STRIKE!

Today was verrrrry interesting. I woke up at 7am to catch the bus at 7:30 since all other public transportation was shut down because of the strike. I had to be in front of the train station by 8:30, and I figured an hour was plenty of time, since it only takes a half an hour to get there. Wrong! Because everyone had to drive in today, the bus was stuck in stop and go traffic (minus the go) for an hour and a half, and only got a quarter of the way there.

When it was 8:10 and we'd only gone a little ways, I asked the bus driver if he thought we'd be there by 8:30. He said he wasn't sure and I asked if I could walk. He said yes and let me off. However, a woman on the street told me that walking to the train station would take a half an hour and by then I only had 10 minutes. I was freaking out! So I got back on the bus, which had caught up to me, and resolved that I just would not get to see the famous Neuschwanstein castle today and would lose 30 euro. After another half an hour, a few people were getting off the bus and I decided to, too.

As I stepped off, a biker passed me and started yelling at me in German. (It was all very "sad, lonely tourist girl" I must say). A woman who got off the bus with me told me that the biker had yelled because I had stepped into the "biking lane" (which is the most ridiuclous little lane ever). She also tells me that she's going to a smaller train station that will go to the main station, where I was supposed to be 15 minutes ago, and that she'd take me. She was a wonderfully pleasant little Scottish woman and we chatted about how annoying the strike was as she gave me directions. At the main train station, I found the Tourist Info Office and told the woman my predicament. She said it'd be no problem to go on the tour tomorrow! WHEW! I was very happy.

So instead, I went to the Deutches Museum, which I'd tried to go to yesterday and had heard a lot of good things about.

It was AMAZING. By far, hands down, without a doubt the best museum I have ever been to. It was like walking into an Encyclopedia! It was enormous and had very detailed and hands-on exhibits on pretty much anything and everything you can imagine: bridges, cars, airplanes, boats, photography, sewing, chemistry, physics, renewable energy, medicine, health, books, printing, etc. In the plane section were dozens of real planes. In the boat section were life-size boats. I'm tellin' ya-- this place was HUGE!

After about 3 hours in the museum, I grabbed a delicious tomato and mozzarella sandwich (oh, Italy) and went to the next museum: the Munchen Stadtmuseum. This was smaller, but still very cool. It had a Disney exhibit of all his drawings! There were original drawings of Bambi, Mickey, Sleeping Beauty...

By then it was 3 and supposedly the time when the strike was going to end, so I figured I could catch a tram right away to the Nymphenburg Palace on the outskirts of the city, since it closed at 4, buuut the tram didn't come until 4:30. So I went anyway and just took pictures from the outside. It was beautiful; I would've loved to go in!

Castles tomorrow! (Hopefully.)