The adventures of the Mel

Munich has been…..an adventure. Not a completely crazy one, but an adventure nonetheless. Our first full day in Munich we wandered around the central area for a short period of time, looking at the buildings and a beautiful gothic church (?) which we happened upon as it was chiming on the hour. It had figurines not dissimilar to a cuckoo clock moving around the centre heralding the hour, a semi-cute experience. We were feeling rather lacklustre, as the light shines straight into our window from around 6am and hence we didn’t quite get the sleep we needed. We needed a pick-us-up. So, we thought we would go to the mega-huge Deutches museum – 47 000m² dedicated to science and technology. Sounds bloody perfect! Unfortunately, somebody made an error somewhere. It was freaking boring! We spent the first couple of hours wandering around not-altogether-exciting exhibits, such as bridges, hydraulics, blah, blah and how could I forget, blah. And it wasn’t just that it was stuff I failed to find interesting – Andrew is a boy (shocking revelation, I know) and he was mostly bored. He did enjoy looking at some planes and stuff. The one thing I did find interesting was a pendulum mimicking Foucalt’s experiment to prove that the Earth rotated on its axis; essentially he swung a pendulum and watched it go through an arc. At the museum it moves through roughly 11.5º an hour. I stayed long enough to watch it knock over an indicator, then trudged wearily back to the far-from-awesome exhibits. After a quick bite to eat we managed to find some maths and computer science exhibits which were much more interesting, but unfortunately by this stage I was absolutely over it and just wanted to go back for a nap. So go back we did. And nap I did. To top it off Andrew took me out to dinner at a really nice vegetarian restaurant. It wasn’t the cheapest, but the spinach-ricotta-parmesan gnocchi balls I had were absolutely amazing – I felt like I didn’t want to eat anything else because I still had a taste sensation in my mouth. Unfortunately the servings weren’t exactly massive, so I had to eat more later. Pout! The next morning Andrew went to the BMW museum whilst I did some work. SO not my thing, but he had fun. After lunch we finally got to walk around Munich proper-like and gawk at everything. We went past a plaza with a building with columns and a copper-ised statue out the front. We also walked past what I think was the Royal Residence, and it had 4 lions with shields out the front which everybody stopped to rub. Assuming it was for good luck and not something obnoxious, I decided to follow suit. We walked up through some parky areas, combinations of grassy expanses, leafy trees and winding dirt paths, and on the way even encountered some surfers. Who cares that you live nowhere near the ocean! Just take your surfboard to the gushing river, that’ll work! It was great to watch them all take it in turns though! We walked up to the English gardens where there was a ‘small’ beer garden. Andrew had a maß beer (pronounced muss), which is a litre of beer. I watched him in horror because I had foolishly promised that I would partake in one at the (apparently) world famous beer hall, Hofbräuhaus. Stupid! We trundled across to see the beer hall looming ominously (in my eyes anyway!). It had started raining and after pausing to take a photo we also noticed a lady with a plastic bag over her hair to try to not get wet. Nice work tiger. It was really effective. You are not wet at all. Anyway….I went in and had a traditional German meal – a maß beer and a schnitzel. It was a bloody huge effort, took me an hour and a half. I really felt like I was completing the impossible castle level in Super Mario Bros 3 – in the last world (insert castle music with Bowser fire in the background). To top it off, the beer glass had spots on it that reminded me of Bowser. But, after 1.5 hours, I made it. I was exhilarated and mostly drunk. It was a nice atmosphere in the beer hall though – they had a small band playing a range of brass instruments, and some of the waiters got around in stereotypical German attire – the women with their bosoms highlighted, the men with their suspenders and hats….it was definitely a cultural experience! And that has been Munich. I’m off to Salzburg (back in Austria) today. Hope you all have a good weekend! XX Munich photos are on Facebook, link to come.