Munich, Germany - Aug 17 - 18, 2009

We hopped on the train and headed south down to Munich. The trip was just over 3 hours. When we arrived we spent about an hour wandering around getting rates at different hostels/hotels. In the end we decided to stay at the Ludwig Hotel. It's kind of a dive, but it's close to everything and was the cheapest we found. As an added bonus, they had an amazing breakfast buffet!

We spent the rest of the evening wandering around near the station. It is a very weird mix. It seems like everything is just randomly thrown together. There are very poor people, rich businessmen, students, hippies and everything in between all congregating in this area. If you walk down any of the streets near the train station you'll notice that everything jumps around in the same random order, you'll have a 5 star hotel next to a sleezy sex shop, next to a pizza hut, next to a youth hostel, next to a high end clothing store, next to cheap dollar store, etc. Along the streets the cars are in the same fashion, broken down old jalopies and porsches every where.

We started walking to the old town, listening to all the buskers. Some were very good! There was a great string-band quartet (Cello and 3 violins) that we watched for a while.


In the morning we did a free city tour that took about 3 hours. Our guide, Kai, was VERY knowledgeable. He showed us quite a few things that normally on the tour, but he noticed on his own. We visited the major churches and landmarks. We watched the Glockenspiel (a show in the main plaza. The figures in the picture below dance around 3 times every day for about 5 - 10 minutes. It represents the wedding of one of the kings.


One of the funny things about Munich is the town halls. There are 2. The new town hall was built to replace the old one (we don't remember the exact years). They designed the new hall like an old cathedral so would look even older than the original. The old town hall was destroyed during World War II so the city decided to rebuild it. Now the the Old Town Hall is WAY newer than the New town hall... Confusing, but interesting.

Old Town Hall (but really the newest one):


The old town hall is to the left:



The tour guide pointed out small things like a cannonball that was still lodged in a church from the 30 years war! It actually fell out during the bombing in WWII, but a civilian kept it in his house for 2 years, returned it to the church and the placed it back in the wall.


Maximilian I's Opera House. This opera house was designed with a water reservoir in the ceiling in case of fire. Unfortunately the building caught on fire and the water system didn't work! Why? Because it was winter and the reservoir was frozen!! The architect didn't think to heat the emergency water system... The man in charge of the opera house at the time ran down the street to Hofbrauhaus (the largest beer house in the world) and convinced everyone to make a giant human line to the opera house so they could pass beers along and extinguish the fire. Great idea, except all the mugs were empty when they got to the end of the line! hahaha The entire building burned and was later reconstructed.


That evening we joined a pub crawl tour. "The Beer Challenge". We made our way through 3 of the biggest beer halls in the world and finished in a Youth Hostel Pub next to the main train station. We met some great people on the tour from all over the world (Canada/USA/Britain/Ireland/Australia/China/Japan). We had a blast and definitely had our fill of German Beer. Those 1 litre mugs catch up to you in a hurry!! We decided to only eat Pretzels in the bar, the alternative was fish on a stick! haha



Mmmmm Fish on a Stick!!!