Munich, Part 1

Hey there! So I've decided to split up my recent trip to Germany into 2 posts. The first will be about my general experiences in and around Munich. The 2nd will be all about Oktoberfest. Now obviously, Oktoberfest's primary lure is the beer, so if you don't want to hear about me drinking then you can simply skip the next post. As a side note, I know that on many occasions I have mentioned that I have enjoyed a few spirits. Despite concerns from a few of you, I really don't drink that often. It's just that usually a few pints are involved around the activities that are fun, and therefore the activities that I write about. Most of my nights involve me getting off work, going to the gym for a couple hours and making dinner at home. Do you really want to hear about that all the time?

Pics here: http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/bbergey/Munich#

My trip to Germany was accompanied by two co-workers, Hayley and Fran. We caught the first tube to Heathrow Saturday morning to catch our flight to Munich. We ended up getting to the airport about 1 hour before our flight, which apparently isn't enough time. After getting seriously scalded by an unpleasant British Airways employee, we were escorted to the "Fast Track" security line and then literally ran to catch our flight. Once on board, we did enjoy a comfy flight which included free food and drinks! When we landed in Munich, we got on the train and made our way through Munich to the campsite where we had planned to stay. We set up camp, which included our large and luxurious tent complete with a deer head on the front, and got back on the train to central Munich. Fran had made arrangements to meet one of her friends from school who now lives and works in Munich. She showed us around part of the shopping district and we made our way to a German pub and restaurant that sat on a square where a market was taking place.

The first thing I drank in Munich was a great local Weiss beer (Hefeweisen, basically). The first thing I ate in Munich was a pretzel. I was in heaven. The restaurant itself was packed and we ended up being there for around 3 hours. For my meal, I ordered a gigantic platter of cold meats, sausages, cheeses, bread and salad. It was absolutely amazing and I could probably eat it every day for the rest of my life. After lunch, we were on a mission to buy our outfits for Oktoberfest the next day. We went to a number of shops filled with authentic traditional German clothing. I bought a checked shirt, a classic handkerchief, socks, and some slippers that worked as shoes. Lederhosen were just too expensive to justify. My outfit did look pretty good though and the suspenders I already had made it complete! After shopping we sat down at a small cafe, or "Konditerei," and enjoyed some cake and hot chocolate. I have to say that I didn't like the desserts as much as I thought I would. The texture of those that I had were very light like a mousse. Not really what I expected when I ordered a cheesecake. Also, Germans seem to be really big fans of gelatin. Every dessert I tried had some in or on it, and even some of the sausages on my giant platter were held together by gelatin. Those were the only two things I didn't eat. After the cafe, we went to a store and bought some food and snacks and headed back to the campground for some cards and an early night. I also had my first (of many) giant pretzels about the size of my head. Believe it or not, every pic you see with me and a pretzel was actually a different pretzel.

Sunday morning we got up and out early to make it to the Oktoberfest around 9:30am so we could get a seat. As mentioned above, the entire day of Sunday will be a separate post. However, let me take this space to talk about Munich in general. It was definitely bigger than I expected, but it was very nice and very clean. All of central Munich was filled with excellent shopping, restaurants, pubs and historic buildings. Due to the war, most of Munich is actually pretty new and modern. However, you can definitely tell when you see a building that survived the destruction, and they looked really cool. Since I didn't do any research on Munich before I left, I don't really know what any of the buildings are that we saw. Also, none of us were prepared for how cold it was! The tent and sleeping bags were warm enough at night, but it was rather cold all day long every day. The transportation system is also excellent. The trains are very nice and well kept, come on a regular schedule well displayed, and connect all parts of the city. Hopefully I'll have many opportunities to visit other areas of Germany, but I really enjoyed Munich and could definitely even see living there. I think I kinda belong in Germany. All I need to do is learn the language a bit better!

After Sunday, I felt surprisingly OK on Monday morning after some water and a Clif bar. Hayley was a different story. She has been battling a cold for weeks now, and camping and drinking weren't helping at all. She slept in while Fran and I showered and reminisced on the prior day's events. After we were all ready, we finally made our way back to the Oktoberfest fairgrounds so we could actually walk around and see everything. Unfortunately it was cold and rainy, but we didn't let it stop us. Our first stop was the lost and found. At this point, I'll just say that Fran got her mobile phone back but not her camera. Unfortunately my North Face soft shell was no where to be seen. We visited one of the tents to get lunch and I ordered a sparkling apple juice and a half chicken with potatoes. It was excellent! Hayley ordered some kind of dumpling soup that didn't taste much better than it looked. She didn't eat very much of it.

We then walked around the fairgrounds. Basically, it reminded me of a huge state fair. The only addition is beer. There are about 15 huge beer tents that aren't really tents since they have permanent walls and seat thousands of people. I'll explain more about the beer tents in my next post, but they are amazing so make sure you come back to read about them! There were also a lot of rides, some of which were pretty impressive; including a couple roller coasters, one of which had 5 loops! We decided to go in the Haunted House, which highlighted a short (and very old) mummy movie clip in German. It was amazing. Of course I couldn't leave the fairgrounds without another extra large pretzel.

The fairgrounds was within walking or tram distance to the city center, so we slowly made our way there. We passed a number of cool buildings and churches and I snapped plenty of pics along the way. We also stopped at a lovely cafe and had some tea. Fran and Hayley ordered some desserts and I tried theirs. We continued to walk around the city seeing all the sights and taking plenty of pics. I was so surprised to see how bike and pedestrian friendly the city was. Most of the main lanes in the city center are pedestrian-only, which is really amazing when you think about how big of an area it is. It was really cool. We stopped for a quick dinner at a grocery store cafe and then met up with Fran's friend again at a pub to say goodbye. We were pretty tired and made our way back to the campground to hit the sack since we knew we had an early morning on Tuesday.

We all reluctantly got up on Tuesday morning, knowing that we had to clean, pack up, and take down the wet tent. We got it all done by 8am and caught the bus to the train to another train that took us to the airport. We got there with plenty of time to spare, which I used to get some lunch, 2 more pretzels for the road and 3 bags of hard pretzels to last me a couple weeks in London. Once back in London, we all headed straight to the office to put in a half day. Needless to say we were tired, dirty, smelly, and not in the mood to work. Hayley and I have been very busy, however, and we were definitely needed in the office. I think we learned we need to minimize the time that the two of us are both gone at the same time.