Mellow day in Munich

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Wow the sun is out!
Relax at the Beer Garden
Glockenspiel not great.

Greetings from Munich! I can’t believe the sun was actually shining this morning when I got up. Great to see since it has been pretty grey most of the time here in Germany so far. The rain of the last couple of days really has made the weather seem like it is autumn. But that’s okay, it could be worse…snow or a hurricane. Haha

I spent the morning and part of the afternoon wandering around Marienplatz and area with Melissa whom I met at the hostel. We checked out a few stores (just looking of course since I really don’t want to weigh down my bag anymore) and passed by the infamous townhall Gleockenspiel where a few times a day the clock will chime and the figurines will dance. It’s cute to watch if you happen to be there at the right time but I wouldn’t make a special trip to go see it. We stopped for a few minutes and actually saw some of the figurines dancing where as yesterday only the chimes were going. . Geesh, I guess I seem to pass the area at 11AM a lot. Lol. Anyhoo, after a bit of wandering round the markets we plunked ourselves down at a beer garden where we enjoyed a couple of bratwurst and a pretzel. Now that really hit the spot! We relaxed under the shade of the trees and chatted and I eventually was able to compose a few postcards so they are almost good to go…just need some postage! It started to get a little crowded at our table plus the sun disappeared so we headed back to our hostel after picking up some fruit.

At the hostel we bumped into Thorsten and then Tim. We just hung out in the atrium chatting, listening to music and playing card games…One day I’ll get the hang of all of the rules of that German card game we were taught last night. Pretty chilled out afternoon. Melissa eventually had to take off and go catch her flight back to Dublin and then onwards to Minnesota - home. Thorsten and Tim are here until Friday and plan on doing the Insomniac Pub Crawl tonight. I don’t think I’ll join them since 1) I don’t drink 2) a couple of guys that went last night didn’t return til 5:30 this morning. Not good for me since I have a train to catch in the morning. So it’ll be a relatively quiet one for me tonight which is okay since the last few nights have been pretty late one compared to normal. What was supposed to be a quiet night in turned into a not so quiet, but not too late either, night. Met a new dorm mate, Laura from Texas and we went down to the hostel bar to cash in Laura’s free drink coupon and ended up meeting some pretty cool people including our dorm mate Marika (from NE of Hamburg), Leah (Melbourne), Sean (Adelaide), Tim (Bristol), Karen (Zimbabwe), Stanly (Sydney) and my two German buddies eventually came along and sat with us since they missed the Insomniac meeting point. Oh well. We hung out at the Wombat Bar for a while and before you know it, it is 9:30! We should really get out and get a bit to eat for dinner. So eventually we all make it outta there and settle on a pizza and pasta place around the corner from the hostel. Convenient!

After dinner most of us headed back to the hostel bar but Stanley wanted to check out the big Beer Garden…no takers since it was after 11. I only stayed up ‘til about midnight but reeked of smoke since there are sure a lot of smokers that I hung out with tonight. I swear that the smoke is always attracted to the non-smoker!

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