Final Stop Five: Munich, Germany

We arrived in Munich and easily found our hostel. It was the biggest one we had stayed in yet!  Our room was on the fourth floor and up a spiral staircase.  It was nice because the beds were more spread out into a few connected rooms, so it was a little quieter and more private (as private as a hostel room can be!).  After we settled in, we headed out to one of the local brewery restaurants for dinner.  We had our first brews and I had traditional Bavarian sausage and sauerkraut. Afterwards we went and hung out at the hostel bar before heading to bed.  The next morning, we decided to take advantage of the "free" tour offered by the hostel.  Our tour guide was quite interesting. He was a tall, black guy that sounded amazingly American (but he wasn't).  He said he had lived in six different countries and he spoke four languages!  But he was a very good tour guide, and you could tell he loved his city of Munich!  The tour was one of the best tours I think I have ever been on.  It was very informative, and had a lot of history! I feel like I actually learned something, because he repeated things a lot and made it interesting and relatable.  So we did the walking tour for 3-4 hours (which included an authentic brautwurst!).  We visited the central catholic church (and learned that Munich is very catholic), the Marienplatz, Viktualienmarket, Haufbraus (including the room where the Nazi party was formed), Residenzplatz, etc). After the tour we tipped the tour guide (that's how "free" tours work) and wandered back through the shops of the market and the city center.  We got some souvenirs (I got a little shot-glass sized tankard!) and some hot roasted almonds (delicious!). We then went back to the hostel to relax a little bit.  That night we went on a pub tour (with the same tour guide) to get a taste of local night life.  We got pork-knuckle sandwiches and went to a few different types of pubs and tried a different type of beer at each.  In between, we got to try some Bavarian schnapps.  It was all very fun, and a really cool experience!  One of the pubs was very cozy, with a live musician playing accordian.  All the people were sitting at long tables, swaying to the music and singing along, and included us also! They were all very friendly (and ok, maybe a little drunk!).  We also went to a beer hall, which is just like a giant cafeteria full of long tables with benches with everyone drinking beer.  

We spent the next day in Rothenburg (see separate post), and when we got back, we made our way to the city center to find some food.  We went to another beer hall because we were cold, and it was very warm in there! I had traditional Bavarian pork roast and some sort of potato dumpling.  It was very filling.  Then we just went back to the hostel and hung out at the bar before going to bed early after a long day.

On Sunday we went to Dachau Concentration Camp.  It was very somber, to say the least.  I don't even know if I can write anything about it.  It had been cleaned up quite a bit, and much of it was torn down.  We went with a tour guide, who offered some interesting information, but we didn't get a whole lot of time in the actual museum part.  There were multiple sculpture memorials from many different groups, but one of the most overwhelming ones was a mass grave, atop of the mounds of ashes from the crematorium.  It was called the "Grave of Thousands Unknown."  It was all very chilling to see, but I'm glad we went.  It was a good way to remember the terrible events that happened during that time, and isn't something I will soon forget.
After our visit there, we hung out in the hostel, as we were all exhausted.  We went to an Italian place nearby, which was strange... It was an Italian restaurant, in Germany, but the waiter spoke English with random bits of French.  It was just funny!  Additionally, they played the same song almost the entire time we were there. It was just ridiculous.  But the food and wine was good, and it was fairly cheap.  After that, we hung out at the hostel bar with some new friends we made from Canada, the UK, and Brazil.  They were a fun bunch, and we enjoyed playing pool and swapping stories.  The Brazilian was particularly amusing.  He had on a University of Illinois shirt, and I asked him about it.  He told me his ex-girlfriend (who he had met while she was studying abroad in Brazil) went there and got him that shirt.  I told him I was from Illinois, but he must not have properly understood, and assumed I went there.  He then asked me if I knew his ex-girlfriend.  I had to explain to him that it was a rather large school, and even if I did go there, it was unlikely that I knew his friend.  After we had closed down the bar, I then discovered that my Brazilian friend was sleeping on the bunk above me.  It was a fun last night in Munich.

On Monday, we slept in a bit before packing up and checking out.  But after that we hung out in the hostel, charging all of our devices and taking advantage of the free hammocks!  My friend and I went out to try and find me a dirndl (traditional Bavarian dress), but sadly I couldn't find one that I liked for a reasonable price.  :(  But we did find some cheap Oktoberfest souvenirs, and I found my keychains.  We stopped to get lunch at the train station, and as we were standing around eating, we saw a man stop by the giant Munich lion statue, put his bags down, and get a camera out.  I figured he wanted his picture taken, but no one stopped to help him.  So I volunteered, and he was very grateful. I walked back over to where my friend was, and when I turned around, the man was walking towards me with his camera again.  I started towards him, but he held up his hands and pointed the camera at me and took my picture, smiling.  It was a little strange!  We then headed back to the hostel to pick up our stuff so we could catch the train to the airport.  That bit was confusing!  We weren't quite sure how to get tickets or if we had purchased the right ones.  But we got on the train and made it to the airport alright (even if we might have paid a little more than necessary).  Once we got to the airport, I was surprised at how dead it was.  I was expecting something a little busier for an international airport, but we had no wait at check-in or security.  So, since we were there 2 hours before (like good little travelers), we had 2 hours to kill.  There was only one place for food near our gate, and it had limited variety.  We browsed the giftshops, and I found a tiny container of Nutella that was so cute I couldn't resist.  Then my one friend and I (who's family is also from the Mid-West) taught our other friend to play Euchre.  Soon enough we were boarding and finally headed home.  The flight was interesting, and I think we were flying very low.  It didn't seem like we climbed too high.  Flying back on British Airways was a relief.  We got a small dinner (Chicken Caesar Wrap) and of course free beverages.  It was much nicer than our first flight on EasyJet, and I didn't have to pay extra for my second bag! We landed and got in line for border patrol.  When I approached the desk, she asked for my visa and I gave her my St. Mary's documentation, and she got very confused when it said I was arriving Sept 11, and she asked if I was 2 months late... Yeah that's right.  But I explained and got through, with another stamp on my passport!  We then had to catch the bus back to campus and were riding for another hour.  We finally arrived to campus and were very much relieved to be home!