MUNICH!
This weekend was spent in Munich with Emily, Stephanie, and their German friend Tom. It was so much fun!
Thursday night we arrived late (11:40) and checked into the Hostel we were staying in for one night. It was called Jaeger’s Hostel. (Oh, European high speed train travel is so much better than flying. It took about 6 hours to get to Munich from Paris, but the seats were big and comfortable.) Anyway, the hostel was cool. We met some interesting people there (a bunch of british high schoolers) and slept in a 40 person dorm. We stayed up pretty late talking to people, but we had to check out at 10:00 the next morning.
Friday we got up early and ate the pathetic free hostel breakfast of toast and jam. Before we came to Munich, Emily looked up the top ten things to do there, one of which was Mike’s Bike Tours. We decided we should do it first because it takes you to a lot of different places in Munich. It was 18 euro for the tour, but it was absolutely worth it. The tour is geared towards young American travelers. The tour guides are crude but funny. I wouldn’t recommend it for people who are easily offended. The tour took us by several landmarks, the English gardens, and the famous Chinese Tower Beer garden. Of course we saw the Glockenspiel and Marienplatz before the tour even started. After the tour ended we had a few hours to shop and walk around the Marienplatz area before meeting up with Tom. After we got together with Tom he took us to his flat to drop off our stuff and then cooked us dinner. It was probably the healthiest meal I have eaten in Europe. After dinner we went to the Hofbrauhaus! On the way there, in the train, we met two German guys who decided to join us at the Hofbrauhaus. There names were Sebastian and Harry. They were really fun and taught us this beer drinking song in German and about Prosting. I don’t care much for beer but I had some good radler. When the beer hall closed we went to an authentic German techno club.
The next morning we got up and all took showers. Tom went and bought us breakfast and brought it back to the flat. He was so generous to us while we stayed with him. We plan to send him a really nice thank you gift. After breakfast we left Tom and went to the Franzplatz, the church where there is a footprint from the devil. We also went up in the bell tower here. Everything in Munich is cheaper than in Paris. To go up a belltower in Paris it is about 6 euro, all the towers in Munich were 1.50 euro. There was a big festival going on all weekend in Munich. It was to celebrate the 850 yr birthday of Munich. We walked around that festival and ate pretzels and lunch before we met back up with Tom. Tom took us out to the Munich Olympic Park. I wasn’t really excited to see this because I figured it wouldn’t be that different from the one in Atlanta. I was so wrong though. It was beautiful. There were rolling green hills juxtaposed against crazy modern architecture. At the park there was a music and craft festival going on. We didn’t do much Saturday night because we wanted to go to Dachau concentration camp early the next morning.
Sunday we got up early and rode the train to Dachau. Tom had never been to a concentration camp before so he went with us. It was really depressing to see, and Dachau was actually better than a lot of concentration camps. We spent a few hours there, and I was very ready to go when it was time to leave, but I am glad I went. After we returned to the center of Munich to kill time before our train left. We went back to the English Gardens and walked around some more. Then we said goodbye to Tom and went to the train station to catch our train.
This might be the most interesting thing that happened to us while we were gone. We have class Monday mornings at 8:30. Our train was an overnight train and we were supposed to arrive in Paris at 6:30. We get on the train and find our couchette. We are laughing and having a good time, until the ticket checker comes to check our reservations. The train had already left the station but it was making several more stops on the way to Paris. The man starts yelling at us in German and we have no idea what he is saying. It turns out our reservations were for Monday night. We are panicking. We checked the tickets when we got them, but the seasonal employee who took forever to make our reservations had lied to us. She said that tickets for overnight trains had the next day on the ticket, the arrival date. This is true for Eurail but not reservations. So we are afraid they are going to kick us off the train or charge us a ton of money. They find and English train attendant, and he explains that the couchettes are booked but they will let us stay in the seat cars, but he doesn’t tell us where to go. So we walk around find a car with only two other guys in it. They were so funny. I guess it was like post stress all we could do was laugh. They were Hungarian and they didn’t even have reservations at all. Their english was not great, which made the things they said even funnier. They were smoking cigarettes in th car, and we all stuck our heads out the window. They also kept going to the bathroom to get high. They were very fun. After we spent a few hours with them the attendants found us and gave us seats in a couchette. The train wasn’t even close to full. I am almost glad we got kicked out initially though because we had so much fun with those Hungarians.
We arrived on time in Paris this morning. Then had to go back to classes and school things.
