My life in the Neustadt

I've been doing a lot of moving around the past couple of days. Yesterday morning, I left Munich, which I was kind of sad to do. Munich was a great, well-rounded city. It had a lot of beautiful, historic buildings in the Old Town, along with a vibrant, but manageable "real" area. There were several convenient nearby day trips. My hostel was within easy walking distance of both the sights and the train station, not to mention at least five Döner Kebab shops. I met a lot of people, both in the hostel and walking around with Rick. And the staff at Wombat's Hostel was fantastic - extremely friendly and helpful. It made me feel very welcome there.

Yesterday, I spent the afternoon and night in Rothenburg ob der Tauber, a well preserved medieval village. Rick warned that it was going to be painfully touristy, but I didn't find this to be the case at all. The streets were fairly quiet, and I really enjoyed photographing my way through the town. I stayed at a guest house called Pension Elke, run by a charming old man and his son, who also run the family grocery store down below. It was neat to stay in my own room, and a nice change from the hostels. This place was centrally located to the main town square. In fact, the facade of the store was even visible in one of the postcards I bought.

Today I took a long, early train ride to Dresden. I like it a lot so far. There are a good number of tourists roaming around in the Old Town, but it seems like most of them are other Europeans. My hostel is located in the Neustadt (new town) area, which is a lot more "real people" oriented. Architecturally, these buildings were mostly undamaged by the WWII Allied firebombing, so they're authentic (and many are covered in graffiti). There are also random, blocky communist buildings mixed in all over the place - relics from East Germany. I did some afternoon roaming and had a tasty dinner (and a liter of dark, delicious beer), but I'm looking forward to more sightseeing tomorrow. The history of this city really, really fascinates me.

Traveling alone has been ok so far. I actually prefer it in some ways, since I can do absolutely whatever I feel like at any point in time and there is no one to get exasperated with my constant picture-taking. In other cases, though, especially for dinner and beer, it would be nice to have a friend along. There are a lot of really cool looking bars here in the Neustadt. It would be fun to go out tonight. Maybe I'll meet someone at the hostel...