(Originally published June 17, 2007)
(Pictured: Cinderella still lives here. At least that's what my magical glass of beer told me.)So Tuesday afternoon we rolled into the happenin´ town of Munich, home of Oktoberfest and the world famous beer gardens. I looked in the mirror, gave myself the once over, and........promplty headed to Pizza Hut for some stuffed-crust pizza. Exotic cuisine indeed! That night Slim and I headed over to the Augustinerkeller Beer Garden. The entire garden is situated outside under these massive chestnut trees, but low and behold after a couple of hours it started to pour. We were forced to take refuge under some kind German folks´ private table and tent. Slim also saw this as the perfect time to steal one of the famous one litre beer mugs that you get your beer in. Not the easiest thing to smuggle out, but we managed just fine.
The next day, we decided to see what Munich had to offer via the guided walking tour. Much like Berlin, much of the city was bombed to the ground during World War II. Unlike Berlin, there isn´t much here in the way of cool shit. Munich is famous for beer. Period. The one positive of the walking tour was that we stopped for a beer break, where I promptly did away with an ice cold litre of Germany´s finest ale. That night, we decided to check out the world-famous Hofbrauhaus. We took our seats, ordered up some brews and Bavarian cuisine (basically a million different varities of sausages and jumbo overly-salted pretzels) and started to let the good times roll. We were already a few beers in when some friendly German folks set-up shop beside us. On the other side I was socialzing with some American executives from Bausch and Lomb who were well on thier way to catching me and Slim for drunkness. The one American dude pulled out his company credit card and ordered a round for everyone (nine of us at this time!). Pretty nice gesture considering it cost over $80 and was the equivalent of ordering twenty-seven beers back home in one shot! Needless to say we closed the place down and had a walk home that neither of us can recall (all we know is we smoked two cigars, which were missing from our package, and we somehow made it to bed!).
Thursday, the 14th of June, we were a hurting unit. Slim wanted to visit Dachau (imprisonment/concentration camp) on the outskirts of Munich where over 206,000 people where imprisoned between 1933 and 1945. About 25% of the prisoners (Jews, homosexuals, gypises, POW) died here, although the gas chambers were never put into use (although they are there and just as equally eerie to see regardless). It was quite the harrowing and humbling experience, although it is good to see Germany face its dark-past and pay homage to those who were lost in some of the darkest days of modern humanity. On the way back, we ran into a couple (Chris and his girlfirend) who we had been chilling with the day before, That night, Slim and I made our way to our third beer garden in three nights, this time the Chinese Garden, which is located in the Englischer Garten (larger than Hyde Park and Central Park). Long story short, we ate and drank some more big beers and stumbled our asses back to the hostel.
Friday, we took a day trip a couple hours out of Munich to visit Neuschwanstein Castle, or as most people call it, the Cinderella castle. It is this beautiful castle cut into the side of the Alps, that was the basis for the castle in the animated movie Cinderella, and also appears as the backdrop for the Walt Disney Logo as we now know it. That night, we got back kind of late so we made another pilgrimage to Pizza Hut before closing out the night in our hostel´s bar, which was pretty poppin´.
Saturday, we hopped on a train and arrived in Heidelberg, Germany a couple of hours later. Heidelgerg is home to one of the other famous castles in Europe, as well as the oldest university in Germany. That afternoon, we just visited the castle before doing some souvenir shopping. It was here that I made the purchase of a lifetime in the form of Das Boot! Anyone who´s seen the movie "Beerfest" knows what I´m talking about, and I can´t wait to get home and test this puppy out! For dinner, we decided to check out the Hard Rock Cafe. They were serving cheap cocktails all night, which led to us staying there, getting pretty hammed all night and chilling with some local university students before retiring to our residence. Sadly we were just too gassed to hit up the local clubs. Damn I´m getting weak at my old age!
Today, we were back on the trains, this time our stop was Cologne, Germany (home of the famous Eau De Cologne). On the train, I was constantly being harrassed by this baby who would just randomly pop up in between my seats every couple of minutes. Good thing I am also easily amused and we got along together just nicely playing ball and such. Sadly, the place where cologne was invented was closed, so we headed over to the chocolate museum. It was way better than the other chocolate museum in Barcelona, and I am still in awe that they put that many millions of dollars into building a chocolate museum. But hey, as long as dumb tourists like me keep showing up, the chocolate shall flow like gold! Tonight I shall take it easy as tomorrow will bring the toughest test of all for my health...Amsterdam for four nights.
Anyways, I hear some German draught calling my name! Stay classy!
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