Due to a number of circumstances, it's been difficult to blog lately. I think it's because our schedules feel even more full than usual here. Maybe we're just lazy. Who knows. Anyway, here's the skinny (in pictures) on Innsbruck, followed by our Munich adventures!
Innsbruck Photos
Munich!
We arrived in Munich and kicked around the hostel for a good long while. Following, we went to a fairly famous Bavarian beer garden, the Augustiner Keller. For baseball stadium prices, I got a plate of sausages and sauerkraut, a gigantic pretzel, and a liter mug of beer. The place was so packed (on a Tuesday!) that we wound up sitting on the ground near the kids' playground because we got sick of wandering around with our trays full of food. The food and beer were both OK, but the atmosphere was fantastic! The whole place was simply abuzz with conversation, kids playing, people eating, and the smell of food (moreso than beer, surprisingly) permeated the air. We sat on our little hill watching the lucky bastards who got tables until it began to get dark, and then headed back to our hostel. Michael hadn't gotten much sleep the previous night, since he got himself wrapped up in Angels and Demons, so he fell asleep in the room while Marc and I headed downstairs to the hostel's bar, where we chatted with some extremely, extremely drunk British kids about how American houses aren't all palaces with swimming pools and elevators, and how the entire country is not, in fact, one giagantic house party. Apparently the OC does more to mar the international image of American culture than anything else.
We got a late start, as usual, the next day, and proceeded to wander throughout the city of Munich. It's a great city. The architecture is quite modern, given the fact that a large portion of the city was rebuilt after World War II. It's not the most photogenic city, but it has a good deal of personality to it, whether in the parks, on the streets, or in its many bustling beer halls!
Our dinner that night was at the Hofbräuhaus, an excellent example of a German beer hall. We found ourselves tables, got ourselves beer (the "regular" size here is a liter!) and tried to decipher the German menu. We happened to be sitting near two Americans, one of whom read German, and helped us choose. Interestingly, everything there is pay-as-you-go. Pay for your beer as soon as it hits the table, pay for your food when they serve it, and pay for your pretzels whenever the pretzel girl wanders your way. As we waited for our food, we chatted and had a great time listening to the oom-pah band (I was happy that I knew a few songs, my favorite being the Beer Barrel Polka: "roll out the barrel..."). The food was much better than last night, and after our main courses we had a smaller beer and a huge (think Fucillo) pretzel. When ordering our second beer, I decided to be brave and order "Zwei weissbier" (two white/wheat beers) for myself and Michael. I think I excited our waiter, but disappointed him when I couldn't respond to any of the resulting German he flung at me. I've been pretty lucky keping up at simple yes/no conversations based simply on conversational/situational clues- just wait until they discover I'm a fraud! What a great night!
Today we continued to travel the city, stopping for lunch at a big market downtown. I had a paper cone of fish and chips (which I couldn't actually obtain in London), while Marc and Michael had a much fancier dish. I again managed to fool the lady at the food stand into thinking that I had some grasp of German with my ordering skils, but alas, I don't. Following that, the main focus of the day was the Deutsche Museum, a huge museum dedicated to all sorts of technology- from steam engines, cars, airplanes, tunnels, bridges, space, music, photography, telephony, television, computing, and more!
We killed as much time as possible there before heading to the Olympic Stadium. We got sidetracked as soon as we got off the subway stop to the stadium, since as soon as you walk out the doors of the station, you're smacked in the face than none other than the BMW headquarters, factory, and museum! We wandered through the main building, drooling at the cars and self-aggrandizing corporate propaganda, and arrived just slightly after the last factory tour of the day was due to start (just another on my long list of reasons to return to Europe). Once done there, we planned to head to the olympic stadium, but were sadly overtaken by rain. I suppose you can't win everything.
Back at the hostel, the promised free pasta had run out, so here we sit until rougly 11pm (it's 8:30-ish now) until we catch our night train (last one!) to Berlin. Auf Wiedersehen!
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