August 15, 2006 to August 18, 2006
(My friend Stephanie told me a month or so after my return that I really should get all of my memories of my trip written down because I would forget all the details rather quickly. And she was correct. So, names have been forgotten and dates are a little muddled, but here is what remains in my mind concerning my time spent in Munich.)
Munich is not a beautiful city. Oh, granted it is clean and doesn't smell of urine, has a scenic park and a nice central plaza (and is rather devoid of pigeons), but architecturally it is pretty bland. That's not entirely its fault, considering it was heavily bombed during World War II. However, what Munich does have going for it is a lot of everything else.
After trip by train–and a thorough passport inspection by Austrian train police–we arrived in Munich, got a little lost, but eventually found our hostel, the Easy Palace. The Easy Palace doesn't exactly sound like the most estimable of names for an accommodation, but it was one of the best hostels we stayed at in Europe. It appeared as though the hostel used to be a hotel with hallway carpeting from the mid-60's and an elevator that was the a little bigger than a dumbwaiter, but it was on the whole pretty decent. The rooms were almost as nice as the ones in Switzerland, the lobby had comfortable couches and cold beer for sale, and the staff was really helpful (especially the gal with short blond hair and glasses).
That was one of the surprises of Munich: Muncheans(?) were rather friendly. Oh, there was the lady in front of me in the line at the post office that threw a tantrum when someone cut in front of her (though she had the right to get mad, going into HULKSMASH-mode sometimes doesn't help you, and in this case it didn't). There was also the woman at the supermarket who, in a rather gruff voice, wouldn't sell me and my brother beer without ID, where previously we never had a problem elsewhere in Europe. However, she was all smiles when we came in the next day to buy some candy. Back at the post office a postal clerk chuckled in a friendly way as I made a pitiful attempt to count out Euros in poorly spoken German. The middle eastern man who ran the nearby Internet cafe always happily greeted me and my brother whenever we came in to check out e-mail. Seriously, the Germans were nicer than most other Europeans (okay, well maybe the Internet guy was Turkish). It was weird and awesome.
We spent a couple of our days in Munich exploring the city with a group of students from Oregon State University. We stopped in for an obligatory liter of beer at the toursity and polka-infused Hofbrauhaus, and drank more beer at a much more laid-back restaurant. We wandered around the town plaza and gawked at the huge, ornate Rathaus-Glockenspiel. We also walked around the enormous Englischer Garten, which is basically Munich's central park, and saw enough nude, sun bathing old German men to last all of us several lifetimes. As one of our male Oregonian companions put it, "I think I saw only one boob during our whole time here."
Hiro and I spent our second to last day in Germany at the Dachau concentration camp, a few miles outside of Munich. It was a sobering experience, but one that provided a stark lesson in history. In contrast to its dark past, the site is very peaceful, with its own small synagogue and church.
Bidding farewell to beer and bratwurst, we headed on a short flight back to London to spend our remaining days in the city in which we started out our whole journey.