we are from the south.... of america.

finally. we are here. today's travels did not go as smoothly as the previous ones.

we woke up at 545am this morning to catch the subway to the midi/zuid train station. this was all good, and we were shooting for the 755am train, but ended up being so early that we made the 725am train! things were looking up. there was barely anyone on the train, and we ordered some delicious breakfast. but things changed once we were approaching cologne.

right before cologne, we learned that trains in germany get very, very crowded. we were told that we needed to change trains right before cologne (not the original plan, we were supposed to wait until frankfurt) and literally switch with another train. so the train we were on was taking the people from frankfurt (on the other train) to brussels, while we jumped on their train to ride it to frankfurt.

we met a really nice man on our train who is german. he helped us out a lot. right before the cologne stop he informed us that we could jump off of this train, because there was about to be a long delay before frankfurt, and hop on another highspeed train to munich. so we followed his instruction. thinking it was genius....

whoa. i think the entire country of germany was going from this train station to munich today. we literally rode on the train like 3rd class passengers from the titanic. we were trapped in a hallway with no where to go and we had to sit on our luggage for a good 2 and a half hours.... comfortable. but eventually people started to trickle off and we all grabbed seats again.

we sat with some other kids in this hall on top of our luggage.

the entire train ride was something straight out of the chronicles of narnia. there is snow everywhere! and it's beautiful. the architecture of the homes are so cool, and it just blows my mind that there are all of these tiny german towns out there. but luckily at around 3pm we arrived in munich.

germany. this isnt even a good picture

we are staying at wombats, which is directly across from the train station. it's pretty nice. i like it because it is very social, and the hostel puts on a lot of events. it's fun. there is a bar on the bottom level and a cool lounging area. and the staff is very helpful.

after we settled in (cydney is sick so she's been in bed), lauren, heather, and i headed out to dinner. we ended up at this local restaurant called augustiner bräu mündhen. i ordered their restaurant's beer, sausage with boiled potatoes and sauerkrat, and chocolate crepes. it was very good.

cigarette vending machine?

keep your fingers crossed that it's sunny tomorrow because our hostel gives a free walking tour starting at 11am that shows you a lot of the sights in munich. it lasts for about 3 hours. so we're hoping that we'll be able to do that!