Day 1: Traveling Day
by Kristy Jaeckel and Becci Burling

The day began like any other trip to Europe…beginning at 3:30 in the morning. The flight from Denver to Atlanta was only a small stepping stone for the journey that lay ahead. We met up with the Northern Lights girls shortly after having lunch and engaged ourselves into a competitive game of UNO, in which the winner will remain anonymous…it wasn’t either of us. After our four hour layover we boarded our flight to Munich, had a delicious dinner, and settled in for the eight hour flight.

Day 2: Munich

Guten Morgen! We finally landed! The first thing that we noticed when we deplaned was how quiet the airport was. There wasn’t a mass amount of chaos and we quickly passed through customs and retrieved our baggage. We also noticed how modern and organized it was. After everyone took a turn at the water closet (a.k.a. the bathroom), we boarded our tour bus and set our sights on Neuschwanstein castle. The drive was amazing, passing through many small towns with cute German cottages. As we rounded a corner we saw the castle come into view. It was the first castle that Kristy had ever seen and Becci could see the tears of joy welling up in Kristy’s small eyes. We parked the bus and immediately dove into the German culture. After stopping at a few gift shops, we sat down in a small restaurant for lunch. We experienced Weiner-Schnitzel and fries with mayonnaise, it was a memorable experience. The host at the restaurant was very polite and helpful to us foreigners. After lunch, we started the long trek up the towering mountain to the isolated castle. At the top, we hiked a little more to see the great waterfall just on the other side of the castle. When it was finally time to start our tour, all of us were experiencing terrible jet lag. The tour was very informative telling us that the building of the castle took many years. The king it was intended for only ended up living in it for less than 200 hundred days before he was drowned. Shortly after the king’s death, the castle was opened to the public.

After the tour we hiked back down the enormous mountain side and loaded up the bus in the blistering heat and headed to our living quarters for the night, the Olympic Rowing Center which was apart of the 1972 Olympics. We enjoyed socializing with the Northern Lights girls at dinner in a small Italian restaurant not far from our youth hostile. After dinner we all were excited for a good night’s rest but before that came we all seemed to catch a second wind and had a dance party in the hall. But all good things must come to an end as did this first day on our adventure in Europe.

Mikenzie, Karina, Carrie, Kristy, and Becci sport German style hats while browsing in the town of Fussen, the location of the castle.