Munich Museums and More!

We started our day by rubbing some lucky lions! I think the one I rubbed was for prosperity, but I'm not sure.

We went to Englischer Garten. It's really big and I hear very popular in the summer months. In the winter... not so much. As we were walking though the park was saw a bunch of people surfing.   The forceful current and a cement slab create a wave for the surfers. It was fun to watch them. 

After exploring the garden we went to the Neue Pinakothek art museum.   We got there just as it was opening.  Since it was Sunday the entrance fee was only 1 Euro. By the time we left it PACKED!  We got to see Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers, Claude Monet’s Water Lilies. Very cool! There was some other impressionist paintings I enjoyed everything else was just like any other art museum to me.

Next we went to the top of St. Peter's Church. There were what seemed like a million stairs and they were really narrow so only one person could be going up or down at a time. The view from the top was AMAZING! It was so clear we could see the Alps. On one side it was super windy and scary so I kind of hurried down after that. 

Last stop on the busy day was Deutsches Museum. It is a very large science museum. It reminded me a lot of the Smithsonian.  It was pretty cool. I was getting tired by then and mostly just wanted to sit down the whole time we were there. 

Then we said so long to the clear sky and clean air and made our way back to Poland. 

Augustiner Brew Hall

 Rather than going to Hofbrauhaus for the Beer Hall experience we decided to go to Augustiner. We were told by locals that their beer and food was superior. 

Walking into Augustiner we were instantly intimidated by the long tables filled with people. We were told to just sit down, but there weren't any empty tables and we didn't know who to join. 

We sat down next to an Italian couple. They sat at one end and we sat at the other. We introduced ourselves and that was about as far as our conversation went. 

After we had ordered our drinks, three more people joined our table. They were talking and we overheard them mention Minnesota! We introduced ourselves and learned that they were students at the UMD. It was really fun to talk to them and share our travel stories. It ended up being a fun night!

Our food was good, but honestly the beer was better! I am not sure what it was but Joel, I'll do some research and maybe we can make a batch when I get home : )

Hello Munich

As many of you know, over Christmas break Genna and I took a trip to Munich. By car it is about 7 hour drive. By train it was going to take about 22 hours and we would have had to change trains several times. The best option we found was taking a bus. It took 17 hours. We used Sindbad bus company. They were great! We just had to change busses once and they were super helpful and made sure we got on the right bus, even though it was clearly marked. 

We arrived in Munich at about 8am, went to our hostel and dropped our stuff off and then went on a free walking tour of the city. 

Above are pictures of the Glockenspiel. It's life size statues that move around for a few minutes to music. I stood there and thought this is kind of cool. After a while I thought, why am I still standing here?  

Munich is well known for it's beer. It is the home of the original Hofbrauhaus and many other beer halls. We stopped there on the walking tour. Honestly, it looked exactly like the Hofbrauhaus in Pittsburgh and I am assuming every other one around the world, but it's the original and I can say I've been there. 

Our tour guide told us some funny stories about the evolution of beer halls. If you are interested Genna retold them on her blog. 

After the tour we went to the Viktualien market. There were some amazing seasonings. We bought some for friends in Poland. I wish we would have bought more! For dinner we had a German Bratwurst! We were pretty much zombies by about 4pm, so we went to bed super early!