One week down, two to go…

Day: 7

Countries: 3               Cities: 4

Salzburg, Austria à Munich, Germany

One week down, two to go…

Saturday 26 December 2015

A pretty good day filled with a lot of steps and some hearty fare. It’s just before 6 now and we are rounding out a little (but much needed!) break in a Starbucks down one of the main drags of Munich—which is like literally just about the only open cafe we could fine. Nearly everything is closed today and after a little digging we surmise it's because of Boxing Day (or St. Stephan’s Day), which apparently they celebrate here in Germany, in memory of St. Stefan, who was stoned or something just as terrible. Anyway.

We started the day off fairly early (around 720) : woke up in Salzburg, showered, got dressed, packed everything up, and then headed out. Took a cab to the train station, made a quick reservation for the train, stopped at a little grocery store in the station for fresh fruit, and then hopped on the train with plenty of time to spare.  A nice, easy, hour and a half train ride later and we found ourselves in a new city, a new country.  Munich. Munchen.  Don't quite understand fully how that translates but hey we'll go with it.

It's only a couple blocks from the train station to our hotel, then just a short walk to the main area of town. We got checked in and dropped out stuff off and then set out to explore a new place. We started walking and walked a ways before we realized we were walking in the wrong direction. Fortunately, we caught it before too awful long and turned ourselves around and started walking in the right direction this time.

We made it to the main part of town and saw a bunch of stuff (mainly the buildings/churches/streets that were on our trip advising app), but we were rather perplexed to see all the stores and even many of the restaurants closed. Now we know why. Oh well. We were still able to have a full day.

We walked for a while, snapped some pics, and then wound up at HB, one of the oldest breweries in the world. We walked around the huge building first and learned a little about the history. They’ve been brewing for four hundred plus years and it was here in Bavaria that the first and oldest food control purity law was put in place. The place was massive and packed with several floors and corridors of dining tables. We found a table and got a menu but couldn't decipher it. This old German man plopped down at the table next to us and spoke some German to us and ate his meal and drank his beer. We managed to order a beer and a pretzel, but still couldn't figure out the menu. Eventually the waiter brought out an English menu, which really helped.  Definitely an experience: good food, if not the best service; a nice atmosphere; and I suppose you could say good company, too, if you count our old German friend who ate his beef stew and drank from his beer stein and told us “Guten-tag” as we left.

Then we kept walking. And walking and walking. But it was like we had hit a wall. From the past week going going going, and not sleeping well the night before, and that huge lunch—we were just beat. We kept plowing forward though and walked all over the city, seeing the main sights and walking through the English park/garden that was really nice. I want to live close to a park/walking path area like that some day. Anyway. We couldn't find a bench in the sun so we just kept walking and eventually made it back to the area we started in. Then since we’d somehow made it that far on our two feet we figured we might as well keep walking (never ones to shy away from going the extra mile ;)).  So, we walked for what seemed like forever in search of a cafe in which we could rest and quench our thirst. Thankfully we finally found that Starbucks where this typing started.

After sitting there for an hour or so we made a game plan and then started walking again, this time towards our dinner destination. Augustiner Braustuben. The place was really neat and had a cool atmosphere. The host/manager was this nice, little, jolly German man who helped us find a spot to squeeze into and then gave us suckers at the end.

And then we walked back to the hotel and made it back before nine. And then we discovered that Netflix works in Germany, which is pretty darn exciting. So we watched a Christmas movie. And now it's about time for bed.

Another good day to wrap up week one of our trip! And there's still two to go!

~