~ Mike
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Our overnight train arrived in Munich around 6:45 am, and we took the short walk to our hostel. For obvious reasons, our room was not ready, so we put our stuff in the luggage
room. The receptionist was very nice and opened the Wintergarden, which was an indoor garden with hammocks and bean bags, so that's where we slept for the next few hours (except for alex - for alex that's where he lied awake for the
next few hours). We woke up around 9 as everyone started coming downstairs for breakfast, so we went and grabbed some food too. Our room still wasn't ready after breakfast, so we decided to take the free tour of the city that the hostel was offering at 11 am.
The tour was pretty good since the guide was an awesome
guy. We started out by walking towards downtown, and the guide explained how to avoid all of the tourist spots, save money, and what was actually worth seeing. He took us to St. Peter's Church, the Glockenspiel, Viktralienmart, the Opera House, the Hofbrauhaus, and the blockade where
Hitler's army marched to, along with a ton of other places.
St. Peter's was very cool, as it is Pope Benedict's home church. It has an interesting story behind it as well: This church was one of the fastest churches ever built in its time (20 years), and the story explains that it was because the architect made a deal with the devil. According to the story, the devil came to see the church one day and stood at the back. When he didn't see a single window in the church, he was ecstatic. He knew that no one would ever go to a church with no windows. So he made an offer to the architect to help him build it if he didn't put any windows in. If he did put windows, however, he would have to give the devil his soul. When the church was finished the devil came back and
walked around the church. He was furious because the church was full of windows. He told the architect that he now owed him his soul, but the architect disagreed. He brought the devil back to where he stood last time to show
him that from where he was standing, no one can see any windows, and that the windows had already been there last time so he didn't break any promises. There is still the
"devil's footprint" in a tile where he stood. In the church we also got to see the crypts, which were very cool as well.
The opera house also had a great story, except this one is a little more believable. The opera house was built with a massive inverted-dome roof to catch water in case there was ever a fire in the building. One day, during a show, the opera house did catch on fire, but it was in the middle of the winter and the water had frozen solid. Just down the street, however, was the Hofbrauhaus, so the King ordered everyone to go and take all the beer to put out the fire. The people at the Hofbrauhaus refused, and the opera house burned down to the ground. The King was so furious that he imposed a 2 cent tax on all
beer sold in Munich. The people of Munich drink so much beer that he was able to rebuild the opera house in only one year.After the tour (that had way more info on it but I'm not putting it all here) we went back to book our train to Brussels - but didn't do it. The train we wanted was booked and other ones were
overpriced, so we took it as a sign from God to go back to the hostel and stay an extra day
in Munich and an extra day in Amsterdam. So we went back to the train station and bought a 5:50 am ticket to Amsterdam, then went to eat dinner.
We ate dinner at the Augustiner Brewery, a real Bavarian brewery in which we were the only non-German people. The beer hall was absolutely awesome, and 1 Litre of beer was a mere
5.30 Euro. We all got a dinner special that had a pork knuckle, 1/4 duck, potatoes, and roast pork. We all ended up eating a ton and drinking about 1.5 litres of beer each - except for alex who had 2
1/4 litres of beer. We stumbled our way the 2 miles back to our hostel and went to bed very very full and ready for another day.
The next day we woke up at 9 after 12 hours of sleep (can you tell the trip was taking a lot out of us?) and got some breakfast. After breakfast we went to Viktralienmart and got some Hefeweizen, which is breakfast beer. It is a very sweet, very heavy beer that everyone has to try in Germany - there is nothing like it.
After the market we walked to the Deuches Museum, which was one of the coolest museums
any of us had ever been to. The museum had everything - there were tons of wings about different aspects of the world like engineering, bridges, aviation, science, pharmaceuticals, music, astronomy, marine, nature, large machines, and so much more. We spent about 4 hours
exploring the museum which is another must-see for anyone visiting Munich. We wanted to stay at the museum even longer but it was closing and we had to leave.
On the way back to the hostel we got some kebabs, grape leaves, and baklava. We walked around a bit, went back to the hostel, and packed our stuff before getting an early night sleep to get ready for the trip to Amsterdam.
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