Day 14 - Munich

This was our first real day in Munich as we returned back to Irsee last night. We made the same drive and found the block our hotel was on in the maze of one way street inner city mayhem. Circling the block for a while we decided to park in a private really quickly so we could check in and drop off our bags and get back to the car. We did just that and came to find our car un-towed. Albeit if it had been towed that would have been the most amazing tow-truck driver ever considering how we parked it in the corner of this very small and tight lot. We then left to drop off the car. We arrived at the Sixt rental place and parked in back and then proceeded to wait for about half an hour while the two workers typed at the computers in panicked frustration only to be told that everything was O.K. and that we were free to go within our 20 second interaction.

So we left the rental place on food heading back in the general direction we came. We came across some beautiful buildings which turned out the be museums. We walked around the courtyard and took pictures and found a map. Jacob realized where we were and thought it would be a good time to go see one of the sites he had researched. We headed for a huge park in the middle of Munich. There we walked along fast moving rivers towards a beer garden Jacob had researched. Along the way we found the source of all the water coming from under the streets where it hit a cement lip which created a large rip curl in which lots of people were surfing. We watched for a while and continued to the English Gardens and Chinese tower passing the sun bathing nudists. Once there we were a bit parched and ordered the local favorite, Radler, which is beer mixed with 7-up. We sat down, ate some food and listened to the polka band play in the tall wooden Chinese tower.

From there we headed back towards our hotel past the Munich university. We got in and settled in a bit more and rested and watched some coverage of Oktoberfest on tv hoping to spot a clip of ourselves recorded by the camera crew a few days earlier. We then decided to go walk around Oktoberfest as it was too late to get a table in any of the tents.

The other part of Oktoberfest is all the rides. They rides are permanently built but they are very much carnival rides. Everything is carnival-ey and tacky. Lots of the booths have airbrushed murals of bad movies from the 80s. We passed a woman eating a giant wafer cookies, the kind that come in the neopolitan flavors, so we sought one out. We first grabbed some delicious chocolate dipped strawberries. We then found the cookies and split one, it wasn't as good as it looked as the wafer was stale and the filling was marshmallow. Our next mistake was trying the herring sandwich followed up by the deep fried mashed potatoes. Like I said, carnival... We continued to walk around people watching and finally decided to grab some gifts and head back.