Marvelous Munich Memories

This is Mike, writing combined blog entries with Luke. I'm going to write a high level description of our Germany itinerary and what we did on our first stop (Munich), and then Luke will caption Munich pictures that we'll pick together. I think the next three paragraphs will be much denser than Luke's captions, and, if you skip the next three paragraphs, you'll probably pick up the gist of our Germany week from breezier blog entries that follow. We left London in the morning of Tuesday, 8/2, for Munich. Later in the day, we met up with the families of two of my college friends who live in Luxembourg and London. The group of 14 stayed together in Munich until the morning of Friday, 8/5, when we rented three cars and all drove to Fussen for sightseeing on our way to Lake Constance. (Two of the cars including ours actually drove through Austria briefly at one point.) We spent a few hours in Meersburg the next day, but returned to Lake Constance. On Sunday, 8/7, we all drove to Stein am Rhein, Switzerland, for at least lunch, on our ways to Freiburg im Breisgau. Freiburg is where we all stayed until Tuesday, 8/9, when everyone departed Germany. In Munich, we stayed across from Viktualienmarkt, a historic open air market with many stalls that sell anything from liter beers and sausages/ wiener schnitzel all day long, pastries, smoothies, and coffee in the morning, to smaller sized beers . . . we took most of our meals there. On Wednesday morning, we went to Olympiapark, a large park developed for the 1972 summer games hosting duties. There are two BMW museums nearby -- one for general industrialization and the other for cars. We spent some of the afternoon at the car one before relocating back to Altstadt (which means old town in German -- I think) to have dinner in Hofbräuhaus, the renowned beer hall near our hotel. Simone likes beer now (really!). Because they call .3 liter beers, "lady beers," Simone nearly upgraded her .5 to 1.0 L. On Thursday, we spent most of the day in the English Gardens, a very large park not far from our hotel, after a trip to the Residenz. The Residenz has a lot of elements similar to what Kiera and I saw in Venice at the Doge's Palace and then Luke with us at Versailles, as well as what we saw in the main attraction in Fussen the next day. It does turn out as a particularly lucky 2022 tourist might guess that the residents tended to visit one another and imitate what they liked. Tyler pointed out that the defenses of the Residenz seemed to be pointed out into the city, indicating that the occupants were more afraid of their own people than foreign invaders. The English Garden highlights centered on the river running through the park. Upstream, we watched surfers in the late morning and then again in the late afternoon (better surfing later in the day?). Not far below the surfing, I got to travel by current further downstream to where many of us swam. But, it was cold, and the Brody kids were mostly talk after getting in slowly and dramatically. Also, that talk sure was focused on duck poop. We randomly found a very large restaurant for dinner that was downstairs and hidden just off the main square in Alstadt by St. Peter's Church. We had a fun meal (the seven small kids actually spent most of it in a playroom) before taking some pictures in the square and calling an end to our Munich time. Pictures: -1) We had an early morning getting to Heathrow to fly to Munich.

0) We went to this really cool restaurant and ordered food. Then we played games like tag. And then we got dessert crepes with Nutella. Every family shared one each. [Ed. Note: Viktualienmarkt.] A guy at our first lunch table said that there was a large pilot strike looming in Europe, but we later made it out on our next flight, anyway.

1) We went to a playground, dug and climbed. Then we went to a different part and loaded a bucket with lots of sand and pulled it up and shook it and dropped it because we wanted to make a sandstorm with all of the sand in the bucket. Then we went to a big field and did a race. It was a big spot, and we had to do as many laps as our ages. Me and my friend, Eliott, were the first people to finish, so the kids win. [Ed. Note: Olympiapark; Kiera actually was the only one to run as many laps as her age.]

2) We went inside a really cool car museum where you could go in cars, but they wouldn’t drive. And then, we went to a different room where you could draw cars. It had a track, and then the cars that we had drawn would appear on the screen that showed the track. I made one car that was a rhino, and there was a label on his butt saying, “butt.” I made a fighter jet, drawings of Darth Vader and Knuckles [Ed. Note: from Sonic], and I made one that was a shark with red spikes called, “Mad Angel.”

3) We went to a beer hall with lots of people playing trumpets. We got really good food. While we were waiting for the food to come, we decided to play hide-and-seek. Daddy’s goddaughter hid behind her cousins, and Ryan was searching everywhere. The video captures only the last minute. [Ed. Note: The beer hall was Hofbräuhaus. The Mets closer’s introduction hilariously features trumpets prominently. Luke and I debate how many trumpets were involved in his Munich memories. I assert that the Mets closer’s intro is influencing his memories, he disagrees.] It was so funny.

4) These pics are from the Residenz, which was the bureaucratic seat of power of Bavarian kings and then dukes/ earls. There was a really cool statue that was made out of only shells.

5) We finally made it to this big park with this big river in the middle [Ed. Note: English Gardens.] There was a big bridge shooting out big waves, and the surfers were surfing on them. One of them jumped in, and he didn’t even stand in his board for a second. He just fell straight into the water. Then we went to a different part to swim. Some swans came, pooped, and left. Then, a different person came and saw us, and he saw that we were so scared to get into the water because of the cold water and the fish. So he showed us a spot where there was a bump so that we could easily walk in. We were much more comfortable getting in. We got a picture in the water, and we saw that I had a six-pack (my belly muscles!).

6) We had dinner, and there were some musicians playing trumpets in the square outside. It was a fun dinner, but I don’t have a lot more to say about it.