Germany...

Munich... a great city that we only saw about 3% of...lol.

I'd say we both drank our weight in beer while in Munich and we definitely did a lot more eating. There are fruit stands scattered all over and everything is perfectly fresh. Food is done the same way, little bakeries all over that make practically the same stuff, even food at the trainstation is better than most places that I'd go to eat in the states.

We're now on the train to Heidelberg to check out a castle or two. This train seems to be much faster than those we've taken in the past, and the power outlet actually works so my ipod and netbook are gonna get a nice charge on this 3 hour trip.

The hostel we stayed at in Munich was probably the one we disliked the most, though it didn't suck so it's not that bad. They just seemed to nickle and dime everyone to death, 1 euro here, 1 euro there...etc. They did have a couple pool tables and free wifi so life was still fine with me there. We didn't see much of Munich because we made it somewhat of a rest day, compared to the rest of our trip thus far. Well, it was a rest day until about 430 when we went to the train station to get our trip for today figured out, along with cashing in some American money for Euro's. I would suggest to anyone coming to Europe, in any country, don't bring any American money, the exchange rates and fees absolutely suck ass and ATM's work just fine. I get a $5 fee when I use my debit card in an ATM but I get the same if I go to Wells Fargo in Portland anyway, so to me it's not that bad, I just limit the times I actually pull money out.

Our first day in Munich was spent at a beer garden and at another place or two for a beer, nothing special after a long day of travel. Our second wasn't too adventurous either until we went on a Beer Garden Crawl... kinda like a pub crawl in most places, but at beer gardens instead, for the most part. We checked out the Oktoberfest Museum for some good old fashioned history about Munich, beer, Oktoberfest, and crazy kings.

When we started the "beer challenge" as it was called, we met at the trainstation where we ended up with 25 people all eager to drink beer... 18's the legal age to drink there, and a good amount of the people on the tour were closer to that age than mine. Over the course of the night, we learned a song, drank a metric ton of beer, met a lot of cool folks from all over the world, and just had a good friggin time. We got pretty hammered on the great beer of Munich and ended up sitting around our hostel with a couple women from Canada and Australia until going to sleep around 3am or so.

I find it amazing how many people we've met from Australia and California actually... it seems like a good bet that every english speaking person we come across is from one of those two places. Apparently, Aussie's don't care much for being on such a small continent, so they travel an insane amount between college and work life. This has been the case thus far at least.

As we waited for the beer challenge to start, we stood around watching everyone in their own little cliques only talking to people they knew. By the end of the night, everyone was good friends and taking pics with eachother and having loads of fun. The tour gave us two free beers and a shot of Jaeger, which was only a half shot if you ask me, but it was free so I'm not gonna complain. Only one or two of the kids on the tour got shitfaced and acted a bit rediculous, but he was a fun piece of entertainment more than a typical drunk bastard that we'd normally come across in times like that. Our tourguide was from Australia but lived in Canada until recently, so he had a funny accent that was a strange mix of words at times...cool guy though. Another guide ended up hanging with our group, but he had definitely been drinking prior to meeting us... by the end of the night we were talking about how awkward he was and that he's pretty damn gay due to the amount of touching he was doing over the course of the night. He passed out and we took some pics of him, so it was ok...haha. One Canadian girl belted out the star spangled banner for us at one point, she had her face all painted up for some reason or another, an interesting character to say the least.

Munich is a well oiled machine. Everything seems to be the pinnacle of efficiency, the public transport is by far the best I've seen, even having an awesome trainstation. Trains are scheduled to leave at 11:42am and if you're not on it at 11:41:59am, you're not getting on. In other news, we're sitting on the train across from some very attractive Korean girls, i'm just saying. One of them is wearing shoes with a Ford patch on them.

So up next is Heidelberg for the night and then off to Brussels Belgium. Where we will be going to Rock Werchter, a huge rockfest that I bought tickets to a few months back... it'll be the first days of our trip that we'd actually planned when we were still in the States. Then it's off to Amsterdam where I'll turn 30... so looking forward to that, of course. :-)

I'd definitely suggest Munich to be a stop on anyone's trip to Europe, if only to see what a beautiful and efficient city it is, and if you can hit up a beer garden, that's nice too...lol. The beergarden we spent most of our time at last night, seats around 8,000 people and it's only the 3rd largest in the world... the other two were around a kilometer away. There are ladies bringing beer to your table or you can go through a line and get your own. People will pick up the empty 1 liter glasses and pretty much stack them on a table for this little truck to come around and pick them up and take them to be cleaned. We had some awesome pretzels, even ate the rest of one that was sitting on the table...lol. We ripped the ends off and ate the rest...lol. We had a good laugh at that later on, perhaps you just had to be there. You'll see the size of the liter glasses in the pics I post, they're freaking huge... and awesome, and heavy. I give mad props to the women who carry them around 8-10 at a time, most people couldn't do it for a couple minutes, much less hours at a time. I know my mom used to do it, so I'll giver her a hi five for that next time I see her.

Alrighty then, I'll probably update again after Heidelberg but it shouldn't be too filled with stories of craziness since we're only there for a night before heading to belgium. We got some fun pics in Munich with Anthony's camera, but mine never left the hostel locker I stored it in.