Munich

Today was a bit of a “lazy” day. Sarah and Josh headed out to the Deutsches Museum for a few hours, this museum is very large with all kinds of science and engineering exhibits, Sarah did say they had a pharmacy exhibit, but they didn’t make it there.

Dustin and I went to the market for yogurt, milk, and bread for breakfast the next two days, then we caught up a bit on the blog and email while we waited for my friend Phin to arrive. Phin was one of my suite-mates when I took classes and lived at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio in the summer of 2003. Phin is from Frankfurt, Germany. She came in on a flight this morning to spend the afternoon with us. Dustin and I met her at the Metro Stop closest to our apartment, then we met Josh and Sarah along the way back.

We headed off to the city on the metro and it was crazy! If you remember from the previous post, today was game day, it’s the European Cup Championship, AKA the European Superbowl of Soccer. If you have ever been in Columbus, Ohio on game day imagine that times 50! Fans were everywhere from both the England team and German teams. If they would see other fans on the streets, they would start chanting their team song. Here is a shot of the crowd we came across and almost lost Josh and Sarah.

As we were trying to find them we spotted the Apple Store. Since Dustin is such a huge fan, he got his picture outside and we went in to see what a german keyboard looked like on the macbook.

We found Josh and Sarah and then headed towards St. Peter’s church, we wanted to climb the to the top of the tower for a view of the city. Just our luck on this trip, the tower was under construction and we couldn’t go up!

We decided to go to Viktualienmarkt and get some food for lunch and then head to the Englischer gardens. It took awhile for us to decide where to eat, but we got some amazing fresh strawberries grown in germany and then Dustin and I had sandwiches with steak and onions. Not the healthiest of choices, but an authentic german sandwich. Phin was helpful in ordering at the small restaurant because it was packed with “football” AKA soccer fans.

We found a windowsill to sit on to eat quickly because the park was a pretty good walk from the market. Here is a picture of Phin and me.

We relaxed in the park for awhile & ate our fresh strawberries. Here is Dustin laying on the grass, catching up on podcasts.

At one part of the stream that flows through the park, there were people surfing! Not what I would have expected in Munich. Not quite the same as catching a wave in the ocean because it was continuous, it was almost like a surf-skate park.

We headed over to Hofgarten next to one of the palaces. It had beautiful flowers and people relaxing in the sunshine. It was at least 75 degrees here today.

Not sure if it was the hot day or just that all the “busyness” is finally hitting us, but we all were pretty whipped today so we headed back to the apartment. We went to the wrong metro train at first and this is that we saw, one of the buses headed for the stadium. The police were there not letting any of the blue fans on the red metro to avoid fights.

Dustin and I stopped at a cafe to have a smoothie with Phin before she headed off to meet a few other friends in Munich and go back to the airport. Then we relaxed for awhile and did some catching up back at the apartment.

Sarah and Josh braved the crowd and headed out towards the stadium to get a glimpse of the action, while Dustin and I aren’t much for large crowds, we stayed home to relax and walked to the supermarket again to purchase lettuce/salad mix for dinner. This dinner was not quite as extravagant as previous meals, but rings in at 3.50 EUR, certainly the cheapest thanks to the European version of Aldi! We finished the day splitting a Spaghettieis and walked back home to relax. We wanted to watch the soccer game on TV, but of course the only place on this trip we’ve stayed without a TV is here. Oh well…maybe we’ll find it on-line! We are heading to our final stop tomorrow Prague! If you’ve been there before and have any suggestions for us, please leave a comment!

Also thank you to those that have been praying for my grandma. Her surgery went well and she isn’t too sore now, but her energy is still recovering very slowly. I really appreciate those that have been praying for her!