around an hour away and calculating the timing, it would give me little time in Zugspitze and Lake Eibsee which I also wanted to see, so it's not worth doing that. So next plan, go to Lake Chiemsee and see Herrenchiemsee. By the way, I was reminded again in this trip that the word for lake in German is see. So in English, the correct wording perhaps Lake Chiem? Anyways, going to that lake also involves taking an around one-hour train ride out of Munich. Again at this point, one may wonder, girl why are you so crazy, why can't you chill a bit and just do things in Munich? Well, the Herrenchiemsee palace I wanted to go to is located on an island on the lake. To get there from Munich, you take a train to the nearest station near the lake. Then from that station you could walk to the pier to take a boat (I think it's a 20-min walk) or you can take a small steam train. Since the summer season hasn't really officially started when I was there, the small train only operates during the weekend, so yeah if I was going to do it, it'll be that Sunday. So off I went. My other card worked on the machine that allows you to just tap your card, so there's a relief there. There's a piss-ness though, because if Chiemsee had been the plan all along, at the airport I should have bought the all day train ticket that covered Chiemsee because that would also cover the ride from the airport. So doing it the way I did, getting a single ride ticket from the airport to Munich and then an all day train ticket to Chiemsee was a waste of money. Little did I know, throughout my time in Germany, it would ask more from me :(
The train to Chiemsee departed from a platform on the other end of the station, but I got on without any drama. Train was rather full. Arriving in the station near Chiemsee, I managed to find the counter to buy the combo steam train + ferry ticket after only getting slightly lost, so that's win in my book. Overall things went according to all the timing that I have noted, got off the train and got on the boat. It was a pleasant day, the sun was out and the sky was blue.
Got off the boat at the first stop, the Herreninsel island where the Herrenchiemsee palace is located and got the ticket to the palace. You can only enter the palace with a guided tour and so they assigned a time slot on your ticket based on your language. I made it to the palace ground. Kinda tired so didn't really explore the ground much. I just went in and waited for my slot to begin. After checking my photos, I realized I didn't take much exterior shots of the palace and the garden - gosh I was quite disinterested.
The fountains were also not on when I was there :( Maybe I missed the timing, I don't know. The fountain has some interesting characters on them, like toads, turtles, and I don't know what this one below is, alligator in a monk outfit?
Anyways, Herrenchiemsee is a palace built under the order of King Ludwig II of Bavaria. It was not finished within his lifetime. King Ludwig II was a young king and seemed kinda interesting with all his different interests. He's most probably gay and he died under mysterious circumstance at a young age - well, 40 is kinda young for me now. The Herrenchiemsee was modelled after Versailles since he's a big fan of King Louis XIV. If King Louis XIV was the Sun King, then King Ludwig II was the Moon King. You cannot take picture of the inside of the palace, so I have none, but I remember it was ostentatious as palaces tend to be and in his bedroom, there's a blue orb symbolizing the moon and blue draperies as blue was apparently his favorite colour. Palaces are ridiculous in how extravagant they are, but as I walked in many of them in this trip, there is that curiousity about how it would feel like to live in one, sleep and wake up in one, and roam in it - if only one can try. Anyways, back to the palace, the hall of mirrors was pretty much the same as the one in Versailles, but I don't know if this one is bigger. There were of course many chandeliers around, but the one I like the most was the porcelain chandelier in the dining room because there's flowers on them, so beautiful. Another interesting thing about the dining room was that the dining room table has a false bottom floor. There's a lift mechanism that connects the dining room table to the floor below it where servants could place the dishes and load it up. The King seemed to be a bit anti-social which is relatable for me :D Perhaps he just liked to spend time with people he liked which is understandable. Anyways, the last part of the tour was actually showing the part that's not finished yet and it's interesting to see the ordinary structure underneath what would have become lavish with all the decorations and frescoes.
After that, I didn't have the energy to walk through the compound of the garden, so I just went to the Augustinian Monastery to check that out. The walk there gave a view of the lake and this view of the Frauenwörth Abbey which is apparently located on another island on the lake, Frauenchiemsee. I'm not sure how easy it is to do boat hopping and just explore all the different islands. Need to really study the timetable for that. I just know my ticket only took me to Herreninsel.
In front of the Augustinian Monastery, there are funny looking trees, more trunks not leaves. I wonder if they would look different with many leaves. Inside, you can take photos and they have some exhibitions going. One was about the meetings that happened there to discuss how Germany should move forward after the end of the WW II and about democracy. I have very little knowledge of this history of Germany and me explaining it will definitely still be inaccurate. I did learn that after WW II, different countries were holding pieces of Germany and until the fall of the Berlin wall, it actually took quite a long time after WW II for Germany to finally become whole. I'm gonna stop talking about this because I will say wrong things. I'm still not knowledgeable. Another exhibition that I found more interesting are of the paintings of artists who used to work around the lake or used the lake as inspiration. There's one section dedicated to Julius Exter, showing his work station and there's a big painting of his featuring Harada Naojirō, who Wikipedia told me was a Japanese painter. The third painting below is from him, which Wikipedia tells me is titled Spring.
After that, I was getting quite tired and didn't have much energy to walk around much that I decided to just wait for the boat back. Took pictures as I made my way to the pier. It's really quite nice spending time on the island on a pleasant day like that. They have meadow with wildflowers. By the way, maybe it's just me thinking this way, but the dandelions in Germany seem to be so much bigger than what I usually see. The people there also seem to prefer bigger dogs; well I guess in Singapore it's very difficult to have big dogs. Anyways, got on the boat, then the small train, and went to the train station to get back to Munich. Found out the train to Munich was late, I was surprised but throughout my time in Germany, I found out this shouldn't be a surprise. The train back was packed but managed to find a seat. Back in Munich, had Italian food for dinner because I was hungry and tired so I wanted comfort food. I wouldn't say the day went as I wanted to, but I managed to execute back-up plan correctly so I tried to be positive. For more pictures from Chiemsee, please go here.
:) eKa @ 11:36:00 PM • 0 comments
Friday, May 17, 2024
Trying to get back, take 2. I know that this is a learning experience and God has mercy on me because I'm fine, but still it's like this place is trying to impede me whenever I try to leave and more. I'm done with this place.
Photo is from yesterday elsewhere when everything was still good, the sun was out and the sky was blue.
:) eKa @ 5:40:00 PM • 0 comments
Wednesday, May 15, 2024
Another day, another city with a clock tower.
:) eKa @ 11:23:00 PM • 0 comments
Saturday, May 11, 2024
Somehow I'm still standing, still walking, still here. Had a major misfortune yesterday, but all and all I was actually okay, despite of having some tears when I told mom what happened - not as sad as the man I saw yesterday who cried while talking on the phone. I recognize how fortunate I am to be able to pivot and execute a new plan. So I'm still going and for that, praise be to God.
:) eKa @ 4:10:00 AM • 0 comments
Thursday, May 09, 2024
Another rainy day. Another day of clocking more than 25,OOO steps. I'm most probably doing bad on my body. Misfortunes happened :( but there was good encounter and some things going really right. After what I learn today, still being in one piece and safe and sound is really a blessing to be grateful for.
:) eKa @ 3:57:00 AM • 0 comments
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