Munich, a wonderful city...we began our tour of Munich by arriving at the airport at about 1:00. Then we had a 1.5 hour bus ride into the city. The bus ride cost 18 Euro and that was a lot; we thought maybe a taxi would be cheaper. I knew it was on me to ask since I was the only one who spoke an German. I went up and asked, "Wie viel kostet...a Munich, i mean München...." I couldn't remember the German word for "to" (nach) so I used Italian (a). Then he told me and told us that if we had 8 people it would be 18.75 Euro per person. While, we only had four people and the bus was still cheaper, so the bus it was. I said "grazie" and started to walk away only to realize "grazie" is quite Italian and not German at all so I turned back and yelled "danke" over my shoulder.
AFter arriving at the Hauptbahnhof (main train station) we began the familiar routine of finding the hostel and checking in. The hostel was actually really close to the train station so it was easy to find. We checked in, made our beds and headed out to find something to eat. We hadn't an idea of where to go so we started walking. After a long time, I realized that was ridiculous and we would never just stumble upon somewhere we would eat. Mostly because we were not in teh main touristy area so most places only had German menus which was an issue because I didn't bring my dictionary from the hostel and Abe is Jewish so he doesn't eat pork. I had no idea what the word for pork was! Anyway, my awesome navigation skills eventually got us to the Viktuelienmmarkt which was something like a farmer's market with a beer garden. Laura, Amanda and I got brats and Amanda and I got good, German beer! Then we played some cards and eventually shared a big German pretzel..yum!
After that we walked around and saw the Marienplatz and some other things. We wanted to do laundry and so we headed back to the hostel kind of early. After doing our laundry we headed to bed. We got up early the next morning to go to Dachau, the concentration camp just outside of Munich. We spend a majority of the day there going on a guided tour and in the museum. It was such a learning experience and a I enjoyed it...it seems weird to say I enjoyed that, but whatever!
Anyway, after our lovely guided tour from Franz and some more museum time, we were ready to catch a train back to Munich. We went back to the hostel to rest a minute then headed back out for supper. I really wanted to go to the Hofbräuhaus and they didn't care so I led them there. We walked in and I thought it would take us hours to find a table...but one walk around the large building and we had one! I had some delicious pork dish that was sooooo tasty. We also had more good, German beer.
After supper it was pretty late so we headed back to the hostel. We had to get up early the next morning to go to Stockholm so we went to bed early. We got to the bus stop to take us to the airport in what we thought was plenty of time to get to the airport. But, we hadn't actually looked at schedules and had forgotten how long of a ride it was, etc. so Amanda was freaking out that we would miss our flight. I figured we would be alright. Well, actually, I figured either we'd make it or we wouldn't and there wasn't any senese in freaking out. We got to the airport with like 30 minutes to spare so we thought we'd have to rush through security. It turns out, which we didn't notice upon arrival to the airport, it competes in size with Alexander Field, the Wisconsin Rapids airport. It was such a small airport and took us about 3 minutes to go through security and get to the gate. Also, our flight boarded late so it didn't matter anyway. Thus ended our German adventure.
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