Day 19- Munich

Tuesday, May 11 (Day 19)

We woke up this morning at 5:45am to get ready for breakfast at 6:45am. We ate and left for Munich at 7:15. The drive was somewhere between 6 and 7 hours- it was a long haul but I hear that our drive to Pairs from Switzerland is 10 hours! Anyways, we played music for the bus from one of our iPod’s and played some card games. We taught Canadians how to play Uno and we also played some other games like “things”. The games made the bus ride feel much shorter.
Munich looked very different from St. Goar- it looked more like America. There were buildings all around and people walking everywhere and at every corner.

We arrived in Munich and checked into the hostel. We got ready to go out in the city center and go to the beer hall following that. We all curled out hair and one of the other Amanda’s curled my hair and ended up burning my shoulder—twice. Around 4pm we went to the city center and walked around for an hour (and found an amazing pastry shop that we bought apple strudel, a piece of veggie pizza, and a cinnamon-sugar croissant) then watched the Glockenspiel play at 5pm. The only times it plays is at 12pm, 1pm, and 5pm. I’m glad we were able to see it. It was a very big clock, the biggest in Germany, and it has something like 42 separate bells inside it. There are two layers of characters on a circular track and when the clock strikes 12, 1, and 5, the characters start playing. It is supposed to be a story about when there was a fight and the blue and white team won (I forget who this fight was between and who was each color…) and you can see a knight on a horse knock the other knight over. This was all happening on the top layer. The bottom layer, after the fight had been “won,” the characters were celebrating and dancing all around. I though this clock was really cool although other people didn’t feel the same way. It amazes me that this clock was built so long ago and still works. The enactments of the characters are really cool to watch. We watched for 10 minutes and left before it had finished, but we figured that the characters were going to just continue on the circular track around and around.

After watching the clock, we went shopping! I got 2 shirts at a really cheap store in the city center and then got a pair of pants and a skirt at H&M. Good shopping there! It was really the first time I went shopping for myself in Europe.
Then we all met by the Glockenspiel at 6:45pm to head over to the beer hall. It took us a few minutes to drive there in the coach. We got there and walked inside and there were rows and rows of tables all set up for us. We only took up 3 of them, maybe an 8th of the whole beer hall. There were two men playing music up on the stage; one playing the trumpet and the other playing a piano-looking-organ-sounding instrument. We were informed that there was a special song and cheers at points of our meal and we witnessed it for the first time about 15 minutes after we walked in. The guy starts playing the song and the other guy starts singing something that sounds like “bullsh*t, bullsh*t, blahblahblah blah blahblah,” then the cheers part that follows sounds something like, “eins, zwei, drei, superfly, zuran, PROST!” The “prost” is the “cheers” and everyone clanks glasses together and drinks. During this whole singing, cheersing thing everyone holds up their beer (which is a massive 1 liter beer in a very thick glass) and swings it back and forth from side to side until the cheers part. It was a lot of fun. We got our food, I ordered vegetarian because the other options were pork knuckle (just sounds gross) and chicken but it was prepared differently. My meal came out and it was similar to mozzarella sticks: a very strong cheese breaded and then fried. It came in a tomato sauce with broccoli. It was good.

While eating, 4 girls came out on the staged dressed up in the usual German outfit and began dancing. At first, they were just standing on the stage with garland looking arches and were moving them back and forth over their heads. Then they started dancing and twirling. They also played songs using only cow bells then a xylophone. That was also very fun to watch. I finished my beer and was bought another one by Ben, a guy on our tour. I only drank half- I shared with Erica. Then the dancing started. We all stood up and did the chicken dance, and then other modern songs were being played. We were all dancing around and having a good time. At one point, a train started and went around the room.

After a while of dancing, eating, drinking, and having fun, we left the beer hall and went back to the coach to go back to the hostel. But, the party continued on the coach, too! Everyone was standing up in the aisle and dancing, our tour guide was playing dancing music, and he was also flipping the lights on and off to look like strobe lights. It was a lot of fun.
We got back to the hostel and I went downstairs to use the internet and update my blog. But first, we called Contiki to get our voucher situation figured out: We signed up at a certain time and got $100 off and then a $100 voucher for excursions but for some reason only one girl got the voucher. So Paula and I sat on Skype and talked to these people. Apparently, they couldn’t find any record of it but we all have it in our confirmation emails. They said they were going to ask the big boss and email us the vouchers if found.

I also went on skype but the only person that was on to talk to was Craig so I talked to him for a little bit. In the hostel, there were a bunch of younger German boys and they were trying to talk to us and make friends. They kept coming over to my computer and looking at the screen and saying, in English, “Oh, it’s okay, I can’t read English.” I kept yelling at them to get away. That was a little annoying.

After my time on the internet, I went upstairs to get ready for bed. I took a shower- wow what an experience! You know how when you are in a public restroom and you have to press the handle of the faucet in to get water and then it turns off after a few seconds and you press it again? Yea, well that was what our shower did. It took me twice as long to shower as normal. I counted and the water only stayed on for 5 seconds. It was like soaping your hair with the water off, then rinsing your hair, then water off to soap up your body, then rinse off, then wash face with no water on, then rinse. That was super annoying. Then I went to bed.