Guess what we did first! We woke up. That’s right. We aroused from slumber, first off. Then we showered and put on our clothes. After those mundane daily rituals we ate our NUTELLA! We had bought some little rolls which we turned into Nutella hotdogs. It was a very healthy breakfast. They are part of this complete breakfast! We also included the Crusti Crocs paprika chips we got. Don’t worry: Crusti Crocs is a brand, not related to the abominable shoes, and paprika is just BBQ flavor.
Then we hustled down stairs to meet for the free walking tour of Munich. It looked pretty good from the brochure, so we decided to do it. Free tours are pretty much always worth it! It ended up not being the same route they advertised, but was still pretty good. We saw the over-rated, under-whelming Glockenspiel, some churches, the old and new town halls, the overpriced Viktualienmarkt, and the US embassy. The embassy was a joke by the guide as a reference to Starbucks… and Chuck definitely didn’t get it. He asked, “Where’s the Embassy, I want to see it!” I then explained to him that it was just a joke. Silly Charles! We also saw the new Jewish Synagogue and museums, a Biergarten, Hofbrauhaus, and the Residenz.
Afterward we followed the guide to a little restaurant where you got bottomless stew for 7 Euro. I ate 4 bowls. It was really good, Bavarian stew! Afterward I was extremely full… almost to the point of explosion. Luckily, I didn’t puke like after I ate the Mucho Macho Burrito in Columbus! The record was 7 bowls. I have no idea how that is possible. Perhaps if I had prepared I could have done it.
While still crazy full, Charles and I walked to the Deutches Museum. It was a science and technology museum. We learned about muscle, water and steam power. Also saw tons of steam and internal combustion engines. They also had helicopters, airplanes, jets, turbines and ramjet engines. We didn’t have much time there before it closed, but it was definitely cool. Wish we had more a chance to check it out. Once we were let out by the last few people in the place we walked to the Englishen Garten.
The Englishen Garten is actually bigger than Central Park in New York! It was enormous. We walked for quite a while and actually saw only a small fraction of the entire place. We did walk to one of the Biergartens there. It was pretty neat. It’s really different to see places with no open-container laws and younger drinking ages than America. It’s not quite as big a deal to drink beer, and while you do see some people drunk and stumbling around, they aren’t as common as in America. I think America needs to follow suit.
After the Biergarten, we made our way back through downtown Munich and back to our hostel. I ended up uploading some photos to Facebook, since I hadn’t done so in quite a while. Chuck read more of Steven King’s “The Stand.” I am rather impressed because it’s a 1100+ page book and he’s a good deal through it since starting it at the beginning of our trip!
Facebook allows you to upload up to 200 images per album, but actually sucks when uploading that many pictures at once. Although it could be a byproduct of low wifi strength as well, I’m going to blame Facebook. The java applet could definitely be improved to avoid failing the loading of all the images. Oh well, that’s a programmer’s rant and I’ll spare you any more! Then we slept.