The Wacky World of a Lazy Pig (AKA Simon)

Eurotrip day 20 - Beer gardens everywhere

We got the yelled at in the morning again by the conductor. He gave the same spew from the previous night. "You paid for 2 beds in a 6 bed couchette room." I don't understand why he was such an ass about it. It wasn't like there was someone else that turned away because of us. But I was still slightly scared that he would make us pay some fine for doing that. We were in Munich. A Southern city in the old Bavaria area.

This was the weirdest feeling when we packed out stuff and moved the beds back to their original position. I actualy had a lot of trouble putting back the middle bed, it just wouldn't snap back into position. Steve tried to help but it didn't really budge. Anyway, the weird feeling. The first time, we had stepped into a city that where the spoken and written language were new to us. There was no way that we could understand anything written on the signs.

It was 6:30 am and there was literally nothing open. Not only were the food stands closed at this time, everything out at the main street were also closed. Nothing open and no one to ask any questions about the location of the hostel. We walked around the entire station once with our heavy backpacks before deciding to drop them off at the pay storage. These pay lockers are large and were really made for the back packer in mind. There were a ton of them. Probably around 200 lockers were available.

With our backpacks safe at the train station lockers, headed out on a journey to find our hostel. All we had was the name of the hostel and the street name it was on. Wombat's, a high profile hostel in Munich that had a great price. The street it was on? Couldn't find it. No idea where it was and we had no way of getting any map because everything was closed. Sucked. Hehe, if Roger were here, he would have freaked out and become disappointed for not being very organized and prepared. Yup, we still missed Roger's company.

Who cares if we were lost right? We were here to explore. YAY!!! Where did we first go? Just some direction that was random and that we though was right. The streets were quiet and cold. Cars were rare at this time of day and the only noise came from the train station or the local public transportation. It seemed really boring and dead. I was really hoping that all of Munich was not like this. We had signed up to stay for 2 nights and thats it, best not to waste it on a boring city.

Rick Steve's had nothing to say about Munich. Not because there wasn't anything to do in Munich, it was mainly because the book didn't cover that area. It did, however, cover other smaller areas in Bavaria like the really nice Neuschwanstein castle in Fussen, south of Munich. Anyway, so on one hand, we had no information and no expectation of Munich and the things to do. The only things that i could think of for Germany were german sausages and beer. But there didn't seem to be any indication of these at all.

We wandered off really far in one direction (no sure if it was north, east, south or west) and just kept going until we hit a large street. There wasn't much so we turned around and started heading back. On the way back though, Steve suggested that we stop for a quick breakfast. I wasn't really into eating and spending money on food this early. I was on a budget and I planned to stick to it. Anyway, Steve went into this small coffee and bakery shop and bought a croissant with a coffee. I refused to get anything saying that nothing interested me. Steve felt bad and I think even a little pissed off. He stopped at the shop so that we would eat together rather than having me watch him eat. But knowing how nice Steve is, he offered me some of his food. What a great friend.

Our slow stroll back to the train station had given the shops at the train station enough time to open up but not ready to serve. Luckily, there were finally people the ask for directions to the hostel. So where was the hostel? within 1 block of the train station. It was soooooooo freakin close and we missed the street. Man were we blind. We quickly got our bags and walked over to Wombat's. You could tell from the front of Wombat's that this was going to be a good hostel. And we were right. We waited in line to check-in and was quickly served. We were on the 4th floor in a pretty big room with a total of 6 beds. When we arrived, the room was totally empty. We were wondering at first if it was a co-ed room or not.

Steve and I did the traditional routine, Rock Paper Scissors was used to determine who got to choose first. I lost AGAIN! Steve of course took the bottom bunk while I took the top. The beds were really really nice and the room was super clean and had a lot of space to move around the put stuff. The washroom was also comparable to a motel washroom. The only bad part was that, in the morning, the sun was blinding. I guess we were facing the east. Once we had put the bed sheets on and settled in, we walked back downstairs to look around the hostel.

By the time we got downstairs, there was a small group gathering around the front desk. They weren't there to check-in though and they didn't have any backpacks on. After asking one of the people, we found out that there was a free tour being given which started at 11:15am. There was still time left to wander and grab some supplies for the day pack. Steve and I took the elevator back up again. This time, we were surprised to find out that we were indeed staying in a co-ed room. But that wasn't a good thing this time, compared to Rome if you know what I mean.

The other 4 beds were occupied by girls, that were, umm... fat or bitchy. Well, 3 of them atleast. All of them american. Not saying that american women are bitchy and just can't stop talking and complaining, but they seemed to be those spoiled girls that got everthing from daddy. The other girl was also not interesting as she was really a GEEKY girl. Sure, some girls are geeky but cute and still look nice. This was different. Large glasses, slightly greasy hair, no interesting hair style and clothing style really represented a geek that didn't really care at all. They were sometimes fun to talk to. But most of the time, the converstations would eventually lead back to the girls talking about themselves. Summary, they weren't people I would be interested in.

But anyway, we went back downstairs to wait with the group for the New Munich free tour. Hmm it was 11:20 and the tour guide hadn't arrived. Our tour guide was late but it didn't matter. The guide spoke english, but not English english. He was Irish born and came to Munich for one year and decided to stay and work as a tour guide that gets paid by tip. Anyway, he was a great tour guide. The first place that he took us was the Marienplatz where we could see the old Glockenspiel.

Marienplatz is a very popular and old location of Munich. It had huge statue in the middle and on one side, a large clock tower and building called the Glockenspiel. Actually, I think the clock is called Glockenspiel. Our tour guide met up with another colleague of his at Marienplatz and they did a really good historical background review of the Glockenspiel and what the meaning of it was. At exactly 12pm, the Glockenspiel would start moving and a small show was done on the tower. These of course weren't life performances. They were really old flat cardbaord like figures that travelled on a circular path like in those classic clocks. Anyway, the performance re-enacted an old jousting competition. It was interesting to see this, thought wasn't exciting. It also started late as the person that had to start it daily manually was also late. Yes, everyday, an old man had to go up to the Glockenspiel and manually start it. I wonder why they didn't automate it.

Anyway, after the clock struck twelve, our tour guide led us to an empty eara very close to the Marienplatz and asked us to sit down on the stairs for a history lesson. Though I forgot a lot of what was mentioned, I did remember the description of the Munich symbol, a monk with book on his left hand. Munich was originally a place with a Monastery way way back. I actual fact, Munich means Monks.

Before a promise of lunch, our tour guide lead us to the Frauenkirche (Church of our Lady) to talk about the history of the church and the people that were buried outside of it. There were two special things to take away from this visit. First, our current pope (Pope Benedict XVI) was once an archbishop of Munich and served in this very particular church. The second fact is that the church is one of the very rare structures that was not totally destroyed during World War II. Of course there was the story about the deal between the original builders of the Frauenkirche and the Devil. The deal was that the Devil would help in building the but in return, the church must be built without windows. Sure, the church was built, and it also had windows. But the Devil was tricked, for from a certain spot at the entrance, the church would seem windowless because the pillars would block all the windows when perceived from that position. The church was then consecrated and the Devil could no longer return. Not sure if this is true or not :)

Funny thing. after this, our tour group continued to move on. But for some reason, I couldn't find Steve. He went missing. I didn't see him come out, but I did see him go in. I started looking for him all around the church, around the park and even back at the shopping street that we first came from. I was so worried. How could our group have lost Steve or Steve lose the group? It would be horrible to have been split with him because we had no map or anything for Munich. The only real place we would have known to get to was the hostel. I could feel myself panicking and running around frantically looking for the stupid dude in red.

I left the group for around 5 minutes so I could find Steve. I was about to give up when I saw Steve walking all calmly around the little park like area infront of the Frauenkirche. Ooooh I wanted to hit him for getting me so worried. Anyway, after venting out a little frustration, we hurried up to get back with our group, that wasn't too far away. They were heading towards the famous out door garden and market.

At this market, there were essentially two things to get, Lunch and BOOZE. We were given 20 minutes to find something to eat and then head out. Our guide not only recommended that we have the Bratwurst Zemmel (German Sausage with Bun) and the famous Augustiner in Germany. I was being a cheap ass and didn't go for the beer, atleast no for the time being. I did however have a Bratwurst Zemmel. t was 3-4 Euros or something and it was soooooooo good. It was juicey and the bun was large enough to match the size of the sausage. I wish I had another one but that would have been maybe too much.

Funny little thing to not about the market was the bright coloured pole in the middle of the market. It used to be a symbol of something, but now, it s more a symbol of homosexuality. Really really weird. The other stores in the market primarily sold cheeses and meets. Some fresh fruits were also available, but they really seemed expensive. Not surprisngly, there were some fast food joints around too. The Pizza Hut and coffee shops that were around were quite packed. Definitely not something I was interested in, unless they were serving a cheap beverage of some sort

Now that Lunch was over, we continued our free tour towards the Hofbrauhaus, the renowned anf famous beer hall and garden. Our tour group stopped hear to listen to the wonderful history and stories from our tour guide. First things first, the beer hall is very old ans traditional. It was full of wooden benches and tables, like the ones that you see at beaches in Canada. We stood outside listening before we even stepped inside. The major highlight of this part of the tour was the story.

Back in the day, Munichens would come to the Hofbrauhaus to just drink, drink and drink. There was a lot of singing and dancing on tables. The popularity of the Hofbrauhaus was nuts and crazy to the point that it was over crowded. Customers would not be able to find a seat normally when they arrived. The people already sitting down did NOT want to give up their spots too. So what did they have to do to keep their seat? That's right, keep drinking more. But there is always something wrong with drinking too much booze in a short period of time but expect to stay long. Their bladders were starting to really fill up from all the alcohol they were drinking to preserve their seats. Now, the Drinker is stuck in a huge dilemma at this point. On one hand, they really want to keep their seat, but conversely, they really have to go pee before they explode. But in order to go pee, they would have to get off their seat to go to the washroom, which would obviously be taken the second he left for the washroom. So what could they do about this? This is disgusting by the way, and this is a warning. The Munichens would unzip (well not unzip, but you know what I mean) their pants right there in their seat and pissed onto a pole built into the table. The idea was that they would piss onto this pole to minimize the amount of splash from the action. Anyway, disgusting.

Unfortunately, with everyone doing this in the Hofbrauhaus, conditions were bound to get worse. Eventually, people would start throwing up in the beer hall and become really sick because of the lack of sanitation. It got to the point where they had to get rid of all the customers in the hall and cleaned all the crap off the floor and wash them out onto the street. The Street would then carry this urine, vomit and other disgusting substances away. This probably just made things worse. Not only causing the streets to smell bad, but probably spreading bad germs and diseases around.

With that story finished, we finally got to step into the Hofbrauhaus all excited to see what Munich drinking culture was like. There were watitresses that came around carrying several tall glasses of beer to customers and a huge number of benches. Most of the people were drinking beer and some of them were eating lunch or some food. Our tour guide explained that several changes were made the policies at Hofbrauhaus. Customers were now allowed to eat food in the beer hall and also bring their own food to eat rather than having to be forced to eat from their menu. I think this is a great idea, but we will probably never see this in Canada.

Once inside the beer garden, we got another story telling about Oktoberfest. The world famous festival that of course is held around the October time frame (actually closer to late September) in Munich. Each year, there are more and more poeple coming to attend the festival. Though the history of the festival was more of an agriculture type of festival to celebrate the marriage of King Ludwig I, it eventually really evolved more of a food and beerfest. Giant tents would be setup in the meadows where there is a lot of open space. A lot of fun things are available for peopel thing to play. But really, the main attraction is the beer tent. Under this tent are probably thousands of people all drinking at wooden benches that were identical to those in the Hofbrauhaus.

Anyway, a very interseting tradition and habit was developed because of these beer tents. Because of the large number of people in the tents during Oktoberfest, the heat from everyone's breath and body rose up to the top of the tent. This hot air would condense into water on contact with the cold tent ceiling. Eventually, enough water was developed by the condensation that a drop of water would fall back onto the ground. Now, there is a pretty good chance that the drop would fall into your mug of beer. So what did people do? When they aren't drinking from their mug, they place their hand over the top of the mug to cover the mug from any drops of water. Is it really water? Probably not. They believe that it is more of a mixture between water and human sweat. You can see this type of habit being done in the Hofbrauhaus and in most bars.

Our next few stops were the old museum, town hall and Theater. To get here, we walked past a street that was literally littered with very expensive cars. Sure, Germany has a lot of BMWs and Benz's, but we were seeing even more expensive carfs a like ferraris. Once again, when we got to the Theater, we were asked to sit on the stairs to listen to another great story. This time, it was about the burning of the Theater house. Some time back, way before the war, a huge fire engulfed the Theater house. The wanted to put out the fire, but there wasn't enough water to do it. So instead of using water, the Munichens requested that all the kegs of beer from the Hofbrauhaus be brought to the Theater house so they could douse the flames. They formed a huge line of men to pass kegs from one person to the next in theline. But, there was a problem with this approach. Each person in the line wanted a sip of the beer before it was dumped into the fire. And by the time the keg had made it to the Theater, it was basicallyh emptye and useless. The Theater was burnt down.

From here, we pasted through the outside of an old museum which we didn't go into. If we had to go inside, it wouldn't have been a free tour anymore. Our tour guide brought us to several windows where we could catch a small teaser of the paintings and art inside. We say a long hall with paintings on both sides. Thank goodness it didn't look that interesting, or else I would have regretted it.

At the end of the museum was free exhibit that showed the history of berlin during World War II. It was a black and white film and was shocking. To see 90% of Munich destroyed was something that I couldn't have imagined. Movies in general didn't seem to portray German cities too well at times, leaving far too many buildings left standing. The film looped every 5 minutes. We stayed for a whole 10 minutes to make sure that we got everything before we moved on to the final part of the tour.

I can't fully remember if we ended up in front of town hall. We did walk up some steps to sit in the front entrance of a old building that could have resembled a court house. Anyway, it was here that we talked two things: the memorial for battles in World War II symbolized by a line beside the town hall, and the origins of Oktoberfest.

The line was drawn on the pavement to show the battle lines that were held by the allied during World War II. As you can imagine, a lot of people would have died around this area and so they had set a memorial here for them. There was also a sign posted on the side of the road for the public to read. I personally didn't read it, but it described the line and its significance. Our tour guide also let us know to NEVER do any Nazi hand signal of any sort. I think everyone in the group knew exactly what he meant, except for Steve. Steve didn't actually know what it was and started asking me what the signal was. Maybe he was trying to scare us, but our guide told us to not do the Nazi salute thingy as it would land you at least a night in jail. Germans don't like to be reminded of the war.

And the origins of Oktoberfest is from the time of King Ludwig I. When he got married, he wanted to celebrate with the rest of Bavaria and organized a huge festival to celebrate the wedding. It was supposed to be more of a harvest and cultural festival with dancing and less alcohol. But as time passed, the whole point basically changed and eventually turned into a great drinking fest, which Oktoberfest is now notoriously known for. Each year, the number of attendees increases significantly. Last year, they had maybe 2 million people in Munich during Oktoberfest. This year, they were expecting 3-4 million people. Gotta love the beer :).

After the last cramming of information, which by no means was bad, the tour was over. Even though the tour is advertised as free, it isn't always free as you think. There is no fixed cost to the people that join the tour. But it is very nice to leave some tip to the tour guide. And you know what? The guide got quite a lot of tip from everyone. I would think he would make more than me too. I gave him 4 Euros and I think Steve even gave 10 Euros because he didn't have anything smaller. We should have just combined. Oh well.

We didn't have any destination now. I told Steve that I wanted to go back to the churches to check them out in detail, say a few prayers and also climb the towers if possible. Steve didn't mind too much so we headed back by tracing some of our steps. There weren't many places to go actually. We went to St. Peter's Church right beside the beer garden. I went inside to say my prayers and also take a look at each of the small chapels lined on the side. Each had a painting or a statue. The quality of the paintings were not spectacular but was enough to put a smile on my face.

There was also tower at St. Peter's church to climb. We got our student discount and started climbing up again. Towers were obviously not new to us. We had our good look of Munich from the tower for about 15-20 minutes and headed back down. On the way down, a small group of adults were laughing as they came up. As they came up, one of the men farted so loud that it was sooo obvious. This made the trip down a hard to bear for about 20 seconds. Ewww.

Once again, we had no plans as to go anywhere after we left the tower. We decided to take the subway to the old Olympic stadiums and also check out any construction they were doing for the world cup in Germany. The trip there was pretty simple even with the extra detours that they had in certain platforms because of construction. Anyway, the olympic park was very very big actually. Huge stadiums and sports facilities were built on this very hilly park that was noticeably well kept and maintained. One of the first things we saw was the renovation of the soccer/football stadium. Scaffolding was setup all around the outer rim of the stadium. Across the highway overpass were the other attractions.

Stages were being setup for the World Cup and flags, signs and posters were placed in many places. We could smell chlorine the closer we walked up close to the olympic pool. Gates were setup at the track stadium and people were actually paying to go in for tours or something. It was way too expensive to us and we didn't think we could really learn much from here. We did pass by one of the roller coaster simulators and for some reason was really compelled to try it out even though they were available in Canada. Itw as 2-4 euros for the ride and it was worth our little 10 minute ride. We did a space roller coaster trip and was generally fun. On our way out, we passed by a huge pond that was really calm. Not too far from there was the science and technology museum and the BMW museum. We didn't actually walk up to the BMW museum, be we could tell that the cars there were really cool and fancy.

With not much else to do we headed back towards the highway overpass to take some pictures before leaving. We also took pictures with the BMW tower that was far away but had a unique design to it. From here, we took the train back to the main train terminal station.

It was around 5pm at this time and a little too early for anything fun. Steve and I agreed that we should check out the bar and to our surprise, found out that it was happy hour and beers were cheaper. We redeemed our coupon for 1 free pint of beer during happy hour. An though the beer was cheap, it tasted better than the beer in Canada. I guess you can't really compare beers like that. Anyway, we really didn't have anything else for the rest of the day so we hung around the bar for a bit until we realized that we needed to do laundry and update any blogs and look at emails.

While I was waiting for laundry, Steve ran off to the local internet cafe to go on the internet. It was soo close. Within 5 minutes away from the hostel. Once I had placed our clothing in the dryer, I ran off to the internet cafe, but I wanted to do two things this time. My #1 priority was to unload all my pictures that we had accumulated since rome until now onto the CDs that I brought. Second was to write up anything that I missed on the trip before I forgot.

I went to the large basement of the internet cafe and asked around to see if there were any computers that allowed me to burn my movies. One of the employees directed me to the back where there were several computers set up, monitored by a single person. It was quite crazy. I had to pay 3 euros for each CD that I burned, even if the CDs were my own, sooooo stupid. Anyway, I really had no choice and didn't want to look around some more. I handed over the cash and proceeded to a machine. Just as I inserted my CF card into their card reader, windows and its anti virus said that I couldn't proceed because there was a virus on my card. Whoa!!! What the heck? I didn't believe it. There was no way that my flash card could have gotten a virus. Turns out that I got a virus from the computers in Rome. Thank goodness the person there was able to help me fix the problem. I was so scared that my files would be lost.

After all the anxiety had left me, I finished up any blog posts that I needed to do for Venice and then headed back to the hostel with Steve. Steve is always so nice to wait for me and I really appreciate it. We thought there was going to be some cheap food at the bar, but everything was quite expensive and didn't seem very interesting. But the more I think about it, it seemed more like an excuse for us to go out and try some more German Sausages. We walked to a local convenient store where they had a variety of sausages on display at 2.50 euros per sausage with bun. We each got two of different kinds and were really satisfied. The only thing that was left was to get some more beer in us and we would be good to go.

Before we started drinking, we passed by the front desk to sign up for a group train ticket to go to Fussen to visit the Neuschwanstein castle the next day. Steve and I had promised each other that we would both drink a Steing (1 litre) of beer tonight to celebrate our arrival in Munich and Germany. 1 Stein was 4.65 or 4.85 euros or something like that; Don't blame me, blame the alcohol ^_^. The only thing I remember was that the bar had run out of the large Stein glasses and had to compromise by giving us two pints of beer instead. Seeing that each pint is 500 mL, it was perfectly find with us.

One of the girls from our room came down as well to join us. She was talking sooooooo much, that it started getting annoying. As evening started to set in, she seemed to get more drunk and I even got the feeling that she was coming on to me or something EWWWWW. I played it safe by keeping my distance as the party started. The festivities continued on that night with some music, games and musical chairs. The winner got some special drink on the house. It was fun to watch these half drunk people play and almost stumbling off the short stools. Our girl roommate participated and won at the end. She seemed quite rowdy afterwards and ran off talking to some other people. I watched a few people play some pool. There was an opportunity for us to play but the table was not the official size. Steve, I felt, would have really wanted to play it just to get some joy out of beating someone.

Though we could have stayed up really late to play and drink, we thought it would be better to get some shut eye so that we could enjoy our trip tomorrow. The room was warm and had nothing to complain about. This hostel was indeed one of the best ones.

Labels: eurotrip

posted by lazypig @ 12:31 PM