We arrived in Munich yesterday after traveling from Prague. We hired a Czech driver to take us to Munich ~4 hour drive (before the road construction and accident delays). It was a nice drive. We had a chance to see some of the countryside - which included a LOT of hop fields. Yep - Bavaria is known for their beer and apparently they are also know for growing their own hop. It was pretty cool. It almost looked like vines the way they had them growing - but it was in a defined V shaped pattern and it was definitely hops. Early stages of some yummy beer :) A couple of pictures from the drive.
We are staying at the Hotel Torbreau - it is the oldest hotel in Munich. How old? Well, the first recorded documentation of the residence as a hotel was in 1490 - yep - let that sink in for a minute. Remember the old saying "Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492..." - this place was a hotel before then :). For the last >100 years it has been owned by the same family - pretty cool. One thing that is a little creepy is the special display they have in the stairway showing what a room would look like in 1490.
First night in Munich we headed to the main marketplace for dinner. They have some cool buildings - we will be back to learn more about the history. We were fortunate to finish dinner before some serious storms moved in!
Today was a day of serious rain. We walked a little over a mile for a lunch at a local place that has kebab pitas. They spoke no English - and it was super small - but it worked out well and was super yummy. After that we were trying to figure out what to do in Munich on a rainy Sunday. Question answered - we went to one of the oldest beer gardens - Hofbrahaus - and enjoyed a couple of liters of beer along with a wonderful Bavarian pretzel. It was great. The first Hofbrauhaus was opened in 1589 - yes - 1589. It existed until 1808 and was only a very short distance from the current location. In 1828, King Ludwig I declared that the royal beerhall (at Hofbrahaus) should become a public beerhall - smart move :). During the 19th century there were a lot of attempts at imitating the original, but in 1879 the trademark for Hofbrau (HB) was made official. Pretty fun to drink with so much history.
The only shame was that we shared our table with some older German guys who spoke no English (and we spoke no German), a younger German punk couple where again there as no common language, and finally a Russian lesbian couple who only spoke very limited English. We shared a lot of smiles - and a few cheers - or Prosts! But we wished we could talk to our table mates. We kept thinking about the stories we could have shared if we had a common language - especially the older German guys. Just imagine what they have seen through the years! It was pretty fun - at Hofbrau they have locked personalized steins that you can purchase - so instead of buying a liter in a 'common' glass - you can buy it in your very own stein. The older German guys each had their own steins - one of them was locked right behind us which we learned when the gentleman left. You can see some of them in the "wall" behind our picture below. We saw these guys each have at least 4 full steins - but they were there before we arrived and we are quite confident they had a few more. They also wore traditional clothes - lederhosen + hats and even feathers in some of the hats. Such great regulars!
Tomorrow we are taking a day trip to Salzburg. We were adventurous today and purchased some train tickets - hopefully we will be successful on a trip there and back!
Until later - definitely remember -
Enjoy the Ride!
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