Blogs from Munich, Bavaria, Germany, Europe - page 110

Headed off to Munich (not far) dropped in on the BMW Museum once we got there. Too bad it was only a temporary setup in Olympic Park because they are building some huge thing opening in 2007. Had lunch in Olympic Park, alot going on - soccer clinic, some seaworld type thing - and alot of people around. Drove to our hotel and got pulled over by the cops, pooed my pants, he was OK just some random check (I think). Hotel was new and situated out in the sticks of a new suburb being built on the old airport, looks like a Mawson Lakes type thing. Caught the train into town and went the Hofbrauhaus for dinner - it was packed - big beer and sausages for dinner. Oh yeah, today was Himmelfahrt - public ... read more

Hello from the Paulsens. The week has finally arrived when we leave for our Europe adventure. We will post messages and pictures along the way so you can enjoy the trip with us. Whenever we have updated our site, you will automatically receive an e-mail notice like this one. If you want to unsubscribe, directions for doing so are on the site. There is also a comment location so if any of you know of particular places we should visit in Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, France, Spain or Portugal let us know. As many of you know, David traveled to Mexico this past January to visit a fair trade coffee cooperative and then visited Belize. There are also photos on this site from that trip if you are interested. Goodbye, Au Revoir, Chow and Adios ... read more

Phuong and I took an incredible bike tour of Munich that included a glimpse of the Englischer Garten, complete with a stop at the Chinese Beer Garden (which Phuong loved to see!). The English Garden was beautiful. There were bikers, walkers, roller bladers, and lots of people had their dogs with them. Actually, there are dogs all over the city, and, often, people have their dogs "stay" outside of buildings while they run in for errands. So as you walk along the city streets, lots of dogs will be hanging out outside of grocery stores and such, waiting for their masters to come back. Phuong is now determined to teach Bebe such tricks. Anyway, back to the English Garden! We biked along the Isar River, and flower petals from the trees rained down on us. ... read more

We arrived in Frankfurt pretty much on time. I was a little disappointed to see so little evidence of the Christmas season as we ran from one side of the terminal to the other. It is a huge airport and supposedly one of the best in the World so why did we have to walk down all those steps (with my sore knee) and take a bus to the terminal? I would have assumed the German flag carrier would get preferential treatment and we’d at least pull up to a jetway. After some confusion about whether we had to go through a huge immigration line, we finally figured out to get to our gate. When we made our way to the departure gate for our flight to Munich we again had to board a bus. Seems ... read more

Today was a very educational day. Emily wanted to go visit some art museums, so while she did that I decided to go on a tour of Hitler's Third Reich. It lasted for about 2 hours and was very interesting. I saw several different places where he lived, worked, attended meetings, fired gunshots, etc. I learned a ton about him and Munich. Munich is considered to be the birthplace of Nazism. It is where they began to have meetings and rise to power. The guide showed us places where Hitler, Mussolini, and Chamberlain had meetings and places. It was a weird thing to think about being in the same place that Hitler had once been. It makes it all seem a little more real. It was kind of neat to be in a place or see ... read more