Today is our last day in Germany. To be more precise, today is our last day on Opening Tour. It started off quite eventful; the girls had our room lottery right after breakfast. There are only so many rooms, and 8 of them are singles, so most of us were panicking that somehow we were going to be the ones to get screwed over and end up in a single. Allie, Gabby, and I have been planning on rooming together since last year. Out of all the rooms, there are only 18 triples. We assumed Gabby turned her stuff so early we would be one of the first groups called. Little did we know that the health form counts as part of the packet, making us farther down on the list than we expected. After what seemed like forever, we finally got called. We managed to get the 9th triple and drew Hotel Bonifacio, which just so happens to be the same pensionne that Erin and Audrey are in! By the end of the day we would discover that Carl and his two roommates are also in our pensionne; 8 people down, only 18 more to figure out.
Our days adventure consisted of traveling to Neuschwenstein castle. It's located in Austria and was built only 800 years ago by King Ludwig II. It is the castle that Walt Disney based the Disneyland castle after. It was the absolute best day to go see it. The skies were crystal blue without a cloud in the sky. Our amazing tour guide (which I will get to later) decided not to inform us that we had the option between hiking up to the castle and riding a bus. We hiked, but compared to our previous hikes it was nothing. We went onto Maria's Bridge, the bridge that Ludwig built for his mother to go out onto and look at the castle (since she wasn't allowed any closer to the building). This is the view of the castle that most people are familiar with. We then took a tour of the inside of the castle, and it was absolutely gorgeous. Only half of the castle is finished because King Ludwig was murdered before he could finish it. The rooms that are complete are extremely ornate. It truly is a fantasy castle. After spending a few hours on the mountain, we wen halfway down to get lunch. While we were waiting to order our food, Gonzaga kids kept coming up to us with these cheese balls. They didn't look like much, but someone got us to try a piece and well, lets just say any of our previous inclinations towards cheese balls flew out the window. They were delicious. They were cottage cheese, cheese balls, deep fried with powdered sugar on top. Of course we didn't actually need them, but they were so worth it.
From the castle we traveled to a little town called Garmisch. There isn't much to see, but I guess that's where the Winter Olympics were held in 1936. We only stayed there for about an hour, which seemed ridiculous since it took us an hour and forty five minutes to get there. Oh well. We walked around and looked in all of the cute local shops. We found authentic dirndl that we wanted to get for Oktoberfest (and Spokane) but they were almost 200 euro. We contemplated asking the women that worked at our hotel if they had any old ones they would be willing to give/sell us, but we forgot.
Our short stop gave us just enough time to stretch and walk around before we headed back for dinner, which was uneventful. Being our last day in Bad Kohlgrub, everyone went out. Or so it seemed. The little bar down the street ordered kegs because we had been overrunning the place the previous two nights. They were some of the nicest people we've met. I bailed early to take a shower and go to sleep, but even I didn't get to bed until after midnight. It's going to be an early morning having to wake up at 6AM tomorrow.
Okay, now I can get to the best part of the day- our tour guide. We decided to get back on the orange bus because Shelley and Linda played Sound of Music yesterday for us. It turned out to be the best decision we have made so far. Our tour guide was this guy named Michael (Mee-kel if you want to pronounce it the way he did). He was the most enthusiastic, eccentric, fun, spirited guy we've met on our trip. He made learning the history of the castle and Garmisch so much fun. Unlike other days, most people actually stayed awake while he was talking. This may have something to do with him making sound effects and getting louder and louder as the story went on, but who cares. We began to refer to our bus as the party bus, because he also brought music that would blast and sing along with while sitting in traffic. At one point on our way to Garmisch he turned on Abba and started dancing down the aisle. We also played a quiz show game over facts we had learned throughout the day, and about the 16 states of Germany. You could just tell he loved what he did and his country, and made you feel the same. He is by far our favorite tour guide of the past week and a half.
You go orange Japan tour bus (which was the official tour bus of the Japan Women's Soccer Team). We go hard.
Tuesday, September 13th
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