After a five hour train ride, we got in at 11 pm and took a quick shower at our hostel before hitting the town with Mike. Other than having him for this one night, this is just Abby and me now, for the rest of the euro tour. Having been to Munich before, Mike knew of a club/bar area so we took a cab there. and almost didn't get in because we didn't have our passports! Who takes their actual passport out? Not this girl.. I had a copy but that "wasn't good enough" Not cool.. After Abby and I talked to the bouncer for awhile about how we were poor students and wanted to party, he let us in :) I met lots of people, one being this massively tall German guy, Max. Everyone was really nice and spoke English so that was good. We stayed out late of course, and went back to our awesome hostel, with a cool bar and nice people!
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| the hostel, after we attempted to hang dry our laundry.. |
We had a private room so we had our own bathroom too. I was really nice for a hostel. Basically a cheap hotel, but suited our needs perfectly. After the last hostel experience with a "shared room", we were booking the private room for sure..
Woke up around 11 on our only full day in Munich and headed to the place we know best- the biergarten. We stopped at Marienplatz to see the clock tower chime at 12. These figurines were supposed to move and it's supposed to be this cool thing. Well, we were a little unimpressed considering it went off at 12:05 and the figurines hardly spun around! After the fact though, I guess it was neat because of the incrdible architecture of the clock tower and building with it.
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| the side of Marienplatz |
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| the clock tower part |
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| Mike and I, in front of it |
Tons of people stand there looking at the clock tower for that to happen daily, at 11and 12. It was a beautiful building though- definitely what you would imagine Germany to look like. I took a video of the cool display, maybe it will work on here.
---video?
So we made it to the Haufbrauhaus, the most famous biergarten in Munich. When you walk in, you see giant long tables under massive ceilings of wood beams. Ahead of you is a quartet playing typical German Oktoberrfest type music, whatever that genre is called. (like with trombones and trumpets and stuff.) It was the perfect atmosphere.
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| the cool german band |
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| from the balcony |
We sat outside on this balcony overlooking the middle fountain thing. Got ourselves one liter of German original beer, and enjoyed the perfect weather for being outside. We all got sausages, Abby's and mine was like a brat with sauerkraut underneath. Sooo good. And with their mustard, it was great. And Mike got a mix of sausages, some looked like hot dogs and some like a brat.
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| breakfast of champions. a liter of german beer, sausage, and sauerkraut. |
We hung out for awhile trying to finish our massive beers while eating a giant pretzel! That was really good too. You buy them from the little waitresses walking around in german dresses, that look kind of like yodeling outfits or something. Off to stop number 3-5 for the Munich tour!
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| all of the tables, from the balcony |
Making our way for the English gardens, (walking this time, no metro) we stumbled across the main shopping street in Munich and oh.my.gosh. Incredible. Every designer you would absolutely love, (well, I absolutely love) next to each other. Dior, Cartier, Chanel, Gucci, Hermes, and the only one I have a chance at affording, BCBG, my personal favorite. I picked through their beautiful spring line and of course wanted it all.. I held back my shopping addiction and moved along to the free walking of the gardens...
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| love. |
After my map navigating, we made it and found the surfers wave! It's this small dam sort of thing where this one big wave is and people put wetsuits on and surf there! It looked freezing but they were really good!
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| the wave! |
pictures from the walk..
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| The English Gardens |
The gardens were beautiful. They're called the English Gardens, and are bigger than central park in NYC and stretch all along the river bordering the east side of Munich. So fun to walk around and see the bikers, picnics, cute German kids, and take in the scenery.
We finally made it about one-third of the way in to the Chinese tower, where there is another biergarten, and that's where we parked it for awhile, again, with another beer.
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| the chinese tower |
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| anddd the giant pretzel :) |
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| yum |
Great day for being outside, blue sky, sun shining, and perfect to just sit and take it all in. I think that's the most relaxed I've been in a really really long time. No homework to have to come back to on Sunday night, no timeframe for the evening of more things to see or do, hanging out with my Mizzou friends halfway across the world from the one place that brought us together.
Mike had a train to catch, so he left and Abby and I finished our beer and made friends with the cute little German girl next to us and her parents. The little one, was 5, and didn't speak English really but her mom spoke English perfectly so we talked to them. Anna fleur de le coure was her name and she had the blondest little white hair and cutest sunglasses! She loved us. I'm emailing her mom so she sends us the pictures she took of us all.
Abby and I got a road pretzel and walked back to a metro stop to get on the metro back to our hostel. It was like 6:30 at this point and we were exhausted. They go by the honor system in Germany with the tram, as in, the ticket machines don't read your ticket because the tickets don't even fit in the machines actually, so we still had our ticket from earlier that we didn't even really need and gypsies on. We crashed and burned at our room.. In Alicante we never drink beer, they claim that's a man's drink and when I've ordered it before the guys look at me funny.. So this change in pace threw us off I think. Took a nap until 830 to get some dinner and by the time the alarm went off, we were not even close to being hungry, so we threw in some laundry, touched base with the parents for a second on the wifi in the common room, and then ventured out for some sushi. Well, at 11:30 pm, that was closed.. So the mexican fiesta place we saw on our way there worked just fine. We both got some good salads and tried to eat but just couldn't! Too full of beer and sausages..
So we went back home and then of course we couldn't sleep since we had napped, making the 5 am wake-up call for our flight to Nice come quickly.. After jumping on the metro going the wrong direction, we had a minor freak out since our hostel guy told us, "if you go the wrong direction, you will end up in the middle of nowhere and have no chance of making your flight." great.. Just what we wanted, to be stuck in Munich.. Thank god someone named Katie realized this about 3 stops along and we got off, otherwise we would have really been screwed. We found the airport direction one and had plenty of time before our flight.
After a few struggles in cities speaking 4 different languages now, I think I can navigate the metro and bus systems pretty well. With my only public transportation experience being the city bus that picked us up from Alleman to take us to Seton after 8th grade early-bird algebra, I've picked it up quickly I would say. It can be difficult trying to read much less pronounce the name of a metro stop in Czech, but I can get us there now.
No Ryan air for this flight, thank god!
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| call me Kim Kardashian.. |
And we're off to the French riviera!!
-k
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