Trip Day 2 Munich

The second day of the trip was a lot of fun as well. We were in Munich. We had stayed the night in a hostel there and it was time to explore the city. We had the unique experience of being in Munich during fasching. This is a mardi gras of Europe, so to speak. Because of that the streets and hostels were exceptionally busy all of the time. It was good though. To start the day David and I visited the town square, Marianplatz, admiring the Rathaus and nearby churches. The first place we visited was the Frauenkirche, or woman's church. It was very beautiful inside. All of the large cathedrals in Europe are. We stayed there for some time, exploring the crypts and taking pictures of the ornate gold statues. Following that we made our way to another square in the city. At the time we weren't aware of it, but it turns out this location was another popular place for the Nazi party to hold large rallies. Again we stood on the steps where Hitler gave some of his speeches. We went to the square originally to see the Residenz, which is now a museum, but was historically the house of the Bavarian rulers. We did not take a tour of the museum however, because we had little time and it was too expensive. Following the Residenz we made our way to the Deutsches Museum. This museum is dedicated to the advancements to humanity from Germany, but also the large advancements from all over the world. We underestimated just how large this museum actually was, and how long it was going to take us to get through it all. We ended up staying until the Museum closed. Once it closed, David and I were rather hungry, so we made our way to the Hofbrau House to meet up with Chris and Julian. They had slept in after a night out on the town, so they missed on a lot of the day, but that's alright. At the Hofbrau House I ordered a large piece of meat (called a Schweinshaxe which literally translates as pork shank) and a beer. I figured that would be the Minnesotan thing to do. It was exceptionally good, and not too expensive either.We stayed there for some time before making our way back to the hostel. It was a full day and I was tired. The night was not over though. It was Sunday, and that meant Super Bowl! So we all made our way over to a local Irish Pub, which actually served as an American bar and at midnight, the game started. David is from San Fransico, and therefore wanted the 49ers to win. I didn't really care, but  I wanted to bust his chops. To make things interesting we made a littler wager. 1 Belgian beer went to the winner of the bet. Naturally I won and he owed me a beer, which I never received, but it happens. While there I also met an German who had recently spent the last semester in Minnesota, living with a family in Sauk Rapids. He was the only other Vikings fan in the place. We talked for a good while and it was a great time. The power outage killed us though, as it happened at about 3 am... We did finally get back to our hostel though, at 6 am. The night was short because we had to get up again at 9 so that we could check out by 10, but it was still a great day. The following are pictures from the day. I apologize, but videos apparently won't load onto the blog.