Maria let you all in my family know that I went to Munich, Germany over our winter break. She also told you to “stay tuned” to my blog for an interesting update. Man, that raises the stakes pretty high. I am not sure if you should bet on this writing:) I will give it a shot because I really did enjoy our “vacation”. We got off from school the tenth of this month for a week and a half. That next day we flew off to Munich Germany which really seemed quite surreal to me until the time we actually got on the plane for the flight. Up until that time I thought about planning what was going to be coming next and had too little time to get excited. However, by the time we touched down in Munich I was thoroughly excited and ready to go do some sightseeing. We actually parked in the airport and at crackers and cheese first.
Being in Germany really surprised me in several ways. For one thing I had this impression that most Germans would be really cold, but to the contrary they were so friendly and helpful. Much more than Polish people I experience generally. Also, all of the public transportation was so clean and fast. The trains take off like sports cars and I would not be too afraid to eat off of the station platforms. From the “get go” we (I) had a problem navigating the train systems because they have two kinds of trains that run above and below ground. There were also many different train numbers running on the very same tracks so you have to be careful which train you get. We ended up getting mixed up for about an hour on the train system before we actually got to our hostel for the night. The hostel itself was really clean and nice, Caia. It did not have a normal hostel “atmosphere” like the ones I have known with all the international people but it was really clean and we got our own room to ourselves; the four of us.
The first night at the hostel Eric cooked spaghetti and then we talked about what we were planning to do the next day. We got up to a really nicely set breakfast. They had many varieties of break and fruit as well as cold cuts and yoghurt and granola. I have never been at a hostel where they serve such nice food for a free breakfast. After breakfast we followed our noses and a map into old town and visited a really amazing old Catholic cathedral in the downtown, it was the one with the two domes preserved during the war as a landmark for bombing raids, walked through it and even sang a few worship songs up near the pulpit. Later on, we sort of ambled through the rest of old town going up into the clock tower over the main square and running down through vast halls in the lower rooms of the court house. We shot some nice pictures downstairs and Eric and I sang song songs in the hall. The acoustics were fantastic because the ceiling was domed concrete with marble walls. For lunch we walked into a little town park and sat down with bread and cheese even though a cool breeze was blowing. Interestingly enough a couple of US exchange students from Wisconsin and Oregon sat down beside us and we started an interesting conversation with them. They were both in Germany because they were majoring in German language studies. I was amazed at how little reason they had for studying German other than it seemed to them sort of a default option; better than taking some scientific based courses. I just wouldn’t want to study very much if I saw no real point in it. That evening we went to a free concert with a cellist and a pianist duo. The cellist was a young Russian/ Ukranian man who was doing his senior recital on the cello. I enjoyed his performance a lot. The last piece was so incredible because his fingers were flying across the fingerboard and yet his eyes were closed, but then at the end of the piece he played some high notes that were so high that his fingers were “fretting” off the fingerboard. I don’t remember who wrote the piece. 
Our next day we took a train into the northern edge of the Bavarian alps. We wanted to visit a castle built by Ludwig II, the crazy king of Bavaria. It was built in the late seventeen hundreds and was crafted by almost all native stone cutters and masons. They must have been top notch in their craft because each stone is faced with a smoothing tool and then the mortar joint is finished off with a polished half inch taper down to the actual joint itself. It took two hundred masons employed full time for nearly eighteen years to complete the outside of the castle. The castle is built on a small peak in the beginnings of the alps which raise their snowy heads high into the sky above a rather starkly flat and treeless valley. On one side of the castle, a chasm drops away for some 8 -900 feet to a rushing torrent below. The castle itself is a tribute to Ludwig’s dream to be a real duchal with a real castle in the most pristine places; surrounded by the sheer wildness of the mountains. I guess I am also influenced by a couple of quotes of his that gave me an impression of his tortured life. We toured the castle which was an absolute marvel. He had a huge dance/ music room upstairs with scenes and characters from some of Wagner’s famous plays depicted on the walls. He was a huge supporter of Wagner. The castle took a lot of time to take in, but below it, nearer to the valley floor, he had built a castle for his in laws so we saw that too. He had even rigged up some sort of telephone system between the castles for better communication. Beside the lower castle there was a beautiful alpine lake frozen with about a foot of ice. Surprisingly enough though, the day was quite warm and even balmy. But above the main castle there was a foot bridge that crossed a waterfall rushing into a pool below, so we walked out on it as it was getting dusk and then climbed the hillside overlooking the gorge and ate some pasta salad Maria and I had made. It was fun to eat the salad because I forgot to bring spoons with us so we had to fill our mouth with our hands or by sliding the noodles into our throats with our tongues. Afterwards we hiked up higher off the trail until we were right on the verge of the precipice looking down into that gorge. Maria and Alison sat together on the cliff and Eric and I walked on further. There was a stiff breeze blowing but the view was so amazing that I hardly thought about the cold. The whole time up there in the alps was really refreshing; I felt so free.
We got back late that evening and we got to have an interesting chat with a man who works as a chef for MAN diesels of Germany. The workers build trucks and engines and he feeds them. The girls went to sleep on the trip home. They were tuckered out.
Our third day we got up early once again. I decided to check into the option of touring the BMW plant in Munich, the company is headquartered there, even though I had read on the internet that tours were only allowed if they were pre registered for. However, we found that tours ran on the hour and so we decided to do it. It was one of the most interesting things we did, I thought. We got a really good first hand look at the quality that goes into building a BMW car. They are really an example of super good engineering; German engineering. I “test drove” a simulator in the display area. It was supposed to be the version of their all wheel drive intelligent traction system which senses traction control via computers “sensing” each wheel individually. Incredible! Every car that leaves the plant is custom designed for a specific owner and has been fitted with options and additions to suit their whims. Even the girls loved it. Alison and I were watching the body “dipping” process and the rest of the group left us behind and we did not know which door to go through to catch up. So, our tour guide was calling for us and we did not know where she was because we could hear her all the time through our headsets but couldn’t talk to her. Finally we opened the right door and got back with the group. I thought that the robots were the best part of production. To see the robots work together was amazing. They function in such limited spaces and yet the repeat their tasks with incredible precision. We ate lunch and then dispersed to do more individual things. I wanted to go to some English gardens . There was not a whole lot to see there because it is winter, but I loved watching people going about their weekend lives. We walked back to the hostel to try to get tickets for a performance of the “Riverdance” which was happening in Munich. We tried but the tickets were just too expensive: nearly ninety American dollars. So we settled for some tea and coffee in a nice little bar/ restaurant on the south side of town. It was warm and cozy and we talked and shared and just generally hung out. It was a nice way to sort of “top off” our time together in the city.
Flying back to Poland was not easy, but I did realize that part of my heart is there. Once again, I called it home. With Rolski Polski, this is Robin signing off.
