Munchin' in München

The Rathaus or the Town Hall

Almost two weeks ago Tuesday and Wednesday I went with my friends Allison and Tucker on an overnight trip to Munich, Germany. Even though we didn't stay very long, I had a wonderful time! We caught a bus and arrived in the late evening after five hours of travel. Tucker has a friend from U of M who is studying for the year in Munich and he met up with us and took us out to eat at a popular restaurant called the "Hofbrauhaus." I had roast beef with little potato dumplings and a glass of beer. It was wonderfully German and wonderfully delicious! We also saw the Rathaus, which is this big elaborate building that used to serve as the town hall. We lamely turned in early for the night because, after discussing it, we realized that we were all dead tired and weren't really in the partying mood, so we headed back to the hostel and slept. Wednesday morning we got up early, partook in the free breakfast offered by the hostel (bread, jam, meat, cheese, boiled egg, juice, coffee, same old), checked out, and began to head out into the city. Off we went!!! Left right, left, right, le- uhhh, hold up! Where were we going? We realized we had no idea where to go or what to do, so we turned around and head into the lobby of the hostel where there was a huge stand full of pamphlets. Tucker whipped out his laptop to find ideas (and check his email) and I, firmly establishing myself as a tourist, leafed through the pamphlets and picked out a few places to see. We decided on a leisurely sight-seeing day since we had lots of time to kill until our bus left later that evening.

The first place we went was the "Staatliches Museum Ägyptischer Kunst München" or "The Munich City Museum of Egyptian Art." I know what you're thinking: 'That's not very German, why did they go there?' And you know what? It wasn't! But it was cool all the same and the free audio guides were auf Deutsch so I got a bit of practice in! We saw ancient Egyptian weapons, coffins, jewelry, hieroglyphic scrolls, cat sculptures, books, sphinxes, scarab beetles, egyptian gods, and more! I've always wanted to learn hieroglyphics or some sort of script language, and ancient egyptian history has always seemed really interesting to me, so maybe I'll read up on it some more in my free time!

Me with the City Garden in the background

The next stop was the City Garden, which was basically this huge expanse of green. Green grass, green trees, green people (as in environmentally friendly). It was beautiful and I got a ton of pictures, but too many to put in this entry. They will, however, eventually be on Facebook! :) After our visit to the City Garden, we became hungry and sought out some food which landed us at some kind of outdoor Turkish restaurant/stand. I had curry wurst which is basically just a weiss wurst in some curry-flavored sauce. It was okay, but it's apparently very popular in Berlin, so I suppose I should develop a taste for it before I visit there! After lunch we had a bit more time to kill so we visited random stores and churches (there were so many churches!) before finally heading back to the bus and beginning the journey back to Freiburg. I thoroughly enjoyed Munich and I would love to go back for another visit. The city has so much more to offer than just Oktoberfest and I'd love to seek out more cool spots that I didn't have time for during this first visit!

With any luck I will have another blog post up later this week detailing my first week of classes!

Waffles and Chocolate - Breakfast of Champions!

I apologize for being MIA for the past couple of weeks, but I was on vacation. Luckily for you I have plenty of stories and photos to share with you about my travels! Three Fridays ago I finished my final exam for our intensive language course, rushed to the main train station, and caught a ride to Brussels, Belgium. We arrived around 11 pm, spent two nights, and arrived back in Freiburg around 11 pm Sunday night. Brussels is the capital Belgium and also the de facto capital of the European Union. Both nights we went out and explored the town and the culture. For being such a popular city, everything seemed to close really early. There was one little street with about 5 bars that stayed open until the wee hours of the morning and that seemed to be where all of the younger people hung out, so we stationed ourselves there for the most part. I met a ton of international students from Spain and France and even one from Germany! I also noticed that most of the beer in Germany has an alcohol content of about 5 percent by volume, but in Brussels the beers were anywhere from 9-11 percent alcohol by volume.

Belgian Waffle with Strawberries
and whipped cream :)

Saturday morning we went out and explored the town. We went to the town square where they had an interesting flea market with fragrances, scarves, handmade jewelry, pottery, and more. We also visited a museum about the famous Belgian surrealist artist René Magritte. We went to a store called the "Beer Temple" where they had hundreds of kinds of beer, we visited many a chocolate shop, and of course we had Belgian waffles. Ohhh, those Waffles...They were amazingly warm and crunchy on the outside and hot and fluffy on the inside. The whipped cream was so delicious and different than in America, and the strawberries were incredibly fresh. And they didn't skimp either; there was a strawberry for every bite! :) 

Brussels Cathedral

On Sunday we had time to kill between checking out of our hotel and heading back to Freiburg, so we walked around the city, visited the Grand Place, got my friend Sonya a coffee fix, and saw the city cathedral. Even though every major European city seems to have a big, historical cathedral, they never fail to floor me with their beauty. Seeing the cathedral might actually rival the waffels for my favorite memory of Brussels. We went on a Sunday and mass happened to be in session, but it was interesting because I noticed that there were actually more people just touring the cathedral that what there were attending the service. The Brussels experience was fun and relatively painless even though the main languages spoken there are French and Dutch. It was funny because I never realized how much German I actually know until I couldn't speak any of the languages around me and found myself responding to the locals in German! All in all, Brussels was a very enjoyable city and I had a good time!

Oktoberfest! Just kidding...

People climbing over the tracks. Shoulda seen the
girls wearing Dirndls and  heels, poor things...

Once upon a time (last Friday to be exact) a group of five intelligent young people traveled to the main train station after their German class and spontaneously bought a ticket for five to Stuttgart for the following day. That Saturday in Stuttgart just so happened to be the Volksfest, a crazy festival/fair that seems like a slightly scaled down version of Oktoberfest. They met at the train station Saturday morning around 8, took three different trains to get to Stuttgart (the last of which stopped on the tracks for a hour and everybody had to get off, climb down the rocks, risk getting crushed in a landslide of dirt and pebbles, then scale a concrete wall and hop the fence), met up with some friends of theirs who had arrived the previous night (and who had had an adventure of their own!), scarfed down some food from the food court in the Stuttgart train
station, then hopped on a tram to where the Volksfest was being held.

Carnival ride from Hell. Not really, but it lasted
forever and I had bruises for days...

Little did these young people know that the following 14 or so hours would be incredibly fun, alarming, hilarious, and tiring. The most tame period of the adventure was during the time they were actually at the festival (only six hours or so). They "snuck" into a beer tent (they still can't figure out if they were supposed to get a wristband or not), ordered huge 1-Liter mugs of beer, danced on tables with the natives, belted out the lyrics to popular tunes that the DJ spun, ate a whole chicken, lamented over the fact that they were going to miss the Chippendale's performance the following evening, ate some pasta and macaroons, made friends with some dudes from Mississippi and Florida (they were battle buddies on leave from the Army for a while), rode a carnival ride (the longest ride ever-it lasted for SEVEN MINUTES! No exaggeration!) and finally called it a night and wandered back to the main train station. Then the real adventure began.

There had apparently been an accident or something that caused huge train delays and resulted in the majority of the tracks being closed. Well now. These young people needed to get home because their ticket was only good for a 24 hour period and they had class on Monday and homework to do! Some dude came by and yelled, "There's a train and it's leaving NOW!" Then it was chaos-these intelligent young people were sprinting madly toward this train, along with everyone else. They just barely made it, having to squeeze together and get cozy with a group of Germans wearing Lederhosen. These Lederhosen-wearing Germans just so happened to be going the same way for two of the three trains, so the young people struck up a conversation and had company on the way home.

The third and last train home stopped suddenly and unexpectedly and announced that it would be having a 30 minute delay. So two of the young people hopped off in search of a restroom (didn't find it) and made friends with a 27 year old law student named Christian who has perfect English because he studied abroad in Ireland. The intelligent young people (and the 27 year old law student) finally made it back to Freiburg at 3:30 Sunday morning, a full two hours after the scheduled arrival time. They then had to walk 40 minutes back to their dorms because the trams weren't running at that time, but that's nothing new!

All in all, it was a wonderful experience, although we were all slightly disappointed because the Germans were not exhibiting their typical punctuality. However, it resulted in a wonderful adventure with wonderful people and I wouldn't change any of it even if I could!

All photo credit in this entry goes to Allison!!!