Munich Mayhem

I was glad that the place we were staying at was just across the road from the train station in Munich as I am at the point where I am getting sick of lugging my big bag around. This hostel was another one in a chain from our previous hostel which meant we got a free breakfast woo!

We'd missed breakfast by the time we got there but it was still good for the next day. Again the initial plan was shower, food, walk about a bit. The hostel recommended a place which was a good walk away so we headed there (the roads look much shorter on the map) but to our disappointment it was rammed full of footie fans, so we turned around and went to find somewhere else that was on our map. Matt thought we could take a short cut, which didn't end up being the case as we got a bit lost totally disorientated and ended up walking to an industrial estate where all the breweries were.

After walking about for a bit longer we managed to work out where we were and got back on track, ending up at a place called Lams. This place was open around the clock, which initially made me think it was probably a bit of a dive but it was actually pretty good. I got a liver dumpling in clear beef sauce for starters and another traditional dish for main that I forget. Half way through the meal an American family sat on the table next to us and ordered some drinks. Now the waitress didn't speak much English and the default water is with gas - you need to be explicit if you want still mineral water. The face on this guy when he was served fizzy water was hilarious and he started to look at it as if he had never seen bubbles in water before. Anyway this guy was making a fuss and being a bit of an idiot about it (such an Anerican stereotype), I just couldn't understand what the big deal was.

We decided that we would spend the next day joining the free walking tour put on through the hostel, you just tipped the guide on how good you thought he was. This was probably the best thing we did, the tour guide was a black guy (pretty rare in Germany) who was from Canada originally but now lived in Germany as his grandfather was German. Before starting the tour we had our free breakfast, met some cool people and went on our way into Munich.

The tour was really good and we got some really interesting info on the sights and the fact that there were only 3 original sections of building left from the war - everything else had been rebuilt to look old from pictures taken by the Nazi's. We stopped off at a beer garden for lunch and got a roll with little sausages in- I can't remember what they were called but they were nice.

We also visited the famous Hoegaarden public house which is where the whole Hitler/Nazi party formed - apparently not a lot of people know that so now your informed. In the evening we went to the bar in the hostel for happy hour and had a few drinks before going to find somewhere for dinner and failing again so we ended up in a kebab house at about 11pm arghh!! Fortunately the train wasn't super early this time and I felt ok in the morning so that was a bonus, I just wasn't looking forward to the 7 hour train journey.