so our trip to munich was my first experience in southern germany, and i really loved it! to me, it was exactly what you picture when you think of oktoberfest – beer gardens, sausages, full-liter mugs of beer, lederhosen and dirndl outfits, and a whole lot of jovial [albeit inebriated] people. definitely fun!
we stayed at the wombats hostel in an 8-bed mixed dorm room… the hostel was super nice and modern, and although i didn’t sleep as well the first night [one of the guys in our room was snoring SO loud], it was a very social place to stay and we met some really cool people. our favorites were another brother and sister, zach and maddie, who were traveling together from canada. it was fun to share travel stories, and we ended up meeting up at a famous [and enormous!] beer garden, augustiner keller, for some radlers [beer + lemon-lime soda, super popular in germany]. afterward, the four of us went back to the hostel, ordered a pitcher of beer at the bar, and played the card game euchre late into the night. it was so fun and really cool to make some friends on our journey.
viktualienmarkt is a really neat market in the city centre, where we found some really neat souvenirs and had some great sausage and beer. there are a few items that i still think about and wish i would have bought at that market and the surrounding little shops…it was a great place for gifts. we had pretzels and – shocker – more beer [!] at hofbrauhaus, one of the most famous beer halls in germany. it was huge, with lots of wood and long tables. the thing to do is to order a maβ – a full liter of beer – so that’s what we each did…it took us an hour and a half to drink them! we were SO full by the end!
we visited three beautiful churches in the city – st. michael’s, the church of st. peter, and the cathedral church of our lady. each of them was different and lovely in their own way. we also went to the BMW museum, which mike was pretty excited about and i enjoyed more than i thought i would. and yessssss, another beer garden – chinesischer turm, in the english garden, which is an enormous park – even bigger than central park. it has a giant five-story wooden pagoda-style tower, which is pretty memorable. andddd one of the highlights of the trip for me was going to an amazing gourmet food shop called dallmayr. there is so much to feast your eyes on there, and everything is truly a work of art. i could have spent over an hour just looking…and a lot of money eating! we actually went there twice, and one of the times, we got fancy little desserts which we ate at marienplatz, a grassy square in the city which happens to be right outside of the store. DAY MADE!
we really had a fantastic time in munich and it was fun for me to see a whole new side of germany. here are a few photos from my phone:
{in our hostel – this was the entrance to a lounge area with lots of natural light and couches.}
{our room! in the photo on the left, our beds are in the back left. they were pretty spacious rooms.}
{fountains in the city centre}
{in front of the town hall.}
{on the right is the inside of the church of st. peter. it was gorgeous.}
{sausage + beer!}
{the light was so pretty on this night.}
{the intricacy of the architecture just gets me!}
{liters of beer + pretzels at hofbrauhaus!}
{this was the hostel bar on the first night – pretty quiet. on the second night, when we were playing cards late into the wee hours of the morning, it was bumping! i wish i had gotten a picture then! it was a cool place and convenient to have it right there in the hostel.}
{inside the church of our lady. i loved the windows – very simple but very beautiful.}
{on the right, a “coconut kiss charlotte” from dallmayr. not going to lie – mike and i sure know how to sniff out good food!} ;)
{the BMW museum! and an old turboprop engine [is that the right terminology?? i don’t know] made by BMW.}
{the cutest little BMW i ever did see!}
{on the left, hello rolls royce! what a show stopper. and on the right, an electric BMW bike. pretty cool, pretty expensive.}
{i think it looks good on me.} ;)
{not bad on him either…}
{here’s what you get when you combine a mini cooper + a limo + a pickup truck. ha!}
{at the chinesischer turn beer garden}
{when in munich…}
here are posts from the other cities that we went to on the same backpacking trip [and more to come!]:
next up will be more photos of munich from my nikon!