Sunday 10 June 2012

Munich

So, if you ever go to Munich don't get a taxi from the airport, unless you are loaded. We learnt that the hard way, their train system is very efficient (much like the Germans) and a quarter of the price.


The view from our hotel

To recover from the taxi fare we grabbed our first German meal. We learnt quickly that its not just the quality of the beer its also about the size..

Sam hasn't been surfing for two weeks, so when he found out about the standing wave we had to go there. There is a wave under a bridge called eisbach. I'm not sure how or why it just is. And people surf it. That's probably not a great explanation.. try this



Our friend from Germany told us we had to go to Hofbrauhaus for some of their famous beer.. And that we did.

Pretty sure I drank about 5 liters of beer, that's not ok.

Everyone else was just as drunk so it was amazing people watching.

At the beginning of the night we met a guy from Chicago who was with a very very very drunk girl from Sydney, when the girl wandered off he told us all about how he loved Australians and that he used to party with Wayne Carey (sorry was that meant to be impressive?)

In other news the Germans are all about the meat so I basically had Mac and cheese for dinner ( they call it spatzel)



We met a group of Austrian guys on a work trip who wanted to practice their English, they said they were carpenters. We all laughed over the fact that Austria and Australia are basically the same word (.. It was funny after all that beer)


It's almost the same word!

The rest of the night is a bit of a blur, probably something to do with the amount of steins that we drank.. We walked back to the hotel in the rain (it made sense at the time).

So we woke up kind of fuzzy - some more than others. Sam left his phone in the communal bathroom at our hotel and when he realised and went back, it was gone!
We knocked on the doors of those in the rooms around.. I was talking to a Spanish girl who didn't know a word of English.. Lucky I know how to say toilet in Spanish (and vigorously mime phone) and we got the phone back.. She was on her way to hand it in to reception but I still maintain that knowing the word toilet in Spanish saved the day (and the phone)

After a quick breakfast and the worst coffee in the world (i thought europe was meant to be all over coffee?!) we went to the Dachau Concentration Camp.

We caught two trains and a bus there rather than going on a tour which would have cost three times as much - we ended up following behind some groups to get the info any way, for free. Man was it disappointing when the guide wasn't speaking English!



This piece includes all of the different badges the prisoners were made to wear. They all wore the circles on their backs, like targets for the SS soldiers if they were trying to escape  - Info courtesy of the guide who's group we tagged along in.
Walking into the camp was eerie, It's devastating to think that it all happened not so long ago. We hardly spoke as we wandered through the camp and museum Sam said 'Brutal hey?' a few times but other than that we were silent.

Me, standing in the "showers" where they would gas prisoners before cremating them
When we got back in to Munich it was raining again. (I swear it's meant to be summer here) So we found a beer hall and waited for it to stop raining.

Sam was working his way through the meat dishes of Germany (whilst I was working my way through the potatoes of Germany) and ordered a wiener schnitzel - they bought him two and then another one because according to the waiter "Ve vere sinking zat it vasn't enough"


Because two just wouldn't have been enough

How Germany isn't full of enormous people I don't know, all that beer and meat is intense..

I told Sam we had to see the glockenspiel before we left because its a thing that you have to do.
The glockenspiel is like a cuckoo clock and instead of the people in German dress/children/knights riding horses popping out of the clock they spin around.

The most exciting part was when one of the knights nearly fell off out of the clock into the full square of people below.

We didn't stay for the whole thing a few rotations was all we needed.
The square was packed with people gazing at the glockenspiel, maybe we just didn't get it?



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