We spent three and a half days in Munich, and despite the rainy weather, we enjoyed it. I personally enjoyed the historical places and stories we heard in Berlin over Munich, but both are neat cities. Munich is very wealthy as it showed time and time again when compared to Berlin as a whole. Yet there was at least one resounding similarity....
This is by far the largest pretzel either of us have ever seen, so we obviously needed to get it. Unfortunately, this one wasn't fresh and didn't taste as good as it could have.
Munich's New Town Hall that was made to look old, but was built in 1908. It was purposely built to look older. So, this is the New Town Hall that looks older than what is the Old Town Hall below. The Old Town Hall was originally constructed in the 1300s, and it has undergone several renovations over the years.
One of Mark's favorite childhood pizza places...I can't attest to how good the pizza was, especially when he says the slices would cost around $1-$2, and he would get free pizza for good grades. Did he like the cheap prices or the "good" tasting pizza? Hmm...not sure. Either way, this was the name of it. Unfortunately, the one he frequented as a kid (he always be one to me) closed its location to make room for a Dick's Sporting Goods :(.
I was pretty excited to be able to drink the water from the public fountains in Munich...tasty!
Street market
"Walk through....similar to a drive through but this one has Munich if not Germany's main beverage: beer. We have learned that beer was (and is to some people and cultures still) a food, and it is embedded to many cultures, too. The average German consumes 1.5 liters a day which is not too far from half a gallon. Think about the popular 2 liters of Coke you would buy. We got a beer, and sat at the picnic tables to enjoy it with the hundreds of other people in the market square, Marienplatz.
We were about to start our bike tour in the pouring rain...neither of us knew how it would go in the rain, but trekked on anyway. Yes, I know I look real cool with the 1 euro poncho I bought from the tour company. ;) Rain or shine, Mark mentioned how he thinks I'm still looking fine.
Munich Opera House - It was built/rebuilt a total of 5 times, the first three were made of wood and burned down time and time again. My favorite story was when the third building was on fire, they brought beer from the Hofbrauhaus down the road to try to get the fire out, but as our guide told us it ended up being, "one beer for the fire, one beer for me, one beer for the fire, two for me...". The reason this was due to the water storage container (built and added into the reconstruction plans after the building burned down a second time) close to the ceiling that was supposed to release the water as a sort of sprinkler system had frozen.
This was our first stop on the bike tour and was very grateful that the rain stopped and the weather was beautiful the remainder of the tour.
The King at the time went to Venice and liked this building so much that he had it constructed in Munich, but houses different monuments. I hope to find this building in Venice when we go.
China Beer Garden - took a break from biking to enjoy some dinner and conversations with others on our tour. Beer gardens started by way of brewers and townspeople wanting a way to keep the liquid cool. Instead of going to the brewery and then lugging the beer to their house, people began to wonder "why not just drink it on site?". Therefore, chestnut trees were used as the best canopy to provide shade from the sun and long benches and tables were added. What makes an authentic beer garden is one that is located underneath chestnut trees and has the original brewery on site.
An engineer from California who moved to Munich created this surfing "hot spot" in Germany...it was pretty amazing to see these surfers ride the waves in a narrow river and some coming quite close to hitting their head on the side walls. It was very impressive though to see such talent on a river.
After explaining the history of Berlin's surfers, our tour guide mentioned how you could not take this back to your home country (most likely) for a couple reasons. One is that this is breaking the law, but the second is that Munich has what is essentially called the "Common Sense" law. Essentially, you cannot sue the city for doing something that you knew was dangerous and/or believed to be dangerous by using your common sense. If only the USA had such a law that would prevent lawsuits such as, woman sues McDonald's for burns suffered from spilling her hot coffee or the man who sued Winnebago RV company for setting the cruise control and leaves the driver's seat thinking it would drive itself. Common sense people. Common sense.
I'm attempting to take some action shots while biking...not sure it was the best idea for safety reasons, but both the camera and myself remained uninjured.
What was once a top private school in Germany in hopes of better retaining students who were leaving to be educated in other countries now serves as one of Munich's council buildings. Also, BMW gets to rent the place out for the annual Christmas and/or New Year's Party (supposedly for free) considering how much they do for the city.
The end of a successful bike tour; we were glad that the rain stopped at the beginning to finish with our dry clothes.
Mark's "breakfast of champions" bratwurst style hot dog at 9:13 a.m.
We walked to Olympic Park, site of the Summer 1972 Olympic Games, from our hotel and enjoyed the views upon our arrival; the garden was enormous. You may remember and/or forget that this was the first Olympics hosted by Germany since the Nazi Party for the '36 Games. This is also known as Munich Massacre wherein a terrorist attack by 8 Palestinians kidnapped and killed several Israeli Olympic athletes. You can read more about this here: Munich Massacre.
The BMX World Tour ramps were in the process of being built while we were there; we are definitely going to check this out online. The competition is in a week or two. If only we were here for it; Mark could give me an idea of what he partook in as a kid.
1972 Summer Olympic Stadium in the background
Spent some time perusing the different BMW and Rolls Royce models at the BMW Welt.
My next car?
It was really interesting to read about how a Rolls Royce is created, and I now have a better understanding as to why those cars are so outrageously expensive. Mark is thinking we forgo saving for a house down payment and go after one of these instead. He then asked himself, "Does that make sense?" His answer was no.
Next stop on our rainy day: Deutsches Museum
Blown glass demonstration
My math nerd...I love him all the same. :)
We both enjoyed this area, as it actually had hands on activities.
Mark working on a spinoff version of the famed Rubix Cube
So, I made the mistake of pushing back when we went to the beer hall to watch the Germany vs. Brazil. We got to the beer hall about 1.5 hours before the game was suppose to start, and they were packed. So, we went to this smaller restaurant to watch the game, but we still had fun watching it among the locals.
This guy cracked us up the entire night. He was watching the game on another TV most of the time. We quickly realized our TV had a delay, because he would come out cheering 5-15 seconds before we saw Germany score. Considering I am not a big soccer fan, I have been enjoying it more watching the games over throughout our European destinations. This game was even more exciting with it being such a high scoring game...on Germany's end at least. ;). Mark asked me after the ten minute mark if I thought the game was good or not so far. It was only a minute after that did Germany start their scoring machine.
Rainy Day 3 - We opted to not go to the Neuschwanstein Castle (Disney Land's Sleeping Beauty castle was modeled after), due to not wanting to go in the rain or spend 4 hours on the train, as we already spend quite a bit of time on the train. So, we opted to go tour the oldest brewery in the world.
Weihenstephan is located in Freising, which is north of Munich. It is known for the Benedictine Weihenstephan Abbey (725 A.D.) started by Monks who then went on to establish the oldest active brewery in the world in 1040 A.D.
The tour was really interesting, and we learned a lot about the brewing process.
The place was huge
After the tour, we enjoyed some tasting as part of the tour. We were able to sample the world winning best wheat beer from 2011: Weihenstephan Vitus. Several of their beers continue to rack up awards in the annual competition.
We felt this tour was quite a steal, it was 9 euros (~$12)/each for tour, tasting, pretzel, and 2 euro voucher for their gift shop.
We met some other Americans on our tour and grabbed lunch at the brewery together. We had a great time and enjoyed meeting new people.
Bears were everywhere in Germany; it was fun to see the different designs on them.
Grabbing a drink at the Hofbrauhaus, which was one of my must see places in Munich. Foundation of the Hofbrauhaus was in 1589. It was originally just for the royal, but was later opened to the public in 1828. This current building is the second Hofbrauhaus that was built in 1607, which was built across the street from the original location. They needed more space, which was the reason for the new building.
We went with some of the guys we met on our brewery tour and ended up sitting with Hofbauhaus official members. These older gentlemen were very sweet, despite the language barrier, but found out they had been members for 20+ years and even stored their steins at the Hofbrauhaus under lock and key.
A little something to make me feel like we're back in the States... :) I know, a bit random. Another random thing is that these are Mark's favorite hand dryers. He loves finding and using one after washing his hands upon toilet completion.
We finished the night watching the Argentina VS Netherlands World Cup game at this beer garden.
This was a great way to end our trip in Munich. After three days of rain, we were ready to head onto Switzerland. Unfortunately for us, we also had rain most of our time in Switzerland, too.
Random things we learned in Munich:
1. There are a lot of cops in Munich who are quick to give you a fine for something even as small as walking across the street before the light tells you it's okay.
2. There was a street in Munich where people would walk on to avoid saluting SS Soldiers, but were later either killed or sent to Dachau once the guards realized they had gone a certain amount of times. (Symbolism of rebellion to Hitler)
3. They have a "Common Sense" law in Munich, where if you are doing something that truly doesn't make sense and you do it under you own will, you can't sue someone else/the city for it.
4. Octoberfest originated from a wedding reception a few hundred years ago that the town had so much fun at, that they requested for the couple to have another party on their anniversary the following year and so on and so on to what is known today as Oktoberfest.
5. Our bike tour guide told us that Munich is a very safe city for a number of reasons with one of them being that people are afraid of the throngs of police out and about that help keep the city safe. To test this, he told us that he purposely left his wallet on the back of his bicycle and left. Hours later he returned, and it was still there. I don't think Mark and I will be trying this one, considering we tested it out ourselves in Berlin, for fun of course :).
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