Englischer Gardens

April 19, 2010

Our first task of the day was to find a city map. Life is a lot easier as a tourist in a new city with one. Steph didn't have one at her place but said we could get it at City Hall. Her directions on how to find it: Left, Left, cross the big street, walk a little ways and you can't miss it. Ha, alright, she didn't know who she was talking to. We got the first set of directions down, but once we got to "you can't miss it" well, we did, I think. The first building we thought would be it turned out to be a church. The second turned out to be a major shopping center. We only found it because it was noon and we heard bells going off. When we turned the corner there was a huge crowd gathered, I told Hilary I thought something famous was happening so we stuck around to see what the big deal was. Turned out to be the Glockenspiel going off. I won't lie, I had no idea what this was until I saw it happening. Turns out it is pretty famous and we just happened upon it, sweet.

Once the crowd cleared we saw a tourist center and headed there to find our map. Being the 'frugal' girls that we are, we wanted a free standard map. The tourist center wanted us to pay. Hilary talked the lady's head off enough about finding a free map that she ended up just giving it to us. Awesome. Apparently being annoying American tourists does have its benefits. At this point we set off to find the Englischer Gardens which is supposed to be one of the biggest parks in Europe and really beautiful. We stopped by the Hofbrauhaus on the way since it is also a major draw of Munich. It was a cool place with live music and lots of beer, but Steph told us that it isn't the best beer around, it just became really famous for some unknown reason. Other than that it was apparently the site of the first gathering of Hitler. Not so sure that is something to brag about though...

The Englischer Gardens were beautiful and huge. We got lucky and it was a gorgeous sunny day so there were a lot of people out enjoying it. We walked about a fourth of it and then read an information sign that there was a beer garden in the park -- obviously our next destination. We found it pretty easily as the Germans to not mess around with their beer gardens. Huge. There were brezels, sausage and lots of other food I didn't recognize along with lots and lots of beer. Turns out Germans don't mess around with the size of their beers either. Liters and liters and liters, everywhere. It was a magical site. I've never seen so much beer in one condensed outside area so early in the afternoon. I love Germany. Who cares if I can't speak the language if my life depended on it, I won't have to. Everyone understands beer, haha.

When we got our fill, we headed out to find a big lake in the middle of the park. One the way Hilary who has a tendency to find random things on the ground -- apparently she looks down when she walks -- found a liter glass in the bushes. It was filthy but she took it anyway as a free souvenir. After she washed it, it looks pretty nice except for the logo on it being scratched off a little.

The lake was really nice. There were dogs and ducks everywhere. I've decided I like ducks. They make funny noises, are highly unproductive with their lives, but are able to live in water, land and air. Pretty cool animals if you ask me. Plus when they dive for food in the water and stick their butts out you can't help but laugh every time - well, I can't at least. It was also funny seeing the dogs chase the ducks around. I don't know how they stand it, I'd get pretty pissed if dogs were constantly chasing me off of my land. But it seemed like a big game. Every time the dogs would walk away the ducks would run back on to the land and waddle around until the dogs chased them back in to the water.

The park was huge and we could have kept walking through it all day, but decided to wander around and gander at the city more instead. We checked out some random famous sites the map told us about and then walked through their major shopping district and eventually headed back to Steph's to make her dinner. She just started her job a month ago after graduating and had a major presentation on Thursday that was stressing her and everyone else out work. Because of that she'd be working 10+ hour days the poor girl. Thankfully she still let us stay with her so we wanted to have dinner ready for her when she got home. We went to the store - always an experience on what is what when there isn't anyone with you to translate. Pesto pasta with chicken and a stir fry of potatoes, onions, pepper, lemon and other seasonings were what we settled on. And a bottle of wine of course. It's pretty quick and easy to make no matter what people have in their kitchens. Steph ended up getting home a half hour or so after she thought she would so the hot dinner on the table ended up being a slightly cooled dinner but it was still really good and provided left overs for the next day and a half.