Day 7: Munich

 Day 7: To Munich

We said "so long, farewell, auf weidersehen, good night" to Salzburg and its Sound of Music beauty. Salzburg was much more interesting that I anticipated and there were easily more unexplored options to extend our stay. We did not visit anything specific to Mozart, for instance. However, it's on to Munich!

We took a quick cab from Hotel Amadeus to the train station and caught a late morning train to Munich. It was a two hour train. Incredibly smooth ride. The train left at exactly the scheduled time, but ended up being a whole five minutes late to Munich because some police stopped the train and asked people to produce their passports. We presented our US passports and the policeman looked through mine pretty thoroughly. Not sure what that was about -- particularly because there is no border control between Austria and Germany. In any event, we arrived at the very large Munich station:

We were very happy to see the "DB" logo, which is the logo of the German subsidized rail company. We have a DB German Rail Twin Pass that allows both of us to take any train in Germany. It was supposed to work in Venice and Salzburg, but didn't.

We found a place right around the corner from the train station, Hotel Metropol Maierprivatels. It is not luxurious, but it is orderly and affordable. After getting settled in our room, we immediately walked to Marienplatz (St. Mary's Square), the central square in Munich. We got there by walking down a pedestrian mall (via Karlsplatz) that ended in a very large public square featuring the new city hall.

There is a courtyard behind the big tower. We ate lunch at Ratskeller, which the hotel recommended for Marienplatz. The restaurant was a large, urban beer garden with live music, dancing and beautiful buildings.

    Pretty nice view in the beer garden

    This beer garden only served Lowenbrau. A liter might be excessive...

Admittedly, the German menus we've been seeing feature fairly plain food. Very different from our Venice experience. We rarely see green vegetables, but there is mustard everywhere. We think mustard and horseradish are used to give the bland food flavor. The mustard is very good...

    Chicken cordon bleu for April, Sausages and potato salad for Rex

    What did I just do??!!

After the meal, we explored the central area and waited for the 5 pm performance of the famous glockenspiel.

Knights fighting before watchful nobles

Coopers dance

    The top part recreates a famous wedding with knights dueling, the bottom part recreates a famous "cooper's dance" that used to be performed once every seven years.

We also toured St. Peter's church nearby.

 Then, we stumbled across the famous HofBrauHaus.

    I just had a liter. We're really going in for more?

    Common sense prevailed. We walked around the beer garden but opted for a nap instead.

After a good long nap, we enjoyed a beer and pizza at the hotel and talked with our very interesting innkeeper. She grew up near the Ramstein Air Base in Germany, so she learned English from being around all the Americans. However, she learned most of her English from an Irish friend, so she speaks English with a pronounced Irish accent. She gave us lots of tips for tomorrow, which is a full day of touring with no travel.

    Time for night night...