Travelling the Bavarian countryside

Hi! We have been busy in the last few days, and it feels like it was a long time ago that we left home, probably because we have been to so many places in the last few weeks.

Neven showed us around his town of Darmstadt, Frankfurt, neaby towns and we saw old Roman walls and ruins from nearly 2000 years ago, and quaint Bavarian towns with sagging, 500 year old houses and cobblestone streets that wind up the hill to the ancient little church. Then we got a ride through a ride-sharing agency (much cheaper than the train) to Munich where we stayed in a guy's apartment for free. He was a member of a hospitality club that is all over the world and you can email different families and ask to stay in their spare room or on their couch, or whatever they have available. It is a great system, they get to meet people from all over the world, and we have free places to stay if we are organized enough to plan a week or so ahead, and get to meet many people.

We went to Oktoberfest with an Indonesian student studying medicine in Germany (Amber and Hardy bailed on Munich and Oktoberfest) and Mike drank a one litre glass mug of beer and ate a pretzel that was one foot across. Oktoberfest was similar to Kondike Days but everything was way bigger and better. The beer tents were huge, with a thousand people in each of the seven or eight tents, all drinking and banging on tables to the live brass band music being played in the centre, and crashing foamy mugs of beer together (Prost!). Many people were wearing lederhosen and funny hats with long feathers sticking out of them. It was very crowded and noisy and the whole atmosphere was drunken (surprise, surpise).

We took a two hour train from Munich to Füssen on September 21, which is a gorgeous little town just 1 km north of the Austrain border, surrounded by huge mountains and rolling green fields with cows wearing bells. We stayed on the edge of a mountain lake and did some hiking in the mountains. We visited a beautiful castle that was supposed to be the inspiration for Disney's Fantasyland castle, and it was gorgeous, every finished wall was painted with murals depicting operatic scenes from legends.

We hitchiked yesterday the 300 km from Füssen to Nüremburg. It took us 6 or 7 rides and nearly 7 hours, but we almost never waited more than 20 minutes for a ride and every ride was very friendly and told us about Germany and Europe and the EU. The "Romantic Road" we took wound through some of the most beautiful countryside and little red-roofed villages in all of Germany. I think our Canadian flag patches help alot.

We spent last night at a hostel in a castle, and it was really neat, except for the screaming kids on school trips staying there as well. Today we are going to see a museum about the Nazis, and soon we will be off to Berlin.

We will put more photos on Mike's site when we find a computer that can download the photos.

Take care and we hope it has not snowed too much already!

Mike and Carli-Ann