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Published: August 20th 2012
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So here it is: my second day in Munich.
Vivi prepared a delicious breakfast, and we had a leisurely Sunday morning, before heading back into town using the glorious German train system. We made our way to the Pinakotek der Moderne (ok, I tried with the spelling, but am invariably somehow wrong). It was a lovely museum day (and for only €1 each!). There was modern art (which is still largely a mystery to me), and a whole maze of random designs (as you will see in the pictures....the many many many pictures). Cars to chairs to jewelry to typewriters to Sony Playstations and robot dogs. Things I learned: evidently a major problem in designing seating at opera houses is the lack of a place to put one's hat. Heinrich Christian Anderson was both a philosopher and an architect. There a bazillions of examples of failed supposed utopian towns that just didn't work out. The part of the photography exhibit showing scenes of junkies shooting up made me profoundly uncomfortable. Museum stores have cool stuff. I almost forgot! There was an entire gigantic table filled with aluminum foil animals. Totally weird.
We wandered through the museum for
a large portion of the day, until we had our fill of design and bizarro modern art. Given our morning of culture, we felt the need to undo some of that by going to by far the most touristy place I have been to on this trip: Hofbraühaus. We each had weißwürst and gigantic beers. Which apparently the Bavarians have their own word for. I do not recall the word (gimme a break, I just learned how to count to ten in German last night...and promptly forgot how to say ten). After eating our fill (probably more than our fill) in the Biergarten, with all of the (likely) hundreds of other tourists (you could tell because there were cameras a-plenty - including mine), we strolled the streets of München with Starbucks in hand (yep, they're here too!). An iced tea later, we hopped a train back to Dachau and walked into the last night of the Dachau Völksfest. AKA Beerfest. It was how I would imagine Oktoberfest, but with less people. That is in no way to suggest that there weren't any people. There were plenty. Mostly dressed in steindl - traditional clothes. P.S. It is awesome that they do
that. And that the Bavarians wear traditional clothing for special occasions. Seriously, Vivi and I were the odd ones out with our modern clothing on. Oh, and I was definitely the ONLY tourist there. I say only because no one spoke English (except the friends we made at another table who both had foreign wives), and because the girl at the table next to us kept giving me dirty looks when I pulled out my camera. She was wearing shoes that were too ugly to allow her to be that bitchy. She was something out of Mean Girls. Regina George come to life.
Our "quick" sojourn into Völksfest turned into several hours of standing on tables and dancing (don't go thinking Coyote Ugly on me! Everyone was on the tables) and singing and clinking glasses and shouting "Prost!". I'm really good at saying prost now. As every tourist should be. Viv and I were completely worn out by the time we finally made it back to her flat (which is lovely by the way). She was kind enough to stay up and print me out a map of the train system and write directions to the botanical
garden and castle that I'm venturing to, as soon as I finish writing this. And then we both crashed. I finally caught up on sleep (thank god). And now it's today! Huzzah! I get to meet up with Ms. Erin A-bear at the flughafen (airport) tomorrow morning and then off to Roma!
Important German phrases:
"Scheisse" - S#*$^, use this for all manner of profanities.
"Prost!" - Cheers! Important for all excursions to bars/restaurants, any place there might be something minimal to celebrate. Celebrating life is good.
"Danke" - Thank you. If you want to be really polite, Dankeschön (again, don't quote me on the spelling).
"Ein , bitte" - One , please. Because food and drinks are important.
"Sprecken-zie Englisch?" - Do you speak english? This one is super important, particularly when someone is saying German things to you and your eyes have sufficiently glazed over as a brain defense mechanism from the word bombs being hurled at your face.
In all honesty, I really don't speak anymore german than that. I know that words with "eis" in them refer to either something iced (ice
cream) or something polar (polar bear = eisbeir). Oh, and spritzer is the same word in English and German. With an accent. Ta-da! Now you speak (horrible and minimal) German!
So, in conclusion, yesterday was all German all the time. It was holy Germanity, Batman!
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