Munich Day One

Someone in my lab was nice enough to tell us that Tuesday, Oct. 21 was Czech's Independence Day, meaning our first holiday. We decided to take Monday off and have a long weekend. I had been wanting to see 'Cinderella's Castle'. Turns out this is in Bavaria, Germany about 2 hours outside of Munich and it is called Neuschwanstein Castle. We went and bought our train tickets the week before and got up nice and early on Saturday to head to Munich. Of course we get to the train station only to find out that we are at the wrong one. Luckily, by some miracle, we were early enough to go to the correct station and still make our train.

So here we are, smiling because we are in first class and we don't even know it. Luckily after 5 hours on the train an attendant was nice enough to tell us to move to 2nd class even though we were only one stop away from Munich.

Our first task in Munich? A beer tour of course. This is the New Town Hall (City Hall) in the center of Munich, a very nice place to meet for a beer tour. We almost missed the tour because our hotel was a little farther outside the city than we thought (think walking on the side of the road where there is no sidewalk, but some nice farmland).


We had a very nice tour guide that explained some beer historical facts. One specific image was very interesting to me, a priest holding some barley on the town maypole. That's how important beer is in Germany! This is from a maypole that historically was in every village showing visitors what was in the village. We also learned that beer gardens in Germany must have 3 chestnut trees to be an official beer garden and there are places for you to sit with your family and bring a picnic and hang out or a section to eat from the restaurant while enjoying your 1 Liter beer.


The night started out promising. We went to a brewery and had dinner and I met Nicole, a newlywed from Ohio. We ran into her and her husband again 3 days later at Neuschwanstein Castle. It really is a small world.

Then we were off to the famous Hofbräuhaus. This brewery was started in 1589 by Wilhelm V., Duke of Bavaria. Bavaria is the region of Germany that Munich is located in, kind of like a state in the US, I think. Here is Brian with his 1st 1 Liter beer.

And here is Brian with another 1 Liter Beer. We met some guys on a bachelor party from England and the night just kept getting more exciting.

How do you end your night at Hofbräuhaus you ask? By arm wrestling the biggest dude you can find. That just happened to be Nicole's husband, Nick. And who won? Why I did of course! He may have 'let' me win, but I have some rock hard biceps.

And the night continues, but without pictures. We went with the guys from England to the Atomic Cafe (http://www.atomic.de/). We were there until 4 am. Interesting, because we had to be on a Castle Tour the next day at 8am.