Week 51: Munich, Again!

I was back in Munich for work a few weeks ago and Jason took the opportunity to fly down and meet up with me. We again rented a place through AirBnB, but this time it was not above a yoga studio. Jason arrived on Friday evening, in the rain. Luckily it let up a bit and we walked out that evening to an Italian-style place with pretty good pizza and had a nice, long European style dinner--in at 8:30pm, out at 11:30pm.

The next day was perfect. One of the best days we had seen so far this spring. We took advantage of it and walked through Munich's Englisher Garten and did some chatting, wandering and people watching. In the middle of one area of the Garten is the Chinesischer Turm (Chinese Tower), which is the in picture below. (Check out the blue sky and puffy clouds! Such a perfect day!) Like much of Munich, the tower was originally built a few hundred years ago, but burned down during bombing during the Second World War. It was, though, rebuilt to the original plans in the early 1950s.

Chinesischer Turm

At the Chinesischer Turm, as should be expected at any tourist sight in Germany, there was a Beergarten, as well as a selection of places to get coffee, pretzels and other delicious food. We had a snack before continuing our walk into another area of the Garten. As one would probably guess, there were bikes everywhere, as you see in any European city. Jason saw a quick reminder that yes, we were indeed in Europe, from looking at the bicycle below. See if you can find it yourself. Hint: there is something in place of a water bottle.

Despite appearances, biking while drunk is a crime...

One thing we like to do when we go to bigger cities, that I may have mentioned in an earlier post, is to eat non-German cuisine. The non-German food in our area is limited and leaves a lot to be desired, so when we travel, we eat "ethnically" as much as we can. For our second dinner in Munich, we found a TexMex place, but when we arrived, then had a 10 Euro cover, as they were showing a Real Madrid or some other important soccer game. Oddly enough, there was a second TexMex eatery right across the street, so we went there instead. The food wasn't bad--much better than the TexMex we get in the Eifel. And, we still got to watch a soccer game--it turns out that Germans dump beer on each other instead of Gatorade after a winning game. And they drink and dump it out of enormous glasses.

On our last trip to Munich, we spent some time at the Deutsches Museum. That admission included a ticket for a later trip to one of the other museums administered by the same group. So, on this trip we used that ticket to go to the Verkehrs Museum (Transportation Museum), which focused primarily on cars and other ground-level items that move us around--trains, trucks, bikes, etc. It was mostly a look-and-see museum, and didn't have too many interactive exhibits, but they did have a large number of cars of all sorts of different shapes.

Verkahrs Museum

Jason even found a stainless steel Porsche. Nice.

The Heaviest Porsche

Outside the museum, there were a few other exhibits, including a few additional locomotives and buses. I also made a new friend! A 15 foot tall snail! At least he was smiling. I, for one. welcome our new gastropod overlords.

My New Friend!