Bavarian Vaca in Munich

First I should start by telling you about the mix up I had with booking a Munich hostel. One night in Amsterdam, I got on the internet in the lobby of Cosmos Hostel to book a hostel in Munich. I referenced my scrap-guide where I had written down some ideas of where we might want to stay. Then D started talking about wanting to stay in Old Town. So that made me remember that there was a hostel I had looked up before called Old Town Hostel, so I quickly looked it up and booked it.

When we were on the train to Munich D asked me if I had directions to our hostel. I did, so I started looking at them trying to get an idea of where we would head from the train station once we arrived. As I read the directions, it hit me, this sounds a lot like directions for how to get somewhere in Prague! It all came together then that D had mentioned Old Town, thinking of Prague and that got me down the wrong track away from Munich. I had booked another hostel in Prague and nothing in Munich! Luckily our train had wifi so I got on and found us a new hostel for Munich and called the hostel to cancel our reservations. I’m so weird sometimes.

We arrived at Munich Central Station at 10pm, so we hurried to our hostel to drop off our bags and head out to make the most of the short time in this city. Our hostel was extremely close to the train station, which we’ve decided is a very important attribute to look for when choosing all future hostels. The quicker you get to the hostel the quicker you can take the heavy load off.

Our hostel, 4 You Munchen, was lively and modern. We had booked at 6 bed room, but no one ended up staying in our room the whole time. So we basically got a private room at a much lower rate! The rooms were nice, with clean bedding and under the bunk-bed locker drawers. There were single sex common bathrooms that were nice and big. Since it was getting late we quickly dropped off our bags and headed to a bar I had heard about in one of my books. The walk from our hostel to the bar was fairly simple and beautiful. We walked through an area that is walled in by stores and paved with pretty bricks with no cars allowed. We came upon some beautiful buildings, and finally the Neues Rathas that houses the Glockenspiel. It was so majestic lit up against the dark night sky. We had to stop and take pictures.

Right around the corner was the bar, Jodlerwirt. I read that it was a bar with live music and lots of people. It turned out to be a really fun German experience, but not as the book described. It was upstairs above a quiet bar and looked very traditional all in wood and pretty small inside. There were about 10 people sitting in the bar, all German, drinking beer and singing loudly to the accordion music being played live. The words were all in German so it was just a funny sight for us. I guess these were typical drinking songs because young and old were all joining in word for word.

On the way back to our hostel I had to stop into McDonald’s to order the Nurnberg meal because it looked so uniquely German. It was 3 small sausage links with mustard and some kind of crispy fried onions on ciabatta bread. It wasn’t the best thing, so D ate most of it so I could have his hamburger.

 

 

The next morning we went straight to the Marienplatz to see the Glockenspiel chime at 11am. We got a prime seat at the Café Glockenspiel, one of the only places you can see the Glockenspiel at eye level. We got something to drink so that we could stay at the table to see the performance. It was fun to watch, but not extremely exciting. There are about 43 chimes and 36 wooden dancing people that come out and perform some events from the past. It was pretty amazing to think about how old it was and to see how many people crowd into the Marienplatz to see it.

We did a little souvenir shopping. At every shop you could find cuckoo clocks, beer steins, nutcrackers and ornaments. We were here right before Oktoberfest so all of the department stores were displaying the traditional German outfits in the windows. Later we found out that that style is actually back in fashion now.

Bunkers at Dachau Concentration Camp

"Beds" at Dachau

We found out that we can use the S-Bahn line for free with our rail pass. We used that line to head to Dachau to see the memorial to the concentration camp. We walked around the camp for about 2 hours reading the history, looking at pictures, and seeing the inside and outside of the camp. The things that surprised me the most were how much land the camp took, that it was made for 6,000 inhabitants but ended up having almost 6 times as much, pole hanging and human experiments done to the prisoners, and the Nazi claims that each murder was just another suicide. It was a humbling experience. I don’t understand how a human could do that to another human.

We road the train back to Munich and went straight to the Hofbrauhaus. D ordered the big stein of their original beer and I had the Weiss. We had a bit of trouble ordering as the waitress spoke no English. We ordered pretzels and potato dumplings…sounds odd but we wanted to try some traditional fare. The dumplings were in a very tasty gravy but had a very rubbery texture. The pretzels were harder and crispier than we expected. The waitresses were dressed in the traditional German attire and there were other ladies walking around with bigger pretzels for sale. After leaving the Hofbrauhaus we strolled around and found a park to sit in for a break. It was nice to see a green, grassy area in the big stone city.

I caught Daniel’s cold, so I felt pretty crummy the last night. We decided to stay in to rest and did some laundry. I died almost all of our whites gray with a sneaky, new black sock. The next morning we woke up early to have time to eat breakfast and pack before catching our train at 9 am. A Scottish man was sitting next to me at breakfast and when I stood up to go get juice he said “A faint smell.” He repeated it a couple of times, and I thought he was telling me that I stink! Then he said I smell good like the flowers from the market. How funny! A good ending to Munich, I guess! Next…Prague…