The capital of Bavaria and even more German history

The Dom

Marienplatz Glockenspiel

Our Friends And Us At Augustiner Restaurant (Kaylin took the pic)

Surfin' The Munich Park Wave

She Is So Beautiful...So Is Kaylin

Before arriving in Munich, we knew two major facts about the city: 1) It is considered the beer capital of the world, and 2) The tragedy at the ’72 Olympics (Thank you Steven Spielberg). The Bavarian region of Germany and Austria is known to be extremely traditional, to the point that men definitely still sport lederhosen as everyday attire. Our first night was spent at, well, a beer garden of course, namely the Augustiner garden, which is one of the 6 traditional Bavarian brews. We then turned in early in anticipation of our walking tour the next morning.
The night before we had heard from another backpacker about a certain tour guide by the name of Ozzie, and she could do nothing but rave about how great his tour was, but followed that by saying he wouldn’t be doing the tour the following day. Lucky for us, she was ill informed as a group of 45 of us were greeted by the boisterous bank of useless but awesome information. Ozzie is a Canadian-born German citizen, and told us that before his Father’s birth, his German Grandfather became ill and “came down with a case of jungle fever”. He also told us that he would probably be the only black guy we would see in lederhosen, and especially the only black guy yelling about Nazi’s and Hitler on the streets of Munich…needless to say we were in for fun and untraditional tour. We were taken to all of the sights in Munich, Marienplatz with the Glockenspiel, St. Michaels Church, The Dom, Hofbrauhaus, The Opera House, The Royal Palace, and more. The great thing was that Ozzie didn’t just spit out years, events and facts, he tied all of these figures and events into something everyone on the tour could relate to, whether American, British, Australian, Canadian, Brazilian, etc. He also aimed to tie the events into emotional and social themes, which we thought he did with ease. When it began to rain, he also said not to worry because “this chocolate doesn’t melt”. Facts, emotion and political incorrectness, suffices to say it was an amazing tour. That night, we met up with some of our tour mates and eventually Ozzie in the hostel bar. He then escorted us to the Augustiner Restaurant for some traditional Bavarian fare. We shared the mixed plate, which consisted of crispy pork knuckle; roast suckling pig and duck with pickles and potato dumpling. Upon Ozzie’s urging, we also ordered a bowl of the pig lung soup. This was all washed down of course by liters of Augustinerbrau. Everything was ridiculously tasty, but our favorites had to be the pork knuckle (think super salty and greasy pork rind, mmmmm) and the lung soup, which was much like a meat sauce with a touch of vinegar for a nice tanginess. We spent the night chatting it up with Ozzie and the rest of our new friends until hitting the hay in anticipation of setting out to see the city on our own.

While it was nice to take Munich in with Ozzie’s soundtrack, it was equally nice to walk around at our leisure. We went back to some of the sights we saw the day prior, only because some of our picture taking was a bit rushed or forced to be taken from a bad angle. The object of the day though was to see the English Garden, which is the largest metropolitan park in all of Europe, 3x the size of New York’s Central Park. Our first sight at the park was the surf wave that was one of the few things pointed out on the map. Surf waves are typically manmade creations that create an artificial surfing experience and are usually found at water parks and inland areas; as such this is what we expected to see. Instead, we came upon the source for one of the rivers that flows through the park to see a gushing water flow, that when coupled with a manmade rock formation, created a steady and consistent surfable wave in the river itself. There were about 7 Munichers, Munichians, Munichites….errrr, Munich locals donning wetsuits and actually surfing the wave with some skill, it was one of the most interesting things we have witnessed so far. We only made it about halfway through the park, but even that was about a 4-hour endeavor. We did make it to the Chinese Beer Garden, which was outfitted with an enormous Chinese tower and flowers for the full effect. Of course we had to stick with the Chinese tradition and order a Bavarian pretzel that was legitimately as large as our heads combined. The rest of the night was spent relaxing and looking toward the calm portion of the trip. Up next, Fussen, home to Castle Neuchwanstein, the inspiration for Walt Disney’s Cinderella castle.

Mark and Kaylin

P.S. – Just as a side note, it is actually in the Munich constitution that citizens are allowed 1 liter of beer throughout the workday. This has caused many employers to stock up the office with beer in order to keep employees in the office while still enjoying their rights. Also, Ozzie said that beer is considered a food in Munich, so Munich doesn’t have alcoholics, just a bunch of people with eating disorders. That part might have been Bavarian humor though.