The Silent Room

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Small Talk:
I’ve been busy with class, assignments, anime, yumcha, and god knows what else I’m juggling this year. On top of that, Unifi has been horribly stupid over the weekend. Sorry if the pics don’t match with the text. No time to properly sort and order them accordingly, lol. Oh, don’t forget to click on the panorama shots for a larger view!

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We left Prague early in the morning to catch an express bus that would take us into Germany. We spent some 3+ hours in the bus, and another hour or so on a train, all the while enjoying more lovely sceneries of the European countryside. I can never get enough of those. In fact, the next time I travel to Europe I’ll make it a point to spend a few days in the countryside and go nuts with my camera.

We reached Munich some time in the afternoon and decided to take away some kebabs for us to eat on the way to the hostel. After checking in and taking a short break, we walked around the town centre and gawked at the sights. Munich is apparently the economic and financial capital of Germany, and it’s clearly evident from the amount of business bustling everywhere.

We walked down several streets and saw buskers and street performers doing their thing. What impressed me the most was a guy who actually set up a grand piano in the middle of the street to promote his concert that coming weekend. We got to the city hall and took a couple more pictures.

Nearby was another church, and admittedly, I was getting rather tired of churches but I was still interested in climbing church towers, and that’s exactly what I did. It’s always a tough and steep climb up the narrow and claustrophobic steps of church towers but it’s always, always worth it.

We had a rather lively dinner that night, some of us got rather drunk and felt a little sick. Good thing drinking fountains can be found everywhere around Munich, and that really helped.

The next morning, we took an early train ride to Fussen, a town far into the Bavarian countryside. We went there to see the famous Neuschwanstein Castle, supposedly the original castle that inspired Disney’s castle logo design. There wasn’t much to see on the ground, but the castle itself is set atop of a hill and that meant another hike.

And hike up the hill we did. Well, there was the option of paying EUR 25 per head for a ride on a horse carriage. I figured I could use the workout, and the weather was nice and cool (also, I couldn’t afford such luxury). Along the way up, naturally there was many ‘landmines’ left behind by the gentle horses. Some small enough to ignore, some big enough to make a motorbike stop in its tracks.

When we reached the top, we were greeted by the incredible view of the Bavarian countryside, with the Alps stretching far in the distance. It was truly one of the most amazing things to behold, and all the money I had spent to get here was definitely worth it.

I can’t say the same about the castle, though. Apparently, to enter the castle (now a museum) one must purchase a tour package, which is exorbitantly priced. The castle surely had lots of rich history going for it, but it was not worth emptying my wallet for it. The view was more than enough for me.

It was after we got down from the hill, though, that things started to get really exciting. It was only 2pm, and no other plans for the rest of the day. The train ride back to Munich was almost two hours long, so we figured while we’re so far out here, might as well enjoy the atmosphere.

Have I mentioned to you yet how beautiful Bavaria is? Well, we felt like we haven’t quite gotten our fill, so we decided to take the train, and hop off at some random station, in the middle of nowhere. It was unplanned, but I’m going to chalk this up as the single most exciting thing we’ve done throughout the trip.

The landscape literally took our breaths away. Freshly harvested fields, all green. Skies clear, with the deepest hues of blue I thought I’d never see. The majestic, snow-capped Alpine peaks, standing tall in the distance. It was a picture-perfect view, one that I’m sure has inspired many poets, philosophers and artists over the centuries.

We literally rolled around in the grass, ran around like idiots, took random pictures, get electrocuted by an electric fence, and more. At one point, I just sat on the grass, and held back tears of joy. I’ve longed to see such sceneries my whole life, and that was truly a dream come true for me.

We rode the last train back to Munich, and had ourselves a hearty dinner at a McDonalds. Due to a certain mishap/tragedy, I lost all the pictures I shot on the following day, unfortunately. A shame, really. Still, there’s an important story worth telling, even without the pictures to show for it.

The next day was a rather slow one, again, with no concrete plans. So I walked around the town center and got myself an Adidas backpack for EUR 20, to replace the previous backpack that was torn at the bottom. I actually considered getting new shoes as well, but fought hard against the desire.

Walking around a bit more, I came across a rather large, orange-themed street protest. I was a little scared at first, but there was one thing I noticed about the march. Everyone was smiling. They were, smiling, cheering and singing.

There were police standing by, in front of the march, behind, on both sides, walking together with them. But the police weren’t there to contain the protesters. They diverted traffic, clear pathways, maintaining order, communicating with the head of the rally.

The police were protecting the protestors.

Seeing that, I felt safe enough to walk together with the march, and asked a few questions. Luckily the guy I chatted up spoke really good English (I guess most Germans speak good English, anyway).

Me: Hi! What’s going on here?”
Dude: “Oh, this is a demonstration!”
Me: “I can see that. What is it about?”
Dude: “This is a protest by university students.”
Me: “Really? Well, what’s the issue?”
Dude: “The government wants us to pay for our university education.”
Me: “Okay,… and?”
Dude: “Well, we don’t want to pay for compulsory education.”
Me: “So before this, you didn’t have to pay to enter university?”
Dude: “No.”
Me: “So anyone can just go to uni and pick up a degree? Without paying a single cent”
Dude: “Well, you need to pass a fucking difficult exam to do that. But no, no payments.”
Me: “If you pass the exams, you can study for free? Any course?”
Dude: “Pretty much, yeah. Studying to pass the exams is a bitch, though.”

Me: “So now the government wants you to pay?”
Dude: “We have to pay an entrance fee now, yes.”
Me: “How much?”
Dude: “500 euros.”
Me: “Only 500 euros?”
Dude: “500 euros is A LOT OF MONEY!”
Me: “For a complete bachelor’s degree?”
Dude: “YES! It’s crazy expensive!”
Me: “Wow.”

Let me say that again. EUR 500 for a full degree, averaging four years. That’s somewhere around RM2250, from start to finish. To put that in perspective, that’s less than what I’m paying PER SEMESTER here in MMU. All you need to do, was work hard and pass a supposedly difficult series of exams. The students here demand that their tertiary education be COMPLETELY free.

I’ll be honest, that was even more shocking to me than the electric fence was. I just hope that the guy I was talking to wasn’t bullshitting on me. Judging from the crowd, though, that didn’t seem to be the case. Later that day it started to drizzle, so I went looking for shelter and found myself in the beautiful English Garden. It is a huge park in the middle of the city, with a clear stream running through the middle. I met up with the rest of the gang and we walked back the station to catch a sleeper train to Venice.

The next awaited us in the morning but for that story, I’ll continue with the travelogue as we went through the final leg of our long, long journey.