Augsburg - Day 13

I think I've already mentioned how great public transportation is within Munich itself, but it's also fabulous all around Bavaria...you can buy a ticket for 28 Euros that's good for five people to go wherever they want within Bavaria for a whole day, which is fantastic for poor college students trying to travel as much as possible, like myself.  On Saturday (April 10, Day 13), I went with Kathryn, Eileen, Elizabeth, and Brijhette to Augsburg, which is only about 40 minutes away from Munich by train.  We made a mistake by taking the wrong kind of train and had to pay a little extra, but otherwise the trip was great.  We got to the city pretty early and spent some time wandering around on our own before the tourist information center opened and we were able to get advice about the best sights to see.  I took about 400 pictures throughout the day, so the best way for me to tell all the stories is probably with the photos...don't worry, I won't post all of the photos I took!

From left to right: Eileen, Kathryn, Elizabeth, and Brijhette (I was taking the picture)

Our train...we didn't realize that the Bavaria ticket isn't valid for IC (Inter-City) trains, so we had to pay a little extra, but now we know to only take Regional trains...life would be boring if you didn't learn something new every day, right?

One of the first things we found in Augsburg after the train station was this nice little park with cool hanging lights:

 We also found this very colorful Rhino, who I think was part of a "go green" campaign, or whatever the German equivalent might be:

From left to right: me, Elizabeth, Eileen, and Kathryn 

St. Peters Kirche (church) and the Rathaus (town hall):

Some of the Rathaus architecture

Even the cobblestones in the town square were pretty:

While we waited for the information center to open, we wandered around on our own and found this gorgeous church, the Dom:

A statue to the side of the cathedral:

I wonder if they want that fillet of fish back twice as much?

It's unbelievable how much detail was in the carvings on the outside of the building:

We weren't able to go inside when we first got there because there was a church service, but we went back later and the inside is as unbelievable as the outside.  The church is massive and ornate and breathtaking:

I loved all the stained glass windows that were in the church.  This was the one I was able to get closest to.

One of the side areas:

I didn't realize it until Brijhette pointed it out, but the church must have been at least partially destroyed in WWII or at some other point and then rebuilt, because the stones used to build the walls weren't actually stones at all.  Instead, the mortar lines were painted onto concrete:

Another of the buildings that we saw while we were first wandering around was part of the old Royal Residence:

We didn't explore it further until later in the day, when we found a beautiful botanical garden, the Hofgarten.  I'm sure it would be even better once the flowers start to bloom:

There were five little dwarf statues in the gardens...I'm not really sure why...

From left to right: me, Brijhette, Kathryn, Elizabeth, and Eileen 

Every time I see a lion, I think of Dad (because of the 1-33 FA Golden Lions), so here's to you, Dad!

 After looking around on our own for a while, we went back to the town center to visit the tourist information center, and stopped on our way for some coffee and breakfast.  While we were eating, we saw this cool advertisement for taking care of the city or something (or at least I think that's what it's for, because the other side of the box is a display of old electronics)

Like I said, I'm not entirely sure what the point was, but it looked cool.

The Rathaus opened at 10:00, and we got to see one of the biggest attractions in Augsburg, the Goldener Saal (the Golden Hall).  These first few are from the Rathaus entrance hall, and I just love all the archways and the architecture:

Once we got upstairs to the Golden Hall itself, it really was breathtaking.  I don't know any of the history of it, because I was too busy looking at all the intricate gold-work to listen to any information about it, but can you blame me for being a bit distracted by it all?

The doors, the walls, the ceiling...everything was covered in unbelievably ornate gold-work:

The ceiling:

 

There were four side rooms that were decorated with wood instead of gold, but everything was still beautiful:

From the windows we could see a Green Peace rally going on in the middle of the town square:

After visiting the Rathaus, we walked around town and found a couple different churches to visit.  We found the first one mostly by accident.  It's called the Barfuesser Kirche - the Barefoot Church:

 Next was Jakobskirche:

We first went into the church through a back door, and instead of the sanctuary we found this rickety old stair case...Kathryn, Elizabeth, and Eileen climbed up to the top and found the church bells.  They made it back down with about a minute to spare - if they had stayed any longer, they would have gone deaf from the noontime ringing of the bells.

After that adventure, we found the main entrance and the sanctuary:

We wanted to visit the Fuggerei, which is the oldest socialist housing complex for the elderly and needy.  It was founded by a member of the wealthy Fugger family in the 1500's and is pretty much a city within the city of Augsburg.  To this day, the inhabitants pay something like 88 cents a year to live there.  Unfortunately, the tour cost money and we didn't want to pay, so we only got a glimpse of the first few buildings:

It was at this point in our day where we went back to the first church and the royal residence and the botanical gardens, but I've already shared all of those pictures.  We ate lunch, and then made our way towards the center of the city to visit a Palace-turned-museum.  The tickets were a little more expensive than we expected, but as we stood discussing what we wanted to do, the very nice lady working there gave us free tickets...she heard us talking about what we wanted to do and whether or not we wanted to pay the entrance fee (talking completely in German of course) and I think she took pity on us and our poor-college-student status...I guess it has it's uses after all!  I'm glad we were able to see the museum and its Rococo entrance hall:

I'm sure the cushions on the floor aren't original to the room 

There were several mirrors around the hall, and each had a different golden carving on top.  The main four carvings represented the seasons, and the other twelve each represented a different month of the year.

We had fun trying to get this picture to work...the images of us in the mirror are a little fuzzy, but it's still really cool.

The rest of the museum contained lots of German art work and even more beautiful architecture...actually, I think I took more pictures of the architecture than the paintings...

 

After that, we headed back to the train station and back to Munich...Kathryn had an interview for a scholarship via Skype, so we wanted to make sure to get back in time for her to prepare.  We cut it a little close and ended up running:

There were a couple other things that I would have loved to see...a castle somewhere in the area, a Synagogue, and a couple other famous churches, but we were all glad that Kathryn could come along and didn't mind leaving a bit early.  Plus, since Saturday is the Jewish holy day, we wouldn't have been able to go into the Synagogue anyway.

We got back to Munich around 5:00 and I made dinner with a couple other friends, before setting off on another type of adventure: the search for a karaoke bar.  It was one of the girls' birthday and she wanted to go out to celebrate, but the first karaoke bar we found was closed, and the other one was part of a Thai restaurant, and as such only played songs in Thai.  Seeing as we only speak English and German, we ended up going somewhere else (still no drinks for me, but some of the other had an interesting night, to say the least), and I eventually crashed in bed sometime around 2:30.

Speaking of crashing in bed...it's 12:50am here now, and I'm getting up early again tomorrow morning to go to Regensburg, so I will hopefully do more catching up tomorrow.  But for now, bed!