München: couchsurfing in Germany!

So I need to play a little catch-up... thus far I have prided myself on my prompt blog posts (usually because it's much more fun to write a blog than do homework on a Sunday night), but last week I was a little busy and I just did not have time to write a post. I just got back from Barcelona a few hours ago, but LAST weekend, November 18-20, I was in Munich, Germany, and that will be the focus of this plog (my new word for a blog post... I'm tired).

Let's go back in time... November has been a whirlwind of traveling and being super busy! After a fantastic birthday weekend in Geneva, I came back for another busy week in Toledo, and then turned right back around to go to Germany. I went with three other people, but somehow we couldn't get the same flight, so two of us had to fly out early (like sleeping-at-the-airport early) on Friday while the other two flew later. So to make the suckiness of sleeping at the airport even better, Roberto and I went to a Rodrigo y Gabriela concert Thursday night in Madrid before heading to the airport. IT WAS AWESOME!!!!!! Perhaps one of the greatest concerts I've been to.

Roberto and I arrived in Munich around noon, and had four hours to explore the city before the other two arrived. So we pretty much just walked down one road as far as we could, then turned around and walked back on another road. We started out in the main plaza, Marienplatz, and walked down a big shopping street. We found a cool outdoor skating rink, a cute little park, a beautiful church, christmas decorations/markets everywhere, and then went to the English Gardens. This park was HUGE (bigger than Central Park, according to some internet source), and we barely walked through 1/4 of it. There were people surfing on a river, cute dogs everywhere, people slacklining and hammocking, sitting, walking, eating, even someone RIDING A HORSE! We just sat for a while and enjoyed the view before trekking back to Marienplatz to meet up with Andrew and Lauren. Once we found them, we headed over to the Viktualienmarkt, a glorious outdoor market of food and even some Christmas-y goods! We settled on some bratwurst, our idea of stereotypical German fare.

This trip we decided to try something new, and instead of staying in a hostel we did couchsurfing!! So we met up with our host "Baba Kace" and he took us to an Irish pub for a drink. Of course, when in Germany, drink beer.... so Lauren and I had cider. Then we headed back to his place, which was a little outside the city, and he made us dinner! Some traditional bavarian food, which was excellent! We pretty much just hung out at his house all night, drank amazing homemade chai tea, and talked with him and his friends. Our host was very interesting; he lived in India for 6 months recently, which seemed to have influenced him a lot, and he had a lot of cool stories to tell about that. I feel like couchsurfing definitely changed our traveling experience: instead of just going to a hostel at the end of the day, we got to sit down with locals and actually learn about them/their culture, share some of our culture, etc, which I feel is exactly the idea of couchsurfing. It was very cool!

Saturday we decided to get our history on. There is a concentration camp memorial site in Dachau (very close to Munich), and we thought that this might be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to actually see some of the history that we have learned about all our lives. It was very sad (even a little creepy when a dense fog set in), but it was extremely interesting, and I'm definitely glad I did it. By the time we got back into Munich and ate some lunch, it was starting to get foggy/dark/cold there as well, so we didn't have a lot of time for sightseeing. We went to the Frauenkirche (Church of our Lady), the Theatinkirche St. Kajetan (another church), and saw a bit of the English Gardens before we decided it was just too dark and foggy!

After holing ourselves up in a bookstore cafe for a while we decided it was time to call it quits in the city and head back to Baba Kace's. He cooked us another lovely meal, showed us how to make his chai tea, and we sat around for some more talking and sharing! Later we decided to check out Munich's nightlife and Baba Kace took us out to a club that was playing old funk music or something... it was awesome! After some funky dancing, Roberto and I again headed to the airport for another early flight, while the other two hung around Munich for another couple of hours. Then I returned home, this busy busy week began, and I ran off to Barcelona.... new post coming soon!

Munich in pictures:

Marienplatz

English Gardens

Bratwurst with sweet mustard... yummmm....

Dachau

cider, beer, cider, beer