As I mentioned, we flew into Frankfurt and spent the night there. We weren't getting positive vibes from that city. It was eerily quiet to the point of not being comfortable, considering it's a big city, and being woken up at 5 in the morning by men screaming and on the verge of blows only prodded us to get the hell out of there ASAP. Chieko and I took turns stepping out onto the balcony to peer over and look at the two men, standing nose to nose and shouting at each other passionately, who somewhat anticlimactically parted ways after a woman shouted out of a window somewhere presumably telling them to shut the hell up.
So we were off to Munich early the next morning. That's when I really got that great feeling of being in a different country again, and the possibility and reality of our trip started to sink in. The countryside heading south through Germany was not spectacular, but it was very nice; rolling fields with towns scattered in between once we got outside of the city limits.
We were very impressed with Munich, and it was a reassuring change from the uneasiness we felt in Frankfurt. It was clean, for one thing, with wide streets and bike lanes, and lots of people around. After a bit of wandering in search of our hotel, we checked in, unloaded our gear, and headed back out to roam the streets. One of the beautiful things about this trip was that, in most cases (if it wasn't raining, snowing, or sketchy), getting lost was not such a bad thing. Everything was new, so even when we took the long/wrong way getting to where we were going, it was all a feast for the eyes and the senses.
I made my first mistake of our trip in Munich, and it was a multi-dimensional mistake. Munich = beer, right? Oktoberfest and all that. So I had to order a beer. The first aspect of my mistake was that I failed to comprehend how much a LITER of beer actually is. So I got this liter of beer that was as big as my head and weighed about ten pounds. And I started drinking it, and then I started getting cold. Enter aspect number two of my mistake: we were outside. Couple that with aspect number three: it was right about sunset, and while our table was basked in late day sunshine when we sat down, by the time I was half a liter deep, the sun had tucked itself away behind that giant medieval steeple towering over my shoulder. Needles to say, I stuck with half liters in indoor venues for the rest of trip.
After finishing up, I was in dire need of movement to try and regain warmth providing blood flow to my extremities, so we set afoot to find a restaurant that Chieko had read about. She was on the hunt for some famous Bavarian white sausages. It was right about then that it started to sleet and rain, which didn't do much for my being cold issues. Luckily we found our restaurant quickly. We ate some white sausage which were tasty, served with sweet mustard (sorry no pictures, but do you really need to see?). Following that, I tucked into a schnitzel and Chieko enjoyed some beef lung. Mmmmm...lung.
We debated spending another night in Munich, but in the end decided to keep our momentum and continue on to Austria the next morning. While that was the right choice to head out, I would love to visit Munich again someday (if for nothing else, I didn't get to visit the BMW factory/museum just outside of town). Here are some pictures:
Next up, Vienna, Austria. But not now :-)
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