Days 173 to 176 - Munchin' on pretzels in Munchen

Day 173 (Fri) *More beeeer, more beeeer, more beeeer, more beeer*

Flying in to Munich for the final leg of my three-week Christmas break. The weather had been fairly mild in London, no snow falling, so I was surprised to see the ground covered in snow as far as I could see when I looked out the airplane window as we descended to land. However, by the time we got closer to the centre of the city the snow had melted and I was pleasantly surprised to find out later that a burst of “warm” air coming over the mountains from Italy (south) was creating unseasonally mild temperatures in Munich too, so it was around 9C the whole time I was there.

view of snow-covered Munich countryside from the plane window

Arriving in early afternoon, I headed straight for the hostel to meet Andra (from Canada) who had been there a couple of days already. First things first we wandered off to the nearest beer hall – complete with ladies in the proper costume, wooden pews to sit on bowls of big fresh pretzels sitting temptingly on every long table. We sat down to plates of cabbage salad, potato salad, meat stew and enormous housemade ravioli (because its further south in Germany there’s a bit of an Italian influence apparently). Was delicious, and all washed down with a refreshing Pilsener. But that was just the beginning, from there we joined a tour of a few of Munich’s finest, if lesser known, beer halls. The tour guide who was Canadian but lived there obviously took us to some of the places she liked including Lowenbrau (which looked like a mini castle), Augustiner Keller (a cool brick underground cellar), one I can’t remember but which was right across from the Oktoberfest grounds (all silent at that time obviously) and which served its beer from vats on site. We learned a drinking song which we sang with terrible pronunciation and no concept of tune and also discovered that beer from Bavaria (the area of Germany which includes Munich) tastes so great and fresh because it is not legally allowed to include non-natural ingredients. Last stop that night was actually the bar in our hostel which was quite handy.

gohst lady at the underground beer hall!

Day 174 (Sat) A more sober day...

Today we dedicated  about 7 hours in total to visiting the Dachau memorial site, about an hour out of town. I won’t attempt to give a history lesson here but I want to share what it felt like to be in a place where so many innocent people were held against their will, starved, degraded, tortured and eventually murdered and incinerated. We walked through old prison rooms, cold, small cement squares with tiny windows. We walked through bare wooden barracks crammed with hard wooden bunks and benches where prisoners slept and ate. We walked through the grounds of the surprisingly large complex, past rows and rows of building bases where the barracks used to be, constraining thousands of people. Most morbid though was the building housing the gas chambers and the incinerators. There was this awful smell that I kept noticing, almost like it was in my nose, musty, dusty, almost wooden – it’s hard to explain but I smelt it everywhere. The rooms, with cement walls and little sun light, were freezing, colder than outside even. The museum however was heated and we spent some time reading about how the camp came to be, how it operated and how it was eventually closed down. There were awful stories of female prisoners made to have abortions, of humiliating hazings by guards, of escape attempts and of course so many deaths. There also was a film which showed the all too familiar footage of human beings just skin and bones or bodies being literally carted away. Given it was such a long day we had brought with us sandwiches for lunch – but after a few mouthfuls it became obvious it wasn’t really a place where one could eat. Throughout the day I felt a mixture of sad, sickened, angry, disbelieving, helpless… but the one thing that kept coming to mind was how the guards could have carried all this out. How could people want to do such things, how could they let it happen? Surely they could see what they were doing was wrong? I don’t know. No one can get inside the minds of people back then, and there were obviously a lot of factors at play that I don’t or can’t understand. But all day, that one question rang in my ears – why?! By the time we left, around 5pm, both Andra and I were feeling rather nauseous and quite drained. Back in town, we needed to just lay down in the hostel and rest for a while until we felt more normal…

After a break we planned to visit the most infamous beer hall in Munich, the Hofbrau haus. Luckily we bumped into a couple of girls from the beer tour the previous night and sat down with them, next to two blokes who were actually from Munich. We asked them incredulously “Isn’t this place only for toursits?” “Yes,” they said, “that’s why we come here – for the entertainment!” We were lucky to meet them though as they engaged us in the proper ways of cheers-ing and explained what was going on when tables around us all of a sudden burst into one drinking song or another. As well as the litre steins of beer, the food there was pretty good too (I had potato soup and apple strudel, just to be as German as possible!). And there were in fact men walking around in rather traditional looking leiderhosen. Apparently if you drink there often enough for long enough (like 3 times a week minimum for some decades) you get your own booth at the Hofbrau haus, and if you happen to come along one night and someone is sitting at your table, you are entitled to ask them to get up and move! Handy at Oktoberfest time I bet! On the way home we stopped back in at the beer hall from the first night for one last beverage and were mightily amused to see, at the McDonald’s on the way back to the hostel, a wiener burger! It was literally a few whole, round sausages in a burger bun :P

steins at Hofbrau haus

Day 175 (Sun) A schnitzel as big as my head!

After a bit of a sleep in (following a sleepless night thanks to the old bloke in our dorm who snored worse than Dad!) we joined another free walking tour. I must admit, the Munich tour wasn’t as captivating as in Berlin, but it was still interesting to learn about where Hitler made some of his early speeches in Munich, the reaction to them etc as well as some of the city’s landmarks, churches, museums, maypoles(!) etc.

town hall: looks old but was actually built in the 1990s

After a few hours wandering around I stopped off at a tiny toy museum on the way home to see an odd collection of old-school barbies and other weird and wonderful toys.

graduate barbie!

freaked out dollies :S

That night, we planned to hunt down Munich’s best schnitzel (as recommended by our ‘local’ beer tour guide). She was NOT wrong. We made the effort to get on the tube and trek out (only about 15 mins away) to a student neighbourhood to a small little eatery. We dutifully ordered the pork schnitzel and a beer each – and both were huge. The schnitzel came on a plate as round as the space between my arms if I make a circle in front of my body; covered in chips and then covered in schnitzel. Honestly, this thing looked like an enormous meat butterfly, two big wings of beaten pig in the most delicious, moist crumbing, garnished with the traditional slice of lemon. Even the side salad was substantial and delicious. Unfortunately, we could have starved ourselves for a week and still not been able to finish it all (where’s Brett when I need him? Or Nellie and Noodles!) But at only 10 euro it was worth it anyway. In fact, I still salivate when I think about it… mmm

before...

after!

Back at the hostel, our stomachs full but with room for another beer or two, we took part in a quiz night in which some of our newfound knowledge from the tour that morning came in handy! Then it was off to bed for an early start the next day … back to Maastricht.

Day 176 (Mon) Returning ‘home’

In a stroke of luck, the only time it rained while I was in Munich was the morning I was leaving@ Andra was going on to Vienna so I packed my backpack and headed for the airport. The flight (to Cologne, the nearest big city to Maastricht I could get a flight home to) took about an hour and then it was a train to Cologne centre from the airport, then three train changes to get back to Maastricht station – ugh. And as if that wasn’t enough, I had to make a detour on the bus home from the train station to stop at uni (after missing classes to travel home that day and needing to sort a few things out with a tutor) What a trip, man was I knackered and after all that … I had class at 8.30am the next day!!!