On the first day of Munich
Monday, July 25, 2005
After getting into Munich, our first problem was that there was no passport control on the train, and me being a bit to much of the worry wart wanted to make sure that this wouldn’t cause too many problems when leaving. As it turns out I won’t be needing my passport much at all in the EU. They only random check on the trains – sucks really because that means that I won’t get the stamps in my passport either. (Sarah doesn’t get any unless she asks for them due to her UK passport).
Anyway it was off to find our hostel, it was meant to be close to the station so we headed for the door, it was about a 10 minute walk, so not too bad. We are staying in dorm rooms now and that is really trying, it’s quite hard to sleep as well as you have to be more organised although I’m quite glad as I’ve started not to wake up at the drop of a pin. But overall it’s good as you meet heaps more people, and that’s what it’s all about really.
We both have a major clothing issue – it’s gone and decided to be cold now that we sent away our winter clothes, and a lot have been ruined by trying to save money on the 4-5 Euro washing cost and putting it altogether. So we decided to go and buy an item or two each. It was also a way of seeing what’s close to the hostel. There really wasn’t much near but we did find a cheep place, so I bought a top and Sarah bought a thin bright orange cardie. Afterwards just walking further, but decided that we must be in the really wrong place as we we’re passing more and more strip joints, so we turned back.
By the time we had found our way back to the hostel it was time for dinner and somewhere along the way we had found out the brewery across the road from our hostel had really good food, and we could see from our room window that they had schnitzel and traditional potato salad for 4.50 Euro, which is way better than we can buy anything for in the supermarkets. It was called Augustiner Brau. It looked fairly small from the outside, so when we alked in and saw that it expanded out from both sides of the entrance we were quite surprised. We were even more surprised when, after requesting a table for 2 (which seemed an impossibility given how busy they were), we were directed to a bench seat at a table full of German men!!! The waiter didn’t speak any English, so it was a stilted ‘beer?’ ‘yes’, ‘big one?’ yes’ (plus a Coke for me). When the beer arrived we cracked up lauging… and so did the rest of the table! It was not your average NZ ‘large’ beer… it was a full litre of beer, twice the size of anything else on the table!! But we have become accustomed to this now – it wasn’t just to be mean to the tourists, it’s how they actually serve beer here in Barvaria! Luckily there were 2 young German guys sitting next to us, and they helped us out with our meals, even ordering them for us at the waiters’ request! The meal was fantastic, and the atmosphere was awesome. It’s a very social way of eating and completely unlike anything we had ever experienced before. On the way back to our room we stopped at the hostel bar for another drink… instantly realising that we should have stayed across the road, as it just couldn’t compete with where we had just been… and there was only a couple of people in there and it was around 11pm.
It can rain here too
In the beer hall
The Guys we met
posted by Maarty @ 12:00 pm,
