Munchen -> Venezia

(From Wednesday, June 23rd)

Hey Everyone,

As I write this, I'm traveling on a train through the Alps! The view has been amazing - rolling through huge mountains with snow on the tops, and passing over crystal-clear rivers with rocky cliffs on the sides. We just passed Innsbruck (Austria), and are on the way to Verona (Italy) and then Venezia.



My final couple days in Munich were a blast. I spent some time walking through the English Gardens, the largest municipal park in the world - larger than Central Park. I saw some interesting things along the way, including a gigantic beer garden in the middle, and some surfers riding the rapids of a river passing through.



That night, I went over to another hostel's bar with one of my roommates (from Cleveland) to watch the Spain/Honduras game. We met up with a couple girls from Canada, and went to the Augustiner beer hall, the oldest in Munich. This was located about three floors underground, and so we had to take a long winding spiral staircase down into this candle-lit, bricked-walled beer haven.

The next day, I grabbed a train over to Dachau (about 30 minutes away) for a tour of the concentration camp. Along the way I met a college kid from New Brunswick, and traveled around with him for the day. Dachau was truly eye-opening; it was incredible to think about the amount of human suffering that occured in the very area I was walking around. We went inside the gas chamber, crematorium, and barracks.



From here, we went to the BMW museum. It was all incredibly high-tech, with touchscreens on the walls and cars hanging from the cealing. Also, I was able to hang out in my future car:



After this, we went to Olympiapark, where the Summer Olympics were held (not sure what year this was). Went inside the building housing an Olympic swimming pool, saw inside the main stadium, and walked along beautiful bike paths through the park.



Now onto Italia!

Ciao,
Colin