Episode 12 - München 🇩🇪
Amazing trains, urban surfing, first time seeing the Alps, and a German beer hall!
And so here we are!! The weeklong trip across Europe, zipping around on bullet trains with Emma and Joe, is finally here!
I decided for this week to write a post for each of the cities that we are going to, since so many exciting and fun things are happening that the blog posts will be long enough for each city. Plus, the blogs will be more focused, exciting, and tailored to the beautiful places we are visiting. I want to do them justice!
We’re hitting Munich, Vienna, Venice, Milan, Geneva, and Lyon this week. The bullet trains are insanely awesome, the Alps are beautiful, and I’ve met so many cool people already. The train system is world-class, the hostels are a great way to meet people, and I am having so much fun.
Let’s start with Munich!
Saturday 10/28/2023
I woke up at 6 a.m. in Joe’s guest bedroom exhausted and wondering what was happening. I was considering bailing on the entire trip so that I could get more sleep. That thought passed quickly.
Emma was super chatty this morning, despite telling everyone that no talking would be allowed before 8 a.m.
So much for that. Emma was talking about this Disney intro that was stuck in her head, and I had no idea what she was talking about. She, Joe, and I packed up quickly and left exactly at 6:15 a.m., exactly as we had planned.
That’s what I would call a great start to the trip.
We walked to Gare de l’Est train station for our train at 7 and got there within 10 minutes. We ordered breakfast, scanned our tickets super quick, and then we were on the train before we knew it.
“This looks like a British train.”
Joe is so British.
We got comfy seats and hit a cruising speed of 316 kph within 15 minutes. That is insane.
I read a bit of my Bloomberg and fell asleep after a chapter.
I woke up in Germany.
We made it to a minor train station 30 minutes later, then had a 2-minute layover to get to the train to Stuttgart (pronounced Schutgaart). Emma led the way by following the people who were running off our train to get on the other one. Emma being the navigational wizard that she is, we made it onto the Stuttgart train as the doors were closing.
The train was lovely and all the signs were in German. The people were German. Folks were speaking in German. It was all tremendously exciting! The German countryside is beautiful.
We were in Stuttgart before we knew it, and our “30-minute layover” ended up being only 10 minutes long. We were starving, but there wasn’t enough time to get actual food. Joe got a Snickers from a vending machine that was by the train.
It got stuck in the machine.
I got a Snickers myself, that knocked down both my Snickers and Joe’s. Consider that my good turn daily. We found a really nice table in the dining car of the train, and before we knew it, we were off to Munich! We got coffees (the medium coffees here were quite large, my American self was very happy) and some light snacks, and chatted the whole way there. Emma liked my oranges but wasn’t dying for them.
If you know what I mean.
We got off the train and were all super excited to be in München. None of us have ever been! We even saw a Yorma’s.
Our hostel (a hotel for travelers where you share rooms with other people and they typically have events, super fun!!) was right by the train station so we got there in 3 minutes. The guy at the front desk was Turkish, named Said, spoke German and English, and lived at the hostel. He was also very nice. If you are in Munich, I recommend the Wombat hostel in Munich very highly.
My impression of Germans has been that they are very nice and speak incredible English. Germany is lovely, very clean, and has beautiful buildings.
The elevator in the hostel was extremely small, and we almost got stuck on the way up to the 5th floor. We dropped off our things and proceeded to spend the next 10 hours walking around München.
Something that was quite funny to me and Emma was that no one jaywalks in Germany. There could literally be no cars on the roads, and there are dozens of Germans just waiting for the light to turn green. It is quite the site to see.
Walking around Munich, we saw lots of churches and stopped at the Lego and Apple Stores. There was a massive church where Joe and I lit candles. We saw the gorgous City Hall, then headed up St. Peter’s church tower nearby to see the views from the top. It was ~290 steps (I counted them in Russian). The view from the top is absolutely gorgeous!! You could even see the Alps on the horizon, and it was my first time ever seeing them. I was so excited! The church bells started playing at 3 pm and the entire tower was slightly shaking from it.
We left pretty quickly after that, and went to the most wonderful place in all of München: Hofbräuhaus beer hall. Basically, it is a massive lodge with wooden tables lined up row after row, a band playing German folk music, and servers wearing traditional Bavarian outfits.
We sat next to an interesting group of Americans and ordered not a pint, but a stein.
A stein!!
What is a stein, you ask? Well, it’s basically a huge glass liter of German beer.
Quite possibly the greatest invention ever. And only 10 euros.
The Americans were from Denver, though the main guy I was talking to Derrick, was from Vermont.
We proceeded to have the most American conversation imaginable for the next 2 hours while Emma became increasingly horrified by American culture relative to Dutch culture. We talked about guns, American politics, living in Denver, America, America, and America. He is a manager for an oil and gas industry and is super proud of his work, and now wants to move to continental Europe.
You can see now why Emma did not like the conversation. Emma hates oil and is super Dutch.
Derricl also bought me a pretzel. Thanks, Derrick!
I haven’t had that American of a conversation for quite some time, and I honestly really missed it. I loved the conversation and left with a much-needed dose of Americanism back into my system.
After being at Hofbräuhaus for about 2 hours, we headed north to the English garden while we were all slightly under the influence. We walked around the park, listened to some lovely music in a subway tunnel, and then scootered back to the hostel with my navigational skills leading the way (Joe was driving the scooter though).
At this point, we had a new roommate Julian, an Austrian bloke from Innsbruck who was in town for a concert in Munich. He was there for one night and left in the morning, just like us!
When we were at the beer hall, the Americans gave us their restaurant reservation for 7 pm that evening because they apparently had decided to go to another restaurant that night. We took the nicest metro ever over to the restaurant, ordered some delicious food (I got German sausages, potatoes, and saurkraut, I can hardly imagine a more German meal), and proceeded to drink 2 pints each over the next 3 hours. We were there for quite some time while talking about our past relationship histories and dating preferences.
Our waiter’s name was Phillip, and he was pretty hammered by the time he served our food. Apparently, he was drinking as his shift was going on, and he seemed to be having quite a good time. He provided 2 free rounds of shots for me, Joe, Emma, and himself.
I’ve noticed that great things can unexpectedly come from being just genuine and nice to people. I always like to say hi and take the time to know people’s names, and then use them as often as I can. I asked Phillip for his name as soon as we sat down, and used it as often as possible when talking to him. I was just trying to be a genuine human being.
Lo and behold, we got 2 free rounds of shots out of it. It seems that being a decent person goes a long way. I am grateful for the experience. :)
Afterward, we proceeded to walk across the Isar River (it was beautiful at night) and took the metro home.
Joe and I learned that Emma has lots of irrational fears.
Like pigeons. She freaked out pretty much every time we saw one.
It was hilarious!
Back at the hostel, there was a Halloween party in full swing at the hostel bar. We didn’t have any costumes with us, so I dressed up as a “clueless American”. It was pretty easy to play the part.
Joe and I got another pint at the hostel bar, and I was feeling quite hesitant to talk to new people. I forced myself to say hi to some people (there was an entire rugby team there watching the World Cup final, South Africa won again but I was rooting for NZ). One of them was a huge Ugandan dude named Romeo who was super nice and smiled a ton. He was in Germany for 2 years and had already become natively fluent in the language.
Then I walked up to a random dude sitting down and said “Hey, where you from?” Turns out he’s a really cool Australian bloke named Kingsley from South Australia, worked on a flower farm for 5 years, quit, and now he’s in Europe for 3 weeks before going back to Australia and figuring his life out. We talked about Australia for about 30 minutes, including the Emu War and a small town called Cooberpeedee where people live underground because the temperature is half the boiling point of water during the peak of summer. Kingsley, it was so nice to meet you! I hope you enjoy Rome next week :)
Joe chopped a couple more pints, we all talked to a hot but very drunk rugby guy, and then we left to get some ethnic Italian food.
It was Domino’s Pizza. Maybe not that ethnic after all. It was delicious and exactly what we needed.
Turns out you’re really not supposed to say “ethnic food” in Europe. Emma was absolutely shocked when I said that term. The cultural differences are quite significant!
We made it back to the hostel at 1 am and we all quickly fell asleep. Our Austrian roommate had a great concert, just in case you were curious.
Sunday 10/29
I smashed my knee into the bench in our hostel room at 5 am when I got up to go pop to the loo, waking up both Joe and Emma. Nice!
I woke up at 8:30 and proceeded to wake up Joe shortly thereafter. Joe and I had planned to bike to Allianz Arena this morning (Bayern Munich’s stadium) and Joe did not want to get up.
I proceeded to rip his blanket off him to find him curled into a ball in his underwear. After 5 minutes of convincing, I got Joe to get up and finally get ready. He took a shower, Emma woke up from her beauty nap, and we finally made it downstairs for breakfast. It was basically Nutella on bread (so my childhood) with delicious coffee from a very advanced coffeemaker.
Joe and I checked out the hostel, then proceeded to look around for Munich’s version of Velib bikes. We found these bikes that had 8 different gears, shook when you biked without holding the handle bars, and Joe called complete “pieces of shit”. I actually found them tremendously lovely. It was anabsolutely gorgeous bike ride for the 13 km to Allianz Arena. The biking infrastructure in Munich is the best out of any city I have ever been to in the entire world. Munich itself was pretty desolate on a Sunday morning.
We made it to Allianz Arena, which Joe really wanted to visit and I was super happy we got to see. The stadium looks like a giant bubble! We made inside the arena and even saw the pitch, though we weren’t able to seat in the official stadium seats because the tour was quite expensive. We tried to sneak inside, with no luck.
We spent about half an hour at Allianz, then took the metro back into the city center to meet up with the lady, the myth, the legend herself, Emma Verbeek. The metro system in Munich is extremely clean, fast, and efficient. It even gives the Moscow metro a run for its money!
We walked over to the English Gardens, where there is the largest and most popular urban river surfing site in the world. Emma’s friend recommended we go visit, and it was one of the highlights of the trip so far. Basically, Munich built a tunnel in the river and slightly dammed it so that there are huge waves, and German surfers wearing wetsuits take turns surfing the waves while tons of onlookers watch from the river banks. It was awesome!
After spending 20 minutes there, we walked back to the hostel, during which I bought a large stein glass from the beer hall we visited the day before. We grabbed our things at the hostel, then walked 2 minutes to the train and claimed a lovely train table seat for 4.
It was off to Vienna for us!
It was quite the train ride to Vienna for several notable reasons.
There was a fight on the train within 5 minutes of departure, causing the conductor to sprint down our train car to break it up. We had to make an emergency stop at the next station, where German police arrested the men involved.
There was also an extremely drunk guy that would not cooperate with the conductor, only spoke Polish, and was escorted by police off the train at the station after the brawl police intervened.
I finished my Bloomberg by Bloomberg book. Finally!
We met a really nice Austrain lady from Vienna that gave us a bunch of recs for the city. Unfortunately, she was quite racist against immigrants, but was very nice in all other regards.
The mountains and views of the German countryside were absolutely gorgeous the entire way to Vienna. It was straight out a movie.
We made it to Vienna at 7:30 pm, when we took the metro to our hostel and dropped our things off at the hostel. We proceeded to befreind a Danish girl Astrid, grab a lovely dinner downtown, and proceed to party with a bunch of people in the hostel until 1 am. It is currently 2 am, I’m sitting in the hallway to not wake up my hostel roommates while writing this, and I am having the most wonderful time ever.
Thank you all for tagging along on this adventure :)
Takeaways from the first 2 days Interrailing:
The train system in Europe is incredible. You can buy a season pass through Interrail and travel to so many new cities and places quickly. I love it so much.
Munich has the best public transportation system and biking infrastructure of any city I’ve been to in my entire life. The metro is incredibly clean, fast, cheap, and quiet. There are trams and buses everywhere. And they are all blue.
Traveling with Emma and Joe is so much fun!!
German women are very pretty. I’m excited to see Austrian and Italian women as well.
The Alps are gorgeous. I cannot wait to see them even more this trip. I love mountains. I love mountains so much!
Must-dos in Munich: St. Peters Church clock tower (climb up to the top), Allianz Arena (where Bayern plays), Hofbräuhaus Beer Hall, Eisbachwelle (river surfing). You will not regret them!
Some more pictures:
