We left the house bright and early at 1pm, or as the locals say, 13:00. I'd like to say we could have left earlier, but we spent most of the morning trying to do the math and figure out what time it actually was. As we stared at the clock we noticed that at 12pm it just kept going, so we figured 13:00 was after midnight, so we went back to sleep. We blamed the inability to sleep on jetlag, not the fact that it was 1pm. I kid, I kid, we knew what time it really was.
Back to the story....
We launched into a fabulous Sunday walking trek around Munich. We started somewhere that I had been dying to return to for 12 years...my neighborhood and apartment at 59 Gabelsbergerstrasse.
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I was very careful to not run into any of my old neighbors, even as I walked into the building and posed for pictures under my old balcony. As the loud American with loud friends, I was never much appreciated by my fellow tenants at 59 Gabelsbergerstrasse, but I always think, "if only the had gotten to know me, they would have thought I was a super guy".
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| 12 years ago, I drank beer on that balcony |
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| 12 years ago, I opened that window |
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| 12 years ago I lived here |
We proceeded to take a beautiful walk around Schwabing, the hip, young, neighborhood where I spent that wonderful two years as a local foreigner. I was thrilled to hear Hannah tell me so many times how happy she was to get such a local's view of the city. It was also amazing to feel the same about the neighborhood's cafes and shops as I did 12 years ago. Even though I have experienced more, lived in different places, and my resume has grown, the lens through which I was seeing Munich was the same.
We walked around Schwabing to Univeristat which is home to several universities, and many students. The cafe's were alive with activity. In Germany, nothing is open on Sunday, the only options are to spend time with family at home, in parks, or cafes. This is something that is hard to get used to as a foreigner but culturally brings the emphasis back to what matters.
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| Coffee and Frühstück at Tresznjewski |
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| Univeristat Munich |
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| Expecting clowns any minute |
The Englischer Garten is arguably one of the most beautiful city parks in the world. It's huge open meadows are filled with families, soccer, dogs, and in the summer, naked Germans.
The Englischer Garten's 2 large biergartens are amazing places to enjoy a nice day in the park. Hannah and I spent an hour having a beer and pretzel at the See Haus bier garten before moving onward to our next destination.
The next few hours we spent walking through Munich, past the monuments, through archways of unknown significance, frolicking through Odeonsplatz, The Residenz, Maximillianstrasse, and back to Marienplatz. Hannah and I both agree that this is the ideal way to spend vacation, enjoying a city, together, as foreign locals.
We finished our walking tour with a stop at the Augustiner Halle in Kalsplatz, serving the finest in all German Helles...Augustiner.
With our cold growing worse it was time to continue to feed them by finishing our evening with another Augustiner and more pig at our local pub. What a great way to end Day 2.
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