Scottsdale, AZ
USA
Munich, Germany
I’m listening to the new Coldplay album while I write my blog about Munich, Germany. It’s funny - I always relate music to moods, moods to writing, and come full circle: writing to music. There’s a song called Lost that’s chorus states, “I just got lost, every river that I tried to cross . . . and I’m just waiting til the shine wears off.” It was in the third largest city in Germany where I truly did get “lost”, however, in the most desirable way.
This isn’t the ‘lost’ one refers to while hunting for Exit 20 off a crazy California highway and there’s Exit 20A-F to confuse you. Quite the contrary. ‘Lost’ is what I was in Munich, the city where I finally dropped my guard and began to fully appreciate where I was. Munich, or Munchen, is the first city of many I hadn’t planned on seeing, but was glad I did.
When Sarah and Paul, the brother and sister from Florida whom I’d met in Interlaken, Switzerland, invited me to go with them to Munich, Germany, it only took me two seconds to decide so I bought a ticket (my first time with Euros) and said goodbye to Interlaken.
I saw a lot of great things in Munich, much more than just a reflection of a pasty white wannabe rogue traveler too (uh, that’s me). There was the Marienplatz, the Englischer Garden, the Biergarten at the Chinese Pagoda, the Hofbrauhaus (my favorite place for beer and food), the Viktualienmarkt (a daily food market), and I also got to know the lobby of Wombat’s hostel intimately. But of course, the most important thing to try and do in Germany, is eat!!
I’d like to say plainly how much food my Swiss/Munich traveling buddy Paul and I consumed in a mere three days, but I have
to elaborate. No exaggerations, the morning his sister Sarah left (boo raspberries), Paul and I made a silly pact to be eating something all day. We called it Munchin’ in Munchen. Blackberries, gummy bears, cheese and crackers, cheese and bread, cheese by itself, steins of German beer, and of course bratwursts. Oh and cheese. By the way, cheese makes my face get fat. But while I was traveling in foreign countries, fat was the furthest thing from my mind (…unfortunatelyit was the closest friend of my inner thighs). Don’t skip out on the food though because it’s like I said, you have to be yourself while traveling and experience what you want to, and myself said to stuff my fat face with German goodies.
As we munched on our morning pastries, Paul convinced me to take the free walking tour (the tour leaves from Wombat’s every morning at 10:15am and lasts about three hours) and although we were late and had to catch up, we were happy we did because it was the best tour I’d ever taken!
Our tour guide Ozzie, informed us that the square we were furiously snapping photos of was the Marienplatz, which is named after the column of the Virgin Mary and is now known for its famed neo-Gothic town hall. He also told us to look up at the mechanical clock, the Glockenspiel that chimes at various times of the day and puts on a little “show”.
Then he proceeded to take us around everywhere a great guide can take you while in Munich (short of participating in Oktoberfest Paul and I missed by two weeks!). Three hundred years of Munich history in just over three hours, and Ozzie was patient, passionate, and displayed every great German cultural accord.
He took us to Frauenkirche (the giant ice cream cone looking buildings) and told us how the structure of Frauenkirche is the tallest structure (109 meters or 358 feet) in Munich and will remain so due to German building limitations. Once inside, he showed us the famous Devil’s Footprint that is imprinted in front of the cathedral as well as the tale of the “windowless church”.
As we kept walking and, in my and Paul’s case, eating, I began to feel a sense of what Munich truly was about. I also began to feel quite full, but my urge to try everything German overwhelmed my body’s urge to implode. This included my brain too as Ozzie continued to stuff it with so much information, I almost believed I was in the war circa 1939. The truth is, you’ll really care about the bullet holes left behind in the cement walls, the red-painted cobblestones representing history’s mistakes, and the buildings having been rebuilt brick by brick because war planes destroyed them over six decades ago. You care that you’re walking through the same streets as Hitler and his Nazi soldiers. You remember that, trust me.
The tour continued through some side alleys and stopped outside the National Theater, the old opera house located on the edge
of Old Town Munich and nearby the highly visited Residenz museum. It was there Ozzie told us of the square’s great moment in history, then informed us that our next stop would be a fun break from the heavy history some of Munich represented. We were off to the Hofbrauhaus, a highly populated local biergarten and the most famous beer hall in the world!
When the tour ended, I was upset. Not because it was over, but I wanted to know more! That’s the great part of going somewhere like Munich - it’s packed with all the fun things you love to do while traveling, but also stored within this marvelous city are the stories it keeps, waiting for people who want to hear about them.
Don’t go on the walking tour just because it’s free, but for the memorable and respectable German knowledge. Keep in mind the walking tour sticks only to sites that don’t cost any money and for the most part, it’s an outside tour. Also, make sure to tip your guide! They don’t get paid for giving tours and they try to fit in a roundabout way of telling you, so the gesture of a tip is a much appreciated one.
There are just too many sites to see and the free walking tour is a surefire way to see a lot of the meaningful ones while getting some powerful historical information, not to mention great exercise!
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