Munich Day 1

Hey everyone! This morning we left Strasbourg around 6:30am to catch our 6:50am train to Munich which we caught with no problems. Having traveled quite a lot over the past few weeks, traveling isn’t a stressful ordeal at all, but it was amusing to watch some of the people on the trip be stressed about catching the train (showing up 45 minutes early). But we all got on the train and arrived in Munich safely (all 31 of us). When we got to Munich, we walked 5 minutes to our hostel, Wombats, which I’ve heard from others is a great hostel. Our room is really pretty big, and it definitely competes as one of the better hostels I’ve stayed in. When we arrived, we checked in and left our luggage since our room was not yet ready. We headed out to go on our bike tour with “Mike’s Bike Tours.” We initially had trouble finding the meeting place for the tour and we ended up standing around for 30-40 minutes in this really large square (but we ended up finding it). The tour lasted roughly 3-4 hours with lunch included so it was a fairly decent value for the 20 Euro we paid. The tour was pretty good, my only complaint being I didn’t like the tour guide. He was actually a Texas native from Highland Park that went to Auburn, and ended up partying/working in Munich. He provided some cool information, but I didn’t care for all his crude/sexual jokes most college kids might enjoy (oh well). But on the tour, we saw some pretty cool sites. We saw a really cool church which had amazing architecture. We also visited the 2^nd largest public park in the world and had lunch in one of the beer gardens in the middle of the park. I had a half chicken and French fries which was pretty good. On the way out of the park, we saw surfers, surfing the river rapids which was different to see in that we are nowhere near the ocean.

But later that evening, everyone headed out to the Hofbrouhaus which is apparently one of the most famous beer halls, if not the most famous, beer halls in the world. The atmosphere on the inside was really just a giant party. There was a band playing in the middle of the hall wearing their folk uniforms and there were long wooden tables all over the place. The entire place was full of tourists (like ourselves), which are pretty easy to spot by the picture/video taking. Our group of 7-8 arrived a little late (after making a pit-stop at McDonald’s for dinner) squeezed in with some of the other students who were already there. I didn’t stay all too long because it was loud, so I left around 10:30 with two girls (Casie and Laura) to grab gelato and head back to Wombats. I love gelato, it’s just ice cream, but it just tastes so good. Maybe I just feel that way because I’m in Europe, but it’s good nonetheless. When we got back to the hostel, we played some Egyptian Rat Screw downstairs in the lobby and around midnight, called it a night. Tomorrow we are head to Dachau, the first German concentration camp, so I’m trying to mentally prepare myself for what I’m going to see. It’s not something I really want to see, but most everyone here wants to see it and I suppose I can’t just be oblivious to what happened in World War II. I’ll update everyone again tomorrow!

Jonathan