Last Saturday, our original plan was to go to Neuschwanstein Castle, but while we were on our way there, it started raining really hard.  After seeing the rain go on for more than two hours non-stop, we wondered what the weather would have been like in Schwangau (where the castle is).  We figured it would be raining at the castle too and it wouldn’t be fun in the rain, we chose to go to Munich instead.  I’ve already been to Munich before, but I think we decided to go there for the Hofbräuhaus because we were all hungry at the time (I hate it when my stomach does the talking).  Since Neuschwanstein and Munich are somewhat close (~ 130 km), it was easy to change to a different train to Munich.

This time, I had the chance to try the Bavarian Weisswurst (white sausage).  According to Wiki, it is a “traditional Bavarian sausage made from very finely minced veal and fresh pork bacon.”  It was served in a pot of hot water and a special sauce with a sweet flavour.  Even though it is a breakfast food, we managed to get it in the afternoon (I guess their supply hadn’t run out for the day yet). 

It looks kind of disgusting in the picture but it tasted so good.  I also ate this dish that had roasted suckling pig.  It tasted like Chinese 燒肉.  It even had the same crusty skin on the surface.

After we ate, we walked around Munich in the rain (that part sucked a lot because I had no umbrella) a bit to see some of the attractions.  I didn’t really take a lot of pictures of these because I saw them the first time around.

For some reason, we also went to look for poker chips.  Apparently my friends couldn’t find them in Stuttgart.  We walked around the toy section of the Galleria Kaufhof and actually found some.  At the same time, I saw also saw some cool toys (almost like being a kid again).

Afterward, we walked around the city some more and stumbled on a statue that got turned into a giant Michael Jackson tribute.

I still have no idea why that’s there, but I guess that’s for a good cause.  We then proceeded to the train station to go home.

On the way home, we passed the time by playing Poker using the newly purchased poker set.  We even played Asshole (a weird variant of Big 2).  But then, in our card playing, we failed to pay attention to the fact that our train had stopped and just idled in Treuchtlingen, which wasn’t the end stop.  Everyone else had already left the train.  We were sure that we boarded the right train, but I still have no idea why our train didn’t go to the stop that we needed (it was the end stop).  We think that the train may have split and we got stuck in the half that stayed behind.

When we realized this, I asked the one of the DB employees (in German ^_^) how to get to Stuttgart and he told me.  While we were stranded in Treuchtlingen, we killed time at a nearby park until our train came.  Luckily one of our friends brought a Frisbee so we threw that around for about an hour.  When we headed back to the station for our train, we found that the doors to the station were locked.  With one minute to go to find a way into the station and to the platform we needed, we sprinted to the next entrance and onto our train.  We made it with just a few seconds to go.  I would not have liked to stay a night here.

We were supposed to return to Stuttgart at around 7:30, but that delayed us and we ended up getting back at around 11:30.

More photos here