On Thursday last week, Corey and I left London for Germany. Of course, we had a problem getting to the airport (missed the bus again, then there was traffic) but we ended up getting on the plane just about dead last after hurrying thru the airport (at least we got on the plane!). We arrived in Munich around 8PM or so then took the train into the city. What a great ride... (I had some pretty memorable instances on the train... read on) We sat down and a couple graced our presence in the seats across the aisle from us- and as luck would have it, it was the Most Annoying Couple of 2007! They canoodled, took pictures, cooed at each other... then took out an ipod and both listened to it together. The lady tapped her loud, clicky boots to the beat for about a half hour and the guy sang along with some of the song (for our benefit, I'm sure). We finally escaped them at the central station and found our hostel, which was only a 5 minute walk and actually pretty nice. We stayed in an 8 person room which had it's own little bathroom. The room was nice, but our roommates either snored (at one point I think 5 people were snoring at the same time!) or chatted about their wild night (when they got back at 3AM).Friday - day 2
We got ourselves up early and after the free breakfast of toast and tea, went on a free walking tour of the city! Our guide was funny, really enthusiastic and named Ozzy. He took us over to the Glockenspiel (the famous clock), which is on the side of the new town hall building in a plaza in the center of the city called Marienplatz. It was under construction, plus it was Good Friday, so it didn't go off. In fact, we didn't see it go off the whole weekend, but Ozzy told us that we weren't missing much- apparently it's out of tune and not that exciting to watch! We took some pictures then walked over to Hofbräuhaus, the famous beer hall. We walked all over the rest of the city too, including Maximilianstrasse (the most expensive street ever- has tons of designer stores) and the royal residence, which was my favorite part of the tour. Ozzy took us to the courtyard and told us a little bit about how it was damaged in WWII then rebuilt and showed us some pictures. Then he told us that it cost 9 euros to get in. "But," he said, "since you guys are with me and this is a free tour we get to see the palace thru those FREE windows right over there!"Like I said, he was funny. It was a good tour, I learned a lot about the city, including the fact that it became rich thru the salt trade (hmm, interesting) and the 2 symbols of Munich are the child monk and the lion. I started noticing a lot of monks and lions after that. After our nearly 3 hour tour, we decided to head back to Hofbräuhaus for lunch. I had sauerkraut and sausage and it was pretty darn good. 
From there, we decided to head up one of the church towers to get a panoramic of the city. It was something like 300 steps but as always, worth the climb!
It was mid-afternoon by then and Corey suggested we go visit the Olympic park where the 1972 games were held. I thought this was a great idea so we consulted my little map inside my European guide book and headed out. It felt like the longest walk ever! I think it took us over an hour to get there but all we had to do was keep walking straight. (I took this picture of the deserted streets of Munich about 45 min into our walk) Finally, we found it. It looked like the set of the Teletubbies- very green, massive hills (it was surprising because Munich is very flat). We strolled thru the Olympic park, which was very strange looking- there was this plastic looking tent thing over parts of it. 
They must have thought that looked cool in the 70s... We climbed to the top of the highest hill (mid-climb, my camera decided not to work!) then rested for a while (my camera decided to work again) the we caught the U back to Marienplatz got dinner then bedtime.
YAY MY CAMERA WORKS AGAIN!
Pondering München
On top of the teletubby hill
