Land of the Monks

a.k.a. Munich.  So I know this is very delayed, but with packing and finishing up everything with the German bureaucracy before we left, I didn’t really have the time.  So here is the shortened, probably less interesting, version of what we did for three days in Munich.

We got in on Friday night after visiting the bunkers in Obersalzberg, checked out our hotel room which had an interesting (read: bad) smell and little gummy sheep on the pillow.  We asked the receptionist for a good place to eat dinner and she recommended a bar/restaurant around the corner which was just what we were looking for.  After a delicious, late dinner and friendly service, we headed to bed for the night.  

The next morning, we went on a Third Reich Tour.  New Europe Tours offers a few different tours and this one focused on all of the important Nazi sites in the city where Hitler gained his power and rose to power.  90 percent of the city was leveled during World War II so most of the original buildings are just replicas but there are also tens or hundreds of memorials built around in alleys, on buildings, in gardens, and everywhere else there is room for one.  However, in comparison to the humongous and imposing structures in Berlin, in Munich the memorials are small and sometimes without explanation of what they are.  If you are in Munich and are at all curious about National Socialist history, the tour is really the only way to do it to make sure that you don’t miss the important landmarks.

After our tour we rode out to the Olympic Plaza to look for a hockey jersey for my dad’s birthday.  We had no luck with that venture but while we were there, we went to the aquarium, despite Austin’s protests.  For me, it was definitely worth it though.

In exchange for Austin’s suffering through the family tourist attraction, we went on a Bavarian food and beer tour that night.  We tasted different quite a few different beers, visited the Beer and Oktoberfest Museum, and ate off a sampler plate at the Hofbräuhaus Keller (Court Brewery House Cellar) with traditional Bavarian food.  After dinner, we ended our tour at the Hofbräuhaus which is the most famous beer hall in the world.  Just like every night, it was packed with some locals but mostly a lot of tourists.  We had to have at least one Maß (1 Liter beer) while we were there, so we sat down with an older man who happened to actually live in Munich.  He goes there often to listen to the band and just talk to different people from all over the world.  He was very friendly and let us practice our bad German and he worked on his English a little bit also.  I don’t think the tour was actually worth the money but the night ended well either way.

On Sunday, we went to yet another tour.  This was just the general tour of the city.  Done by the same company as the 3rd Reich Tour, but for this one it is based purely on tips so you only pay what you think it was worth.  Just like the other one, there were a lot of very interesting facts but the two tours overlapped in the information quite a bit, but surprisingly the numbers didn’t always match up so it left us looking for more answers than anything.  

We left the tour a few minutes early to catch our train to Mannheim where we watched a hockey game and did find the jockey jersey.  It was fun just like every other hockey game and the only noteworthy thing about the night was the smoking area.  During the break between each period, the entire stadium emptied out so everyone could go out into the staircase to smoke.  The entire area was completely filled with a combination of every type of cigarette smoke imaginable; which again left an “interesting” smell.  The smoke was thick enough that it was honestly strained just to see through it.  

After the game, we went back to the apartment to the biggest surprise in the six months that we had been there: we got Comedy Central and John Stewart was on it…in English!  I wish we would have known that starting in October when we found the TV!