Munich, the King who lived in fairy tale

A Youth Backpacker in Europe
Chapter X Part II
Munich, the King who lived in Fairy Tale



City: Munich
Country: Germany
Currency: Euro (€)
Dates: 15/01/2008 - 19/01/2008
Travel buddies: Chris, Siddharth, Stella, Meghan, Rahma, Egon


Caption: Munich city hall

Yes, it is undeniable that this has been a longed update. Summer trip, still freshly lingering in my mind will however not appearing in this column anytime soon. Well, as you can see, I am still struggling with my late production of my winter trip.

However, I have decided that updates will be made more frequently in order to keep up with the pace of the column with the tragically overdue travel stories.

Last time we were looking Munich from an advanced and developed point of view. But now, let's board on time machine and travel to the past of Munich. Our destinations: ancient Munich city and Neuschwanstein.

Caption: Munich old town and the dragon church.

Munich old town, in my opinion is not massively confusing. But together with my friends, there was still quite a bit of challenge for us to locate at night the restaurant which serves humongous portion of cuisines at unimaginable affordable prices, which was recommended by our walking tour guide.

The trails of an old expression of Munich were not difficult to be noticed. But with modern shops so compactly fused into historical monuments, it could be hard and perhaps less interesting for one to really enjoy the visit to the old town. However, bear in mind that this is the norm of megacities in Europe, where very often shopping street or district is located, or purely a modification from a city's old town.

Still, during the visit to Munich old town, one would be able to ascend to the city hall tower which gives you a panoramic view of the entire Munich city, or visit to a church which was once conquered by a dragon (couldn't remember the name of the church though), and also various buildings located at random corners, which remained largely untouched.

Caption: Neuschwanstein and the beer mug of King Ludwig II.

Personally, for the sake of quenching the thirst for more historical sides of Munich city and its surrounding, I would recommend a visit to Neuschwanstein at Füssen. If you haven't got to know it, Neuschwanstein was one of the 21 candidates in the new seven wonders of the world contest. But to be really honest, this fairy tale castle, which was popular locations for various films, turned out to be not so glamorous.

The interior of the castle is not as extravagant as its adjacent surrounding promises. The location of the castle is undeniably perfect as any view from any of the windows of the cacstle will isntantly supplies a sight to sore eyes, even when it was durinf winter time. However, this supposed to be the most expensive castle built by King Ludwig II turned out to the a loser when the interior design is of concern. There was golden decoration but only with golden paint; there were murals all around the building, but only unattractive dull drawings.

And contrary to the romantic belief, this castle was actually used by the King to separate himself from the world. Some even concluded that Neuschwanstein was the private mental illness centre of the King. To add on the mysteries, there was even speculation saying that it was the love net of the King and his homosexual lover. Fascinating!

Caption: Trains hall, bridges hall and space hall in Science and Technology Museum.

Leaving Neuschwanstein, I stepped into the past of Munich in another form; the Science and Technology Museum of Munich. Yes, I admit this may sound a little similar to the technology chapter in the last entry. But differs itself from the modern technology which you can observe easily on the streets, the science and technology museum supplies immense pleasure to technology enthusiasts of different disciplines with its detailed and rich galore of histories, explanations and models in various technology fields.

However, once has to recognise that this museum is not targeted to be a day or even a two-day event. Of course you can choose to rush through the various chambers of the museum, but surely that will not benefit you in any way. My suggestion is really to just relax and pace yourself in the museum and the best thing to do is always to start with your favourite section. To me, this definitely has to be the train technology section, where large scale trains models was set up and running in the entire hall.

Caption: Tropical fruit store in Munich old town and voila! The most expensive papaya in life!

One othe thing about why Munich was able to crave such a vivid memory in my mind was the most expensive papaya I had ever bought in my life. it was the first time I saw a papaya in Europe and after being deserted by the fruit for more than half a year, I went literally insane during its presence. Spent 12 Euros on that papaya, I must say it was not only the most expensive one in my life, it was also the most effective one; toilet visit was guaranteed after two-hour I had tasted it.

Now, it is not hard to see why Munich was such a huge attraction to me. It simply has the whole package tgat dazzles tourists of all walks of life. If there is one place in Germany that I would recommend, Munich is definitely the place. But to be fair and not just conclude as a first-timer to Germany, join me in Berlin next time.