Munich

Munich is a great city, especially if you’re a beer and/or history nerd. When we originally planned this trip in July we were going to drive and bring the dogs with us, but right before the trip we reconsidered that plan since traveling with the dogs is stressful. Instead we bought some train tickets and found someone from work to stay with the dogs — a decision I’m glad we made since our hotel was right downtown in a touristy, crowded area, which would have made walking the dogs a nightmare.

This was my third trip to Munich, but the first two trips were in 2004 and 2005, so it had been a while, and Chris had never been. Since we try to be pretty low key tourists focusing on quality time over cramming in all the things, we only had one event definitively scheduled — our Get Your Guide Oktoberfest event — but we had a few other things on our list like eat at the original Hofbräuhaus, hang out in Marienplatz, and I wanted to revisit a crazy church I remembered called Asamkirche.

Unfortunately, it was cold and rainy for a lot of the trip, but we had been checking the forecasts so we packed our rain jackets, waterproof shoes, and an umbrella. We arrived Thursday evening and ended up walking the 30 minutes to our hotel, which was centrally located a block and a half from Marienplatz and on the same block as Hofbräuhaus. (Hotel Platzl for anyone looking for a nice, central hotel.) We tried to get into Hofbräuhaus that first night, but it was insanely crowded and even with the beer house seating rules where you can sit at any table with empty seats, it was impossible to find a place to sit since there were dozens of people packed between tables closely watching the tables for a hint that the current occupants might be leaving soon. We also didn’t want to sit outside in the rain, although there were plenty of other people who chose that route.

After pushing through the crowds of people a couple of times, we finally left and went across the street to an Augustiner brew house, which brews one of our favorite Oktoberfest beers. We had to wait in line outside in the drizzle for about 10 minutes, but we eventually got seated at a 6 person table with two other couples. The meal — traditional Bavarian food was great, the beer was delicious, and our waiter was awesome, but once we finished dinner we were both tired, so we walked back to the hotel for the night.

Friday was our Oktoberfest experience, which I wrote about separately, but what I left out was that after we left Oktoberfest we went to Hofbräuhaus and managed to find a couple of seats this time around. We were seated with a German couple who spoke very little English, and two young Italian men who were big Trump supporters and who apparently left without paying. Luckily, it was too loud to really talk much, and since Chris was between me and the Italians I didn’t talk to them at all. A couple of more beers on top of our Oktoberfest drinks and another heavy Bavarian meal was more than enough to send us stumbling back to our rooms to crash for the night.

Friday morning we were feeling a little rough, but since we figured fresh air and movement would help, we signed up for a walking tour that explored how Hitler’s Third Reich was able to get started in Munich. It was fascinating, and the tour guide was excellent, dealing with the heavy topics in a professional way and connecting the events of the 1920s and 30s to the types of rhetoric that has recently become become popular on the right in the U.S. When the tour was finished it was time for a late lunch so we went to a Japanese place for Ramen since I couldn’t face another Bavarian meal at that point.

After lunch we went over to the Asamkirche, which was much easier to find with google maps than I remember it being when I was using the tiny map in my guide book 20 years ago. It did live up to my memory of being over-the-top though, and I’m glad we walked over to see it. After that we just wandered around a bit, checking out the Frauenkirche and the Devil’s footprint that is supposedly in the church, window shopping, and drinking coffee and eating cake in the hotel coffee shop while people watching.

Sunday morning we decided to visit the Residence, a huge royal palace that Bavarian rulers used for hundreds of years. The opulent rooms and displays were interesting and with audio guides we were able to learn a lot about the history of the family and buildings. After about 2 hours we were ready to go, but we ended up lost for 30 minutes in the maze of rooms trying to figure out how to get back to the entrance.

Sunday afternoon was also pretty low key. We wandered around a bit and took some pictures with the blue skies and clouds instead of rain, checked out part of the original wall around Munich, and finally sniped some outdoor seats at a restaurant on Marienplatz, where we had a beer and chatted with the American tourists next to us while we waited for the Glockenspiel to do its thing. After that we went back to the Augistiner restaurant again and the waiter we had the first time sat us in his section and chatted with us a bit, even helping me figure out a German word/grammar issue that had confused me for a while now.

(The word “freund” in German means both “a friend who is a boy” or “boyfriend” depending on context, but I never understood how you could tell them apart. Apparently, if you say “ein Freund” (a friend) it means “a friend who is a boy”, but if you say “mein Freund” (my friend) it means “my boyfriend”. The feminine version for both is “eine Freundin” or “meine Freundin.”)

We got back on the train for Wiesbaden on Monday and we were supposed to be at work for the middle of the week before we flew out Friday afternoon for Barcelona for Columbus Day weekend. However, we ended up getting sick (probably from the packed crowds at Oktoberfest) so we stayed home from work Tuesday and Wednesday and cancelled the Barcelona trip. Our next big trip will be to Belgium for Thanksgiving weekend and Chris’ birthday, then we have Rome scheduled for January and Lisbon/Sintra scheduled for February.