Dear God I've Eaten a lot in the past 24 hours...also, Castles

(Note: Pictures will have to come later, running out of time on my free internet!)
Food in Germany is ridiculous.  I don't know if it's just the Bavarian part of Germany, but everything looks delicious, whether or not it actually tastes that way.  

Dad found some bratwurst.  And there was much rejoicing.

Our dinner last night was at the (in-?)famous  Ratskeller beer hall (you'll have to forgive me if I misspell some of these German words, I keep forgetting to write them down and I don't have access to Google while I'm writing this offline), which is famous for being really old, and for being one of the first speech sites of Adolf Hitler before the Nazis came to power.  However, the food was quite good: I had a roasted pork shank with potato dumplings - the pork was delicious, though the thick layer of fatty skin was a bit tough where it hadn't been roasted enough to get crispy.  

"I hunger!  Bring me another pork shank!"

If I was able to get the picture uploading thing to work (UPDATE: I did.), you might notice the strange purple stuff next to my plate; this is Bavarian Sauerkraut, which is sweeter and, well, purple-er than the sauerkraut commonly seen in America.  Also note the fine Fransiskaner Weisbeir that accompanied my meal, always a good choice!

Our culinary extremism continued to breakfast, after we experienced our second jetlag-induced 5AM wake-up.  The Germans seem to have heard about how great our breakfast buffet was in Zurich, and appear to have decided to one-up the Swiss: the spread here was absolutely insane!  My first plate is shown here:

Yes, those are fried buffalo wings.  No regrets.

And this represents only my first pick of the protein section of the buffet!  There were whole buffet tables devoted each to sliced deli meats, fruit, sausages, breads, yogurt, cereal, even a section of Asian cuisine (miso soup, rice, and some sides)!  Yet the thing that really set this one apart from the last was the inclusion of complementary champagne with breakfast, which my sisters and I mixed into a number of mimosa variants, using the multitude of fresh juices provided.

A toast, to alcoholism at breakfast!

After we had our fill of ridiculously good breakfast food, it was time for our first official tour of the trip.  This took us on a history-filled bus ride out to the Bavarian countryside, through some of the smaller Alps to two of the castles built by the 19th-century Bavarian King Ludwig II.  The first castle, which I can't remember the name of, was beautiful but surprisingly small, little larger than a modern 2-story  house.  

The inside was insanely ornate, with nearly every  inch of every wall covered in intricate gilding and carving.  In my opinion, the most spectacular part of the whole house was the faux-staircase waterfall in the backyard, leading down to an incredible fountain of rearing warhorses (scored an awesome picture of it, after messing around with some of my camera settings to get a really fancy look):

Pictured: Majestic-ness.

The next castle, another of Ludwig II's, was much larger but less intricately decorated, likely due to the fact that Ludwig died before it was completed, and all work was halted due to the insane cost of building castles in the 19th century.  The guy had the right idea in my opinion, though...the world could always use more castles!  This one is notable mainly for its resemblance to nearly every castle seen in the earlier Disney movies, a resemblance apparently due to Walt Disney's love of the castle's design.  It sits near the top of a small mountain in the Bavarian Alps, and requires a full mile uphill hike to get to - a perfect way to burn off those buffet calories!

Had to use all of the 15x zoom on my camera to get this near the start of the walk up.

We returned, exhausted, with only enough energy to grab a quick dinner at the Augusteiner Beer Hall, though I forgot to bring my camera, so no food pictures from this one.  Now it's just about time for me to hit the hay, so I'll see if I can get this posted with our room's 15 minutes of complimentary internet time...I'll try to get pictures added for this and yesterday's posts too, if I can work fast enough!

Til next time, Auf Wedersehen!