Bavaria... an odd place!
Trip Start
Sep 02, 2009
1
6
72
Trip End
Oct 30, 2010
Where I stayed
Munich, Bavaria, Germany
Saturday, September 12, 2009
We were just finishing a game of cards, happy in the thought that we only had an hour left to kill, when the train pulled into a station. As people were getting off we decided to have another game (Dave likes being thrashed at cards it seems! Lol). As I was dealing I commented to Dave how this must be a popular destination because everyone was getting off! Dave said, 'Yea, because we're in Munich... not really, haha, I love winding you up!' So we continued playing cards. Then after a few minutes, when the train was completely empty and still hadn't left the station, a man walked passed us, then came back and looked at us. He yelled, 'MUNICH!'. And we said, '...yes?'. And he yelled again, 'MUNICH!'. We looked at each other, then at him, and said, 'are we in Munch??'... he yelled, 'YES! MUNICH!'.
Thank goodness the train terminated there, or who knows where we'd have ended up!
That evening we decided to go for a beer. It was delicious! Me and Dave we're amazed at how wonderful this beer seemed to taste, shocked almost... it wasn't until the next day that it hit us that we're in Bavaria, the home of beer! Home of Oktoberfest! Haha, we're such numpties.
The next day we decided to get up early to see the centre of Munich and do some shopping! It turns out, however, that the whole of Munich is shut on a Sunday. So we ended up wandering around what felt like a ghost city, not a soul in sight. The only thing we had planned was to see the glockenspiel go off at 11am. Munich is a very beautiful city, which feels more like a town really.
At 11am we went to the world famous glockenspiel... and found it very unimpressive. We later found out that it was possibly the second most disappointing tourist trap in the world. But, as we watched the 15 minute chime, we stumbled across a free walking tour of Munich and decided to join it. It was fantastic! We saw a canon ball lodged in a church wall, saw the street where history could have changed (the attempted assassination of Hitler), and learned a LOT about beer!
We were told about how the opera house burnt down one year, so the mayor decided to rebuild it with an inverted roof to gather the rain water. That way, if a fire happened again, they could just open the faucet and the water would come down. The only problem was that there was another fire, in the winter... and the water had turned to ice. The only thing not frozen in Munich was the beer! There was a brewery opposite the opera house so the mayor told the owner that they will have to use the beer to put it out. Everyone came to help, and formed a human chain passing along the huge buckets of beer. The only problem being that Bavarians love their beer. So each person, to lighten the load on the next (how considerate!) took a little sip. Anyway, to cut a long story short, they all got stinking drunk and the opera house burnt down!
The tour lasted about 2 and a half hours. and, of course, there were beers at the end!
After that we went to the Englisher Garten. One of the largest city parks in the world. We came to one point in the park where there was a river, and in the river were some rapids.. and on the rapids were surfers! In a park, on a river, in Munich, there were some surfers... surfing. Surreal!
Then, after leaving the park we came across some kind of street fair. We have no idea what it was about. So we had a look around and bought a huge pretzel, then headed back to the hostel.
It was a really interesting and surreal day, but we loved it!
Amy and Dave xx
