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!