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Published: October 7th 2008
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Munich.
We took a night train from Berlin to Munich and arrived at the main train station a little after six in the morning. We had our own sleeper cabin with a shower and toilet, but the rocking and swaying of the train wasn’t much comfort and we ended up with very little sleep again. The night before we were graced with the presence of one stringy, hairy Italian man named Roberto during our last night in Berlin, who had two distinct characteristics - the first being that he would casually drop down to his under dacks or birthday suit in front of all of us in the five person room, and the second was his attempts at breaking the sound barrier with his snoring. Yes, he was one of a few characters we’d meet along the way, albeit not a very pleasant one.
So, we caught up on some emails at an internet cafe across the road from the Hauptbahnhof (main train station) before heading to Florentine and Gerhard’s place in Milbertshofenplatz, which was about fifteen minutes from the centre of town. We stayed down stairs in what Florentine uses as her art classroom when the semesters are
New town hall
also at night commencing. The place itself is a four-storey house that was originally built in 1911, and which was at the time the only house standing apart from the church across the square. We spent much of the first day catching up on sleep before heading off to another free tour with Sandman’s New Europe.
The New Munich free tour was held at Marienplatz and we were taken around the town by a Texan named Austen (he was from Dallas, though). We were shown around some of the main sites around Munich. The tour was quite informative and I never knew how much history there was in Munich, from beer to politics to religion and to war. There are several plaques around the city which are subtlety placed amongst and around buildings to commemorate different parts of their history. Also, after the war most of the city was destroyed, but many people had taken pictures of how the town had looked like which made refurbishing establishments an easier task. See our picture gallery for a look into Munich.
Our second day was spent at the three art galleries in Schwabing. Most art galleries on Sundays only cost €1 so we took
advantage of it. The first gallery we went to was the Alte Pinakothek, which housed many paintings from the Renaissance period. We were both looking forward to seeing an original Da Vinci and Raphael, but that part of the gallery was closed that particular day. We then went to the Neue Pinakothek, which was just across the road. Here, we saw Van Gogh’s Sunflowers and various Impressionist paintings of that time. I also got to see two Klimt originals. WOO! The last museum was the Pinakothek de Moderne, which showcased more recent work by artists of today. I found this place a little weird and we didn’t stay for very long. The only part I really enjoyed was seeing originals by Dali, Ernst, Magritte, Braques and Picasso. Other than these, we left early. Oh yeah, we also found this cafe/bar named after Shakira - yes, I know, how strange!! After our gallery expedition, we had dinner at Catherine’s place, who is one of Mitch’s mum’s good friends. We talked and laughed, and we would have stayed longer, but Catherine had work the next day and we had Oktoberfest to attend to.
So the big day - Oktoberfest. After putting Mitch
through art gallery after art gallery, it was time for some down time. We arrived at the grounds just before midday and after looking around at some of the stalls we decided to settle into the Hofbrauhaus tent to get us a table for the night. Even at midday the tent was almost eighty percent full, with raucous crowds of multilinguals who shared a common love for bier and a good time. I only managed a stein and a half, and Mitch, well... let’s just say I was still walking straight on our way home. (Just for the record, I think he had at least five steins). The beer was also stronger than usual, and I was proud of my little effort considering one stein is equal to three standard drinks back home.
The only lowdown for me was being groped by drunkards as I tried to make my way to the women’s toilets, but this was nothing compared to the nicer, more pleasant people who had stationed themselves at our table of the course of ten hours. We had an Englishman who’d been living in Germany for sixteen years serve as our interpreter to the various beer drinking
songs that the band seemed to be playing much more frequently as the night went on. There was also a German couple, who Mitch kept saying “Ja das ist gut” in his best German. Also a few Canadians popped up on our table as well, like Tania, a twenty-eight year old doctor, and Mark and Dan, who turned out to be top blokes. The table next to us, which was occupied by Serbians, somehow got hold of my drunken boyfriend and started going on about Tasmania to him and propping up their fingers to make weird rabbit impressions. They were harmless and one of them kept reiterating “Hobart, Hobart...” and doing the rabbit ears impression, followed by fits of laughter. There was also a Swiss guy who stopped by our table and proceeded to have the weirdest and most entertaining conversation I’ve ever had with a drunk. His most memorable phrases were “Canadians, Australians so crazy” and “Swiss are cool” which was always followed up with either him or one of us putting on his bright blue sunglasses.
Following the Oktoberfest, we weren’t in the best conditions to do anything. I was alright by the end of the day,
but I think Mitch was a little worse for wear. All in all, we’ll have fond memories of Munich and hopefully we’ll visit it again.
Dorina
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