Beer; It's not just for Breakfast Anymore!

Munich, Germany


When I used to travel for business and someone would ask me how my trip was, I usually answered, "Uneventful, just the way I like it". Well I can't say that for this trip! Things started out normally enough. My sister Maura drove us into Logan and we took a flight to DC. We had a really long layover in DC so we decided to meet up with my cousin Sarah who works at the Capitol building. The trip into the city was a little hectic at first, but only because we are on a tight budget so a cab was out of the question. Once we figured out the right bus to take us into the city, we called Sarah and she agreed to meet up with us at L'enfant Plaza where we were getting dropped off. That area has food trucks galore so we all ordered wraps from a truck that served Middle-Eastern food. (I'm sure you think this was where things take a turn for the worse, but the sandwiches were great and nobody dies from eating them!)

After our fun lunch in the park, Sarah walked us back to the bus stop where we said our goodbyes. All was quiet and Shaun and I were sitting there talking about the trip when our bench started swaying back and forth and the ground started moving beneath our feet. Yup, it was our first earthquake! At first we weren't positive that was what had happened, but when we got on the bus and started driving through DC, we began to notice that everyone had evacuated their buildings. By the time we passed the Pentagon word had spread that it was definitely an earthquake.

Now, generally I love any kind of storm or cool natural events, especially when nobody gets hurt. However, after last year's Icelandic Volcano that killed our trip to Paris, I was more than a little wary of how this would impact our trip. We had heard they had evacuated the towers at LaGuardia and JFK in NY so I was fearing the worst. Imagine my surprise when we boarded and took off right on time!

The flight was one of the longest I've taken so far, about seven and a half hours. I'm a terrible plane sleeper and historically I've opted against taking anything to help me sleep, but this time I was determined not to start the trip with horrible jet lag. So after taking a little something with dinner, I was off to dreamland. Roughly four and a half hours later, I woke up for breakfast with only 90 minutes to go in the flight. I watched out the window as we flew over the southern tip of England and before I knew it we were landing in Munich, Germany!

Customs in Germany was a strange affair. For some reason I was expecting them to be particularly harsh, but it was one of the easiest border crossings I've ever done. We had our packs and were out of the customs area in less than an hour. My brother John was joining us for the first six days so we waited about 30 more minutes for him to land and we were off! Once again, the challenge was to get to our hotel without cracking and ordering a cab. We started off great, taking the S Bahn from the airport, but we messed up when we had to transfer to their underground, the U Bahn, so we ended up having to get a bus to take us to the next U Bahn stop. Even with all the delays, we were at our hotel by 11AM. The hotel was great. The brand is Ibis, which is a low end hotel you can find all over Europe. I signed up for their frequent guest program in hopes that we will build up enough points for some free nights. In Munich, the room was only about 50 Euro, which got you a clean, comfortable room. No amenities, but we weren't planning to spend much time in the room anyway!

The first day can sometimes be a wash, but we did a pretty good job of filling it!. We went to Marienplatz square where you could see the Glockenschpeil, a very famous clock with life sized figures that dance and even have a joust! Then it was off to the Viktualienmarkt which has hundreds of outdoor food shops and a beer garden of course! My brother convinced us to try Currywurst, which is basically a bratwurst in a sweet sauce sprinkled with curry powder and served with a bun. We washed that down with some beers. Needless to say, Munich is not going to be a dieter's delight!

After more walking, we were exhausted so we came back to the hotel. John and I went to our respective rooms for a nap, while my crazy husband took the subway into town to do a workout at a local Cross Fit facility. If you don't know what Cross Fit is, I will tell you, it's a fitness cult! People who do it are in the best shape of their lives, but they are also obsessed. Needless to say, I'm not in the cult!

By the time Shaun returned from his "Feats of Strength" as I like to call them, it was time for dinner. I got us all good and lost trying to find a place I had looked up online. (Why bother writing down the name or the address of a German restaurant in a strange city, right? We can find it!) As fate would have it though, we ended up at a cute little place called the Red Pepper where we all had yummy meals and some drinks before heading back to the hotel for bed.

That night we all slept great for 9-10 hours and everyone woke up feeling like we were fully adjusted to German time, which is huge. We decided to head to Viktualienmarkt for breakfast where we had coffees, croissants, quiche and some sort of sausage/meatball kind of thing that Shaun couldn't resist. It was 10AM and there were about a hundred people in the beer garden having beers as big as my head. It was tempting but we had big outdoor plans for the day and beer would have only led to more sleeping so we passed.

So it was off to do more exploring. We spent most of the day in the English Garden, which is one of the largest urban parks in the world. We rented a paddleboat, walked for miles and were generally having a fun, but quiet day when we came upon what I will call the Crazy River! In the middle of this park there was a raging man made river. There were signs everywhere saying swimming was "Verboten" (forbidden) but hundreds of people were jumping and and riding the rapids down the river. I knew immediately that Shaun would be one of those people.

It was actually really cool and if I wasn't so chicken I would have tried it too, but this thing was truly raging- complete with white water rapids- so we let Shaun do his thing. I stood at one end and John at the other and we both took pictures and video of his trip down the crazy river. He had to go twice of course, and the second time he got caught in some rapids so he was done at that point, but he's totally glad he tried it! We needed some beers after the crazy river, so we stopped at the beer garden and had a radler (Beer with lemonade) before heading out of the park.

The Crazy River- obviously not Shaun but I don't have one uploaded.

The rest of the day was uneventful. We walked around the area of the Royal Residence and the Opera, Odeonsplatz, which was a beautiful spot. We grabbed a pizza for lunch and took the U Bahn out to Olympic Park where I laid down under a shady tree on a hill while John and Shaun looked for more adventure. Finally it was back to the hotel, where I'm having a small beer while writing this post! We're off to dinner now and tomorrow we head to Salzburg, Austria where I plan to get in touch with my inner Fraulein Maria! The Hills are Alive!!!