Munich

June 3-5

Munich is a beautiful city: beautiful buildings, beautiful scenery, beautiful people.

We arrived early afternoon and Sarah and I headed out for a walk around while Michael napped. We quickly realized how amazing our “neighborhood park” is. Englischer Garten has an area of 910 acres, with its name referring to its English garden form of informal landscape. Thank you Wikipedia.

The park has several huge open green spaces where people just laid around enjoying the beautiful weather. Situated right next to the university, Englischer was packed with young people. The huge green space reminded me very much of New York City’s Central Park.

It also has several streams that flow through the park that a ton of young people were jumping in and riding the fast moving current, only to jump out, walk back up and do it again. There was even a rope swing that people were using at one point in the stream.

There is a lake that these streams feed into with paddle boats and ducks scattered throughout. There is also a beer garden that sits on the edge of the lake – one of two beer gardens in the park. This beer garden has 2500 seats. So, you know, just a little place to pop into for a beer.

The two or so hours that we wandered around got us super excited to explore more of this city. Then we headed out to met Michael for dinner… my fish definitely won the meal.

And then we headed back to bed early. After a few late nights out with Ken and Janine, we all needed some good sleep.

The next morning, we woke up, grabbed a quick breakfast and jumped on a train to head out of the city. That’s right, after 15 hours in the city it was time to leave again. But we didn’t go too far. An hour and a half on trains took us out to the city of Dachau. It was only suppose to be an hour, but I put us on the wrong train and shook Sarah’s confidence in her travel partners. But we finally arrived and spent three or so hours before returning to the city. I’m going to write a separate post about that experience next. So for now, let’s just skip ahead a few hours and get back into the city.

There were a few things that we needed to see while visiting the city. Mostly, we wanted to walk around, explore the old town and then head to the original Hofbräuhaus.

The majority of our exploring centered around Marienplatz which is the main square in old town. It was named Marienplatz for the Virgin Mary after the city prayed for her intercession during a cholera epidemic.

This column with Mary on top was erected in 1638 during celebrations marking the end of the Swedish occupation of the city.

This is the New City Hall building… that’s actually what it is called. Its construction started in 1867 and it’s considered new.

We wandered through some of the shops and a market next to the square and then headed off to Hofbräuhaus. It had been a full day without a beer…

Hofbräuhaus was originally built in 1607 with several restorations, including one in 1958. The beer served is from Staatliches Hofbräuhaus brewery and they also serve a variety of meats and pretzels. Interesting fact: on February 24, 1920, Adolf Hitler organized one of his first propaganda events here. There are actually quite a few buildings and sites to see in Munich related to that period in history. So even breaking Dachau into a separate post can’t separate all the bad history from this area.

We got there at a great time and were able to get a table out in the biergarten.

The place is huge, but was also quite full. We hung out for a few beers and taught Sarah how to play golf.

Inside there was a bandstand and kitschy decorations.

Lederhosen!!! Those guys don’t work here. That is just what they are choosing to wear.

Afterwards we wandered home, making a few stops along the way.

A church:

Excited to see a family name:

Missing Ken and Janine:

Ice cream:

Funny thing about that ice cream – you can see in the back of this picture that they are trying to move a piece of stainless steal furniture through the ice cream shop door. It’s stuck. They served us our ice cream through a window while a group of people stood around not sure what to do next with it.

And then bed. It was another early night to bed, but we had a very draining day and were exhausted.

The next morning we had to check out of our Airbnb by 10am and then had about 6 hours before our bus ride. Carrying around all of our bags, we had the perfect way to spend this time: back to our favorite park! We found a shady area and enjoyed the fresh air for hours. Sarah and I took the opportunity to get a little sun, although we ultimately passed on floating down the river.

We saved a bit of time to pop into one of the two beer gardens for lunch where Michael decided to order spongy moist meat. Gross. There is no picture of it, so you’ll have to use your imagination. Then it was off to Prague. There was definitely more to see here in Munich, but I think we were ready to keep moving. It was a great city and a really great park.