Munich

So the other weekend I ventured outside of the Czech Republic for the first time to Munich with my roommates Allison and Niki. Munich was absolutley amazing! None of us had stayed in a hostel before so we had no idea what to expect. We got into Munich pretty late Thursday night and our hostel had a bar so we had a beer there and went to bed. If you've never stayed at a hostel before, walking into a room of 12 sleeping strangers is kind of comical/creepy/ridiculous so we all started laughing and just didn't know what to do with ourselves that first night.

The next morning we got up and ventured to Nymphenburg Palace and it was gorgeous. There was this little pond area in front that had a lot of swans and ducks. I'd never seen a swan before so that was cool, except one of the swans kind of almost attacked us. The inside of the Palace was really nice and had a lot of giant decorated fancy rooms. One room had paintings of young girls all over it that this Prince had done. He picked out what he considered the most beautiful girls in Munich and got paintings of all of them so he could look at them whenever he wanted, kinda creepy.

Niki and Allison outside the Palace 

Inside the Palace

After that we went to the Deutsches Museum, which has science/technology stuff. It was a huge musuem and had a ton of cool stuff. We met up with our friend Laura and her German friend Franziska. The museum had lots of engineering like stuff, old computers, and way to much to list. One cool thing was a U-boat from WWI.

I met R2-D2!!

The U-Boat

Then we walked around a bit and we went to Viktualienmarkt, which is just this outdoor food market and saw some other things.

Town Hall

Der Rathskeller (WI people will get why this is picture worthy)

Afterwards, we went to this pub/restaurant called Hofbrauhaus, which is apparently one of the oldest places in Munich. It was really cool traditional (and touristy) place. We got our first exposure to 1L beers there. At the table were these crazy German guys we met who spoke hardly any English, but we ended up spending 5 hours there and they were entertaining. Most of the night all I heard was "Hi, I'm Kevin," and the other guy said "I'm a pilot" and "photo!" And they kept on hugging us and taking pictures, so Niki and I became very fond of the word nein after a while.

Niki and I with our 1 Liter beers

New best friends

Allison with her giant pretzel

The next day we went to the Modern Art Museum and pretty much just wandered around all day. A ton of walking. We think we stumbled upon all the sites, we just weren't sure sometimes what stuff was. It was more like "Oh, pretty building, lets go check it out." But the city is so beautiful! The fluffy white snow everywhere made it really pretty, but I'm sure in the spring time it is just fantastic.

Pretty church!

Niki lovin' some modern art

There was a lot of snow....

The previous night we met these British guys who were staying at the hostel. They were going to this beer festival thingy and purchased some interesting shirts for the occasion. We hung out with them again the next night and made some new British friends at our hostel bar.

British guys

Our last day in Munich we went to the BMW museum. Lots of shiny very expensive cars. I was very tempted drive off in one. One of the last things we saw in Munich were some surfers in the middle of February. There is this man made wave on the river and people come there to surf.

My new ride at the BMW museum

Surfin' by the snow

Overall, Munich was a blast! I definitely wanna go there sometime again in my life when it's warm outside. We wondered around a lot, got lost, ate some good German food, met new people, and were able to actually talk loudly in the subways and smile at people :)