Advertisement
LETZT GEHT'S LOOOS!
Euro 08 was huge over there in May Hallo for the next little story about Germany.
We visited Germany 2 times on the trip, Munich was the first stop and we returned to the Northern Wine Valley called St Goar a few days later.
18/5/08 - Hopfgarten to Munich (München)
After our much needed early night in Hopfgarten, we awoke to a slightly rainy day for our departure to Munich. Our first stop was back in towards Innsbruck where we visited the Swarovski Crystalland museum and the amazing showroom that followed. This was probably one of the most weirdest exhibitions I've ever seen, full of surreal artwork that had pretty much nothing to do with crystals and the production of their jewelery. However, it was a really great experience, looking at how strangely the Austrian Brain must have to work to come up with some of the things they had on display, like mannequins marching along a tightrope (but only the legs) and flying t-shirts. There were a few rooms full of dazzling crystals that were on display, which was really cool.
After the Swarovski experience, we headed towards Germany and had yet another stop at an Autogrill (roadside servo) for lunch, where we had
German Loos
They don't muck around do they. Burger King (Hungry Jacks). They don't lie when they say German sized meals are twice the size of your head. Now, I know a whopper is meant to be big, but this thing had about 2kgs of steak slapped on it and enough salad to keep the Italians going for a week.
After rolling back onto the coach and occupying 2 seats, we stopped at Dachau, a German concentration camp. Dachau was Germany's first camp, and one of the smallest in existence, there were (only) 25,000 deaths that occurred at Dachau, and most of them were natural. We walked through the bunkers, a small museum that explained a lot about the rise and fall of Hitler and the people that were detained at Dachau. Outside, there were various memorials that had been constructed, a Jewish building and a Church of some description. It was amazing to find out that German kids are required to visit a concentration camp during their schooling, and that in Germany it is illegal to deny that the holocaust ever happened - and rightly so.
We arrived in Munich at 3:30pm, where we were given the chance to walk around the town centre until
Beer Hall
Great company and great beer. What more can one ask for. 5pm where we were meeting at the New Town Hall for an awesome display of the moving clock. It was Sunday, and unfortunately Europe has not kept up with the rest of us, and most of the shops and attractions were closed. That didn't stop us from having a good look around though, we went to Maccas to have a look - the burgers were again massive, and the menu was about 4 times bigger than the Aussie one, with about 10,000 staff running around behind the counter. We went for a slice of Black Forrest Cake, the famous German sweet - which was unbelievable. By the time we walked around and past the closed shops, it was time for the return to the Clock for the performance. Beaver had told us that it is an experience that should not be missed. The New Town Hall, the older looking building than the Old Town Hall, was an awesome example of typical German gothic architecture, and about halfway up one of the faces (probably 5 stories up) there was a massive clock complete with moving people and battle horses that would come to life at the stroke of 5pm daily. Needless
Le Splits in the Beer Hall
How embarrassing, I have 2 different coloured socks on. to say, we weren't in for a Logie Nomination performance, but it was something to see. At the end of the demonstration when one of the soldiers were knocked off his horse, our entire group went nuts with applause and cheering and literally scared half of the crowd away due to our outburst of excitement. Funny times for a pointless reason.
After walking back in light rain to the coach, we headed straight for our hostel, Haus International München, which was pretty much in the middle of Munich and was a really great place to stay. The rooms were fitted with special locks operated by a card, but there was a half-an-hour introduction by a site rep who showed us how it was done. Why they could not have stuck with the generic carded locking system I do not know. Two hours and twenty three bloody minutes of trying to get into our room later, we got dressed promptly and returned to the coach for what turned out to be one of the best (and biggest) nights on the whole tour - German Beer Hall dinner.
München Haupt was the name of our beer hall. We were going
to the beer halls with the other contiki group we had met in Venice, they were all champions, so that was automatically going to be an awesome night. To start with, we were given a free 1lt of Germany's finest to get the night going. We had pre-ordered our dinners back in Italy, and I was having the traditional Pork Knuckle, which sounds interesting, but tasted better than it sounded. The night was full of unreal entertainment, including a crazy photographer with a passport photo camera running around snapping everyone and creating keyrings of the beer hall experience that you could buy for 8 euros each (I did) and german dancers and musicians up the front. Every now and then I would catch the eye of the old geezer up the front and raise the glass which would get him (and the rest of the 200+ crowd) chanting the German Prost (Cheers)-
"I'm Prosting, I'm Prosting, I'm Prooooossssstinggggg! ....eins,zwei,drei,vier, PROST!"
and everyone on the table would sway their glasses backwards and forwards until PROST where they would all come together in the middle before a guzzle. Awesome fun. The beers were brought out by German Barmaids, each one
Dachau
Main parade grounds holding about 10 steins in their hands, pretty good effort considering I had to use 2 hands to lift one. The Beer (Called München Haupt as well) was one of the best beer's I've had - and consequently had 7 1lt steins, which went down rather nicely until Shane kept on buying throw downs of Jagermeister as well. Apparently we left the beer halls at about midnight where we apparently went back to the hostel where we apparently went downstairs to the disco and apparently danced and partied until apparently 2am where I apparently crashed for the night. Nice one.
Thats about it for the first of Germany - coming up next we head into the Swiss Alps.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.067s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 15; qc: 46; dbt: 0.0395s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb