Munich

After the wedding in Waldenburg, we headed to Munich to meet our college friends, Dan & Annie Gianola. But first another story from the train system in Europe. Bright and early the day after the wedding we got up to catch a train. We went to be around 4am and were up around 7am. Needless to say, we weren't at the top of our game. We got to the train station in plenty of time. We didn't want to have to fight for a seat this time. After an hour wait, the train arrived. The doors open...and there are people standing in the doorway. Not a good sign. The train was full. Stupid train system. So we had to stand in the entrance to the train for an hour without air conditioning. After an hour, some seats opened up. After about 20 minutes, we realized we were in first class. Unfortunately we didn't have first class tickets. So after we had cooled down we moved so that we wouldn't get a fine for being in the wrong seats. We happened to find seats in a car that is used to transport people with bikes. We found one seat and an area to sit down. We weren't there five minutes, when an older lady in front of us starting throwing up. She must have puke and heaved for ten minutes straight. What is even more weird is that she didn't try to avoid puking on herself. She just puked all over her shirt and jeans, and then would rub it in her clothes. At that point, Heather and I could only laugh at each other. Talk about the train ride from hell. So here we are, in a hot train, with the smell of puke in the air and we are hung over. After about two hours, we transferred trains. This time everything worked out fine. We had seats and no one threw up around us. This was the last train we had to take in Europe, thank god.

A little hard to see the sign but this is the Hofbrauhaus. This is a famous beer hall in Munich, where Hitler once spoke to rally people to the Nazi cause. Now, they just serve liters of beers. Yumm!

This is a restaurant near the Hofbrauhaus. This are "pig knuckles" roasting over an open flame. It sounds disgusting but they taste delicious.

A cool looking water fountain at night. It looked like glowing lily pads.

Dan and Annie drinking liters of beer with us at the Hofbrauhaus. It was our first time drinking liters of beer. Up north in Berlin, they only serve .5 liters. Another interesting factoid about Germany is that Waite staff at restaurants get full benefits and a salary. So some of these people working at the Hofbrauhaus have been there for 10+ years.

Heather excited about her liter of beer and massive pretzel.

After we finished our first liter of beer.

Their beer serving apparatus. Impressive, all automatic.

In Munich we stayed at a hostel and shared a room with Dan and Annie. It was a pretty nice hostel, but it was still a hostel. In the shower, they had "Tricky Ricky Dueschgel" for you to use. Really, they couldn't come up with a better name than that?

Dan and I in the top bunks. The girls slept in the bottom bunks. Annie was afraid that Dan was going to fall on top of her all night. The bunk bed squeaked quite badly. If you even tried to turn over, it was like nails on a chalkboard. It was just like college again. Lots of alcohol, small bedrooms, no privacy, but good times had by all.