Berchtesgaden National Park Camping Trip April 2-3

Ok check it.  It's three weeks into my stay here in München and I am FINALLY good to go with internet in my room thanks to a cheap new netbook!  Sheesh, it has been a mighty battle with my compy and the internet tech support people here in my building - I'm not even going to get into it, because my stay has otherwise been legen - wait for it - DAIRY!

Before I briefly summarize my time here so far let me first describe Munich. I have been exploring Munich with a vengeance.  Basically, there are like 1.3 million people in this city, and because of this size it is in every way the polar opposite of San Luis Obispo.  Due to the magnitude of the population they have an AMAZING public transportation system here.  It consists of 5different modes of public transportation - a bus system, tram system, two different subway systems (one for short distances and one for long), and a train system.  The subways are always impecibly clean, frequent (at peak times trains come every 10 minutes), and punctual (I have never had one more than a few minutes late).  This all comes at a pretty hefty cost at around €40/month for full access.   All this access I find kind of a waste though, so I bought a crappy bike for €75, fixed it up, and now I bike everywhere.  Weather permitting, I pretty much bike everyday.

The weather here is amazing, but sporadic like Salem in the summer.  For example, this weekend I went camping in the Alps and enjoyed a static 80 degrees the both days, got mega sunburnt, then woke up Monday morning to pouring rain.  I love it though.  It makes me feel at home in California one minute, then the next minute like I'm home in Oregon.

So like I said, I went camping in the Alps this weekend.  One of my aspirations is to camp and or climb in the every section of the Alps while I am here, so it felt really really good to start chipping away at that goal.    Three friends and I ventured 100 km by train to Berchtesgaden Nationalpark which is here (see map) at point B.  The ride to the park was really beautiful because the whole time you approach the Eastern section of the Austrian Alps they just keep growing and growing and growing until you are in the park and are completely dwarved by them.  The coolest thing about Berchtesgaden is that it's the candidate city for the 2018 Winter Olympic Games.  It's beautiful and funtional.  They have amazing ski resorts, a bobsled track, a lake for ice skating in the winter - it's really a legit location, but the guys I went with made it really worthwhile.

Our crew consisted of two Brazilians, a German dude, and me.

Alex (the German guy) I met through this campus program which pairs you with someone who's comfortable in a language you want to get better at, and vis versa.  We've been practicing German/English together for thepast few weeks - and by practicing I mean hanging out, drinking beer.

Oh, sidenote about the beer here: It's freakin' cheap and amazing!!  But that's not enough for the Germans, they mix a lot of weird stuff with beer, like Coke or Lemonade.  Lemonade and Weißbier (white-beer) is known as a Radler, and Coke and Weißbier is known as a Neger (pronounced 'nigga'). Yeah, no joke.  I don't know if you can imagine how hard I laughed the first time I heard a non-english speaking waitress ask me if I wanted a 'nigga', but she was most definitely confused by my reaction.  It's actually an amazing combo.

Anyway, Alex is the classic serious german dude who's hard-working, serious faced, and incredibly punctual.  Overall a very likeable guy.  He rocked to have on the trip because he has an iPhone, which apparently gets 99% coverage in Germany, so it was the easiest camping trip in the world to plan because we were never lost or without contact from the internet.  Brunno and Thiago, the two charismatic Brazilians, were hilarious because they had never experienced snow before! On our first hike, one of them dissappeared while the rest of us were engaged in conversation and when we finally noticed he was gone when he came running up to us with a handful of slush yelling, "I think I found some, I think I found some!" Then the other one kind of got jealous because the first had experienced snow and he hadn't.  It was awesome.

Berchestgaden was absolutely gorgeous, and has so much activity going on!  All in ~25 sq. km there's boating, skiing, rock climbing, hiking, camping, fishing, bobsledding, ice skating, and mountain biking.  It's like a haven for outdoor sports.  Rock climbing specifically has who new meaning here in Europe.  The local mentality of the sport here is that climbing is for everyone.  To do this, they equip most climbs with cables, ladders, and bridges, so that even the least equipped climbers can do awesome climbs.

 I don't know about this style, as it goes against the American 'purist' rock climber mentality where you only use bolts and quickdraws or traditional gear, but it's all cool and I can imagine that before too long I'll try a climb with cables.

It's late here though and I should probably get to bed.  There's so much more to tell you about, I wish I had energy to do so, but I'm too tired so it'll just have to wait til next time.  Thanks for reading.

Myles