Munich, Prost!

Munich was a blast! Again, you have to forgive me for this blog post because 1. I am writing this 1 week after I went and 2. I get so excited and my words and sentences sometimes don’t make sense and 3. I am too lazy to reread what I wrote and look for mistakes. With that being said, me and 36 of us begin our trip to Munich, Germany!

We left Lugano on Friday (Jan 20) at 2ish. This was my first train ride ever, so I did not know what to expect.  Naturally, I ended up getting motion sickness on the first train ride because it was a “tilt” train… literally felt like I was on a roller coaster. We had a transfer in zurich for another train to get us to Munich, and luckily, this was a normal train and I was able to nap a little bit on second train ride to Munich.

After 8 hours of traveling, we finally go to Munich! And of course… the weather was not in our favor.  It was snowing/raining/FREEZING. I was very smart and I packed some cute snow/rain boots.  Everyone else ended up ruining their designer boots while on this trip. Sucks for theemmm. Anyway, we arrived in Munich and thankfully our hostel (Wombats) was located 5 minute walk from the rail station. Wombats was very very nice. Nicer than the Interlaken hostel.  I stayed in a private room with 5 other girls. There was a shower in our room, so we did not have to share with other people on the hall.  This type of hostel was kind of like a hotel-ish feeling.  Very clean very organized. By this time, it is 11pm and most of us want to go out and explore the night life. We met up with the other groups of people and we all went out to a club about 10 min walk from our hostel. What was the name of the club? I have no idea.. but it was a lot of fun! They even had a coat check which I was so happy about because sometimes when we go out at night time, you have to hold your coats. SO I give this club an A+.

The next day, Saturday, was when we had all of our day planned with a walking tour of Munich and a late night beer tour of the town. We woke up around 8am so we could get to our walking tour at 10am. Again, the weather was shitty and it was very cold and snowing and raining. I did not mind the weather too much only because I was dressed appropriately with now boots and a heavy coat.  The only thing I was annoyed about was that I had to get over the fact that my hair was not going to be pretty.. no matter what.  So we met our tour guide and she was AWESOME! What a little fun person!! Her name was Diana and she had so much energy and was funny so she made the tour of the city much more enjoyable dispite the fact that everyone was freezing. Most of the tour she just took us around to major architectural buildings and also talking about the history or Munich. The walking tour was supposed to last us 2 ½ hours, but some of us were way too cold that we stopped it short and decided to get lunch instead.

Even though we left the tour early, it was so nice to finally sit down inside and have a great lunch. Right away, me and the other girls ordered hot chocolate and some food. One of the best things about Germany is the fact that everything is not nearly as expensive as it is in Switzerland.  My meal (hot chocolate and this mac and cheese stuff) only cost 8 euros which is really good. After we ate lunch we went shopping and walking around Munich some more

The shopping was a great time. Munich is basically a tiny square filled with tall buildings and lots of shops. There was so much shopping that had to be done. Unfortunately, I am on a budget and I like to spend my money on important things (like food) so I did not end up spending any money on clothes. I did, however, get some souvenirs for some people (beer glasses and shot glasses).

There was this very weird incident that occurred during the day and during our shopping.  All of a sudden we hear this big commotion and hundreds and hundreds of police EVERYWHERE in the middle of Munich.  We found out that there was actually a Neo-Nazi rally happening.  We had been told earlier that day from our tour guide that neo-nazis sometimes have rallys in the middle of town, so it was ironic that there happened to be a rally that same day.  **Google who the neo-nazis are because I will have a hard time trying to describe it in this blog.** The rally was crazy because there were hundreds of cops surrounding the neo-nazis (for their protection) because they are such a radical group, normal sane people hate them so much for what they stand for. So picture this – about 50 neo-nazis in the middle of town dressed in all black and waving these flags.  Police were surrounding the neo-nazis from the on-lookers.  The neo-nazis had microphones and loud-speakers, so they would try to preach to the crowd.  Every time the neo Nazis started chanting, the surrounding crowds started blowing whistels (like lifeguard whistles) in order to drown out the neo-nazi chanting. It was a crazy scene.

The most thrilling part of Munich was obviously the beer tour!!! The beer tour basically consisted of going to different restaurants/pubs and drinking beer. We had already bought our tickets for this tour (12 euros).  We all met at the train station to meet our tour guide. Once we got checked in and situations, we had our first beer of the night right outside the train station.  They gave us this beer first because it was in a bottle and we had to walk 15 minutes to the first restaurant and we were supposed to drink the beer on the way to stay warm. We got to our first location and everyone got the popular beer (cant remember the names). It was delicious. But then again… I think Natty Light is delicious soooooo…. Haha! Our next place to drink beer was at HOFBRAUHAUS!!! This place was so awesome because it’s a huuuuuuge beer hall. If anyone has been to the beer hall in busch gardens.. its like that but BETTER! Tables and tables and tables of people all drinking Liter sized beer oooooh myyyy it was soo cool!!!!! Every 30 minutes there was a mini “show” of people playing the tuba and some other instruments. All of the waitresses were dressed in beer girl outfits. Everything was on POINT! I of course drank my entire Liter beer in 15 minutes. True signs of a Hokie. After the beer hall, we went to another restaurant and had another beer. We ended the tour at our hostel (convenient) and had jager shots.  We did not get back from the beer tour until later (1130pm) so many of us were too tired to go out clubbing.

The next morning (Sunday) we had to catch a 45 min train ride to Dachau. The next blog post will be about Dachau. For now… CIAO!

FUN FACTS

Munich is so much more affordable than Switzerland

Germany loves beer

Everyone still thinks I am Brazilian

You cannot “fist pump” in Germany because it looks too much like the Nazi sign and you will get fined if you do that.

To cheers a beer, you say “Prost!”