Germany - München

August 28

 The first leg of our trip from Denver to Chicago was pretty uneventful.  In Chicago we had a several hour layover, and Ryan was keen on getting a true Chicago dog, so we found a place in the airport. I had the “Wisconsin Dog” which was a hot dog drenched in nacho cheese sauce.  Ryan did get his Chicago dog, but it was sadly lacking the fluorescent green pickles (he said it was good nonetheless). I asked Ryan if he had ever seen the lights at ORD, and he had no idea what I was talking about.  For a few minutes I looked crazy raving on and on about the cool light tunnel without any indication of where it was or how we could find it, but it turns out we were pretty close.  We rode the moving sidewalk through the neon light display, which was probably more nostalgic for me than the “totally awesome light display” I had made it out to be.  I also didn’t remember the pantone color mosaics on the wall.  Still, it was a way to pass the time.  I spent a little time sitting with 10 of my closest friends at a charging station so we could make sure we had enough juice to get through the 8 hour flight. We had specifically arranged our journey such that the trans-atlantic portion would be on a Boeing 777, as Ryan had never ridden on one before. It was a pretty nice plane and seemed new. The 2-5-2 arrangement might suck if you are in the middle section, but it was perfect for just the two of us, plus, we were in Economy Plus. :)

August 29

Dinner was... interesting.  I ordered the pasta, which was tortellini, but Ryan got the “meat” option, which was a very strange and mysterious mix of meat pieces in some sort of “gravy.” At least his mashed potatoes and mixed veggies were good.  We both ordered wine for the meal, and the flight attendant claimed their machine was broken, so it was free.  After that we decided to each get an after dinner drink (Bailey’s for me, scotch for Ryan). We tried to watch Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (I forgot how bad that movie is!  It’s amazing anyone ever watched the Last Crusade), but then decided if we wanted any appreciable amount of sleep we should get to it. I don’t think either of us slept particularly well, and we were listening to the Channel 9 ATC channel.  Ryan heard a discussion of a ELT (emergency locator transmitter) over eastern Canada. Although they can sometimes be triggered accidentally, this one seemed to possibly be associated with an actual plane going down as several planes reported hearing it over about a five minute period. I found the most interesting part was hearing the different accents, particularly as we passed over the Shannon, Ireland control area.

Breakfast on the plane wasn’t too bad: yogurt and banana bread. We got into Munich 30 minutes early and sat on the taxiway until a gate was available.  As we were landing, Ryan commented on how all of the roofs were red.  Everything looked so green, too.  We had no problems going through customs or getting our luggage, so before long we found ourselves on the S-bahn riding through what seemed like the countryside toward the city center. We stayed at the King’s Hotel Center, which was a cute little hotel that boasted 4 poster beds and “luxurious accommodations at an affordable price”. We were both so tired and jet lagged that despite our plans to immediately hit the town to combat jet lag, we took a two hour nap.

Our hotel was in a pretty convenient location, only a few blocks from the Hauptbahnhof and a 10 minute walk to Marienplatz.  We took in the Neues Rathaus, and as it was about 4 pm, I maintained that we should wait and watch the Glockenspiel at the top of the hour.  However, nothing happened as the clock passed 4 pm, and no one else seemed to take note. We read later that it goes off at noon and 5 pm.

Ryan had read about Augustiner beer before we came to Munich, as it is the only one of the “big 5” Munich beers that you can’t really get easily in the US. After much discussion about how to spend the afternoon, we found the “small” Augustiner beer garden (more like Cafe) out on the Neuhauserstraße, and we started in on the beer consumption. I had the weissbier with a tomato/mozzarella salad, while Ryan opted for the dunkel and onion sausage sauer "salad".

We were feeling pretty good at this point, and decided we were up for a full-on beer garden experience.  We made our way down to the famous Hofbrauhaus and settled in in the patio.  It was a very nice evening temperature wise, and of course the ambiance was jolly and relaxed.  We couldn’t believe the waitresses actually carried upwards of 5 liters of beer all at one time!  Their forearms were pretty beefy to say the least.  I had heard about the pretzels the size of one’s head, so I just had to get one.  We also had to have Kaiserschmarrn (“emperor's mess”) which is kind of like a scrambled up dutch baby.  MMMMMM. At one point our “table neighbors” kept “Prosting” (a toast like “cheers”) us, and we chatted with them for a while.  One couple was from Zürich and was visiting the other couple who lived in München.  It really added to our whole experience. I think by the end of the night, all told, Ryan had put back 3 liters of beer, and I had 2.5 (although one of them was a Radler, which is 1/2 dark beer and 1/2 “lemonade” (like a Sprite without lime).

As we headed out, Ryan confidently lead the way, proclaiming he knew exactly where our hotel was.  After walking for a bit and convincing Ryan that we had never seen these parts before, we looked at a map and discovered we had gone in about 180º in the wrong direction out of Hofbrauhaus to get back to our hotel.  At least our path home took us through Marienplatz at night and we could see the cool Rathaus and churches lit up. We actually made it back to the hotel by a respectable 11 pm.

30 August

Needless to say, we were moving pretty slow the next morning, so didn’t quite get up as early as we had imagined.  We opted for the 12 Euro buffet breakfast at the hotel over grabbing something as we toured around town.  It was expensive, but actually a pretty good breakfast with hot and cold options, as well as meat and cheese, croissants, etc. We took the train to the BMW Welt and Car Museum. I really enjoyed the BMW Welt part of it with the interactive displays about the cars, as well as little floor cleaning robots that wandered around displaying messages about keeping things clean while stopping and turning red if they encountered any dirt.  I also really liked watching the cars come up in the elevator to the delivery floor.  The car museum was very interesting as well, with lots of old cars and history about motors, cars and BMW. Even Ryan enjoyed it even though he thought he wouldn’t. Unfortunately I wasn’t feeling all that well (um, I don’t usually drink close to 3 liters of beer in a day!), so we were moving slow and I didn’t really linger in at different displays as long as I might have normally.  We grabbed some sandwiches / paninis at the M1 BMW cafe and regrouped.  We could see the Olympiapark and Olympic tower from the 1972 games as we were eating.  One interesting side note was that we were walking around in BMW Welt and Ryan heard a “Hallo!” only to find our friends from Hofbrauhaus the previous evening waving and smiling at us!

We took the U-Bahn to English Garden, but weren’t quite sure which stop to get off at. We popped up near the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, where we had a good view of the St. Ludwig church and it’s mosaic roof.  I was in need of some Tylenol at this point, so we stopped into a pharmacy, where I asked for Tylenol by name.  I got a blank stare back.  Ryan dredged up from the depths of his mind the name paracetemol (how does he know this stuff??), at which point the lady nodded and got me a box of the stuff. We also passed the Siegestor, which is a large monument with the inscription “dem sieg geweiht vom krieg zerstort zum frieden mahnend”, which loosely translated means “Dedicated to victory, destroyed by war, and a monument to peace”. We wandered through the English Gardens for a bit in search of the Chinesischer Turm and associated beer garden.  Ryan got himself a liter of beer while I had a mid-afternoon ice cream snack.

I really wanted to see the Glockenspiel back at the Rathaus, so we took U-Bahn back to Marienplatz about 4:30.  With some time to kill, we wandered into the Apple Store (which also just happens to have free Wi-fi....) for a bit. Then we watched the Glockenspiel play at 5 at the Neues Rathaus.  It was neat and everything I thought it would be based on my memories from German class.

We poked around the Viktuelnmarkt (kind of like a large farmer’s market) and went into St. Peters church where I got yelled (actually, sternly whispered) at for taking a photo. We ended the afternoon in Marienplatz with Frauskirche.

After dropping stuff off in our room, we went down to the little bar in our hotel for “happy hour”. I had a very fruity, but delicious drink with kiwi and other tropical fruits while Ryan experimented with a German margarita (German only in the sense that we were in Germany. It was actually pretty ‘normal’). We asked the bartender’s opinion on which beer garden we should hit up for the night, as both Augustiner and Löwenbrau were pretty close. She said she thought Augustiner because Löwenbrau was smaller and tended to be a bit more “rowdy” with more a more unsavory crowd.  We got lost trying to find the beer garden, even though it was only about 5 blocks from the hotel.  Upon actually finding it, we discovered that they only served liters of “helles” / original pilsner (not the weiss bier or dunkel), so we both got ein Maß. I didn’t really like mine so Ryan ended up having at least half. We had observed many people at Hofbrauhaus with a pork knuckle, so figured that might be a pretty traditional item to have while drinking copious amounts of beer, so that’s what I got for dinner.  Ryan ordered pork schnitzel as he wanted to have schnitzel.  He thought it was a lot like chicken fried steak.  My pork knuckle was good but kind of hard to eat.