Weekend Bonanza Part One (Munich)

Hello all! I know it's been a few days sense I last posted. I did end up going to Munich on Saturday, but then instead of coming home that evening we ended up heading to Salzburg, Austria on Sunday. I am going to upload the two posts that I wrote from this weekend, and the photos from my trip (350+) are uploaded to the photos page.

Today was a really busy day. I got up at about 5:15 AM or so to get ready to go to the train station. Thankfully there weren't any Fests last night, but I was up pretty late going through Rick Steves' guide to Munich. I made it to the train station in plenty of time (6:30, our train was leaving at 7:06). As I was waiting for the others to arrive (Melissa and Jonathan, another RISE student in Karslruhe), I realized that I left Rick Steves at home. Sadly the bookstore in the train station didn't have a copy of it, so we ventured off to Munich with the little information that I had written down from the book, but mostly we were on our own.

It was really fun traveling with the German Rail Passes that that the RISE program gave us to use. It allows one to ride in any second-class railcar operated by Deutsche Bahn (including the faster Inter-City Expressways and the Regional Jetrails) during five 27-hour periods within 31 days. We were able to just hop onto any DB train that we wanted so long as we had our rail pass and passport.

We got to Munich around 10:30, and by the time we had navigated the completely unhelpful tourist information center, ridden one of the street-train in the wrong direction and then back again, we had sadly missed the famous Glöckenspiel and a free bike tour that we had been hoping to go on. So instead we lazily wandered around the main touristy area on our way the the world-famous Hofbrauhaus. We had lunch at the big 'HB'; I had a pork-knuckle with Kartoffelkloesse (German potato dumplings) in a sauce. It was the most delicious meal I've had in a long time! The pork was so tender that it almost melted on the way to your mouth and it tasted incredible. I even drank most of my house Radler (a type of Shandy) before I gave up and ordered a mineral water.

After lunch we walked over to and through the ever-popular "Dom zu unserer lieben Frau" (also known as the Munich "Frauenkirche", essentially the German translation of the French "Notre Dame", or "Church of our Lady"). It was pretty impressive, and did a pretty good job of stacking up against the "Cathédrale Notre-Dame-de-Strasbourg" we saw last week. After the church, we walked back over to the main square to see if we could catch the later bike tour. We met some Australians who were also waiting for the tour, but unfortunately the tour guide never arrived. So instead we took a long walk through the English Gardens and watched the river surfers for a while (you should check out the photos, it was pretty cool).

Melissa and I walked Jonathan back to the train station so that he could catch a train back to Karlsruhe that night. He grabbed a bite to eat in the train station, and after walking though a rather sketchy part of Munich looking for dinner, Melissa and I decided to head to our hostel to check in and see if they had any recommendations for local sources of food. As it turned out the hostel had a really nice (and cheap) cafeteria, so we just ate there. The hostel we stayed at was called "The Tent", and it was essentially that. I guess every summer sense 1972 this company comes out to this park area in Munich and sets up this tent for travellers to stay in. It was really nice and really cheap. For 7.50€ you got a mat and three heavy blankets, and for an extra 3€ one can get a bunk bed to sleep in. Being the cheap college students that we are, Melissa and I took the mat and slept on the wooden floor in the tent. It sounds rustic, but there were clean bathrooms with hot showers, a nightly bonfire, ping-pong tables, basket ball hoops, volleyball nets, and a really nice cafeteria. For 7.50€, I would definitely stay there again.

After we got checked in and some dinner, Melissa and I headed back out to the town. We wandered around some of the areas that we had seen earlier, but it was way cooler at night with the buildings all lit up. As we were walking around, we bumped into a group of women from South Africa that we were able to point in the direction of the Hofbrauhaus. They were really funny to listen to, bantering away at each other.

After a while we headed back to the hostel and called it an early night. All-in-all it was a pretty good day in Munich.

So with that said, "You took how many photos?!".