Claus lives in Freising, a small town that has more of an authentic German feel to it than Munich. Munich reminds me a lot of America and is definitely the closest thing he have seen to home. There are bigger cars, wider streets, new buildings, and people dress similar to back home. Anyway, we went to Freising, got cleaned up, and cooked for Claus. After eating we planned to catch the big football game tonight.
Our timing could not have been better to arrive in Munich because their city's team was involved in the most important football match outside of the World Cup. You could see the affect this had on the city right away as groups of young kids clad in knickers and funny hats and adorned with Bayern-Munchen paraphanalia walked around chanting through the train station and in the streets. When we stepped into the Hofbrauhaus earlier that day it was erupting with loud grunt-like football chants and beer steins clanging. The game was in Madrid, Spain but we were going to the staidum the team usually plays to watch it on large screens with 70,000 other screaming fans. We picked up Claus' friend, Moritz, on the way to the game. The game wasn't the most exciting football game and the televisions were too small to see well in the large stadium, but to experience the atmosphere was great. Even after Munich lost to International (a team from Milan, Italy) the fans still remained and cheered.
Earlier that day we had talked to Claus about going out after the football game, but we were tired from 4 straight nights of going out in budapest and then 2 in Vienna (after Italy our vacation has since turned into a long weekend in Ann Arbor) so we were kind of looking forward to staying in and catching up on some sleep. However, after the game Claus wanted to go out and we had felt the urge as well. So Claus left us to take his car home and would meet us in the city by train. Brandon, Moritz, and I took the subway into the city and waited to meet with Claus.
This is where our addiction to Doners began. We grabbed our first one while looking for a bar to spend our time at. Like Heidi Spencer to plastic surgery, we were hooked. We everntually found a bar to wait for Claus at. We arrived at the bar around 11(?). We figured Claus would be an hour behind us. After sipping on the best beer in the world for an hour Brandon and I were feeling pretty exhausted and began to count the minutes hoping Claus would walk in soon so we could courtesly stay out for another hour and then head home. Well, that was the plan and if you have learned anything from our constant missing of trains then you already know this plan didn't work out.
Claus didn't arrive until a little after 1am. So we figured we would take the last train of the night at 2:43am. Claus told us the last train left at 5am and when we showed him we had proof a train left at 2:43am he said, "Well 5am is the time I want to stay out til." He also said that a basic couch-surfing rule is that you don't go home until the host wants to go home. He then gave us each a jagermeister shot. Couldn't argue with a man that was being nice enough to let us stay at his place so we splashed some water on our face, dug down deep to find the courage to make it through this night... and then went to the next bar.
Next bar happened to be closed. Good! Can we go home now? No. Claus had heard of a party bus that drives around the city equipped with a bar and packed with people who seek more intoxivcated transit than the normal bus can offer. Well, we found it. We got some beers at the bar and made our way to the back of the bus. It's a great concept, but it was packed with the wrong people. A few were passed out since what appeared to be yesterday going in endless drunken circles around the city. There were the creepy old guys sitting sporadically around the bus. Not the best party bus...
So our Party Bus dropped us off at a string of night clubs sometime around 3:15am (I didn't pay attention to ths time because this night wasn't ending til the sun came up). It was club after club. None much bigger than the next, but I would say about 25 in all. One had a foam party going on! However, it turns out not all Germans are as nocturnal as Claus and most of them were dieing out after 4am.
Finally, the sun! Time to head home. It took us 1 hour by train to get back to Freising and Claus snapped a great picture of Brandon and I passed out on the train (coming to facebook soon perhaps?). We arrived back at 6:30am and saw Claus' other roommate leaving to start her day. We found our beds through half-open eyes and tried to explain to our livers not every night would be like this.
the next morning, and by morning i mean 1pm for Brandon and 2pm for me, we arose from bed and realized we didn't have much time to see the Dachau Concentration Camp. Claus offered to drive us to save us an hour instead of taking the train system. We didn't brush, shower, change because we didn't have time. Thank god for the autobahn! We arrived with 2 hours to explore the camp.
Dachau was the first concentration camp and was never used as a death camp, although 43000 people died there. It is an eery feeling to walk the same ground these prisoners had to suffer on and I kept overlaying the footage I have seen from concentration camps with where I was standing. Basically, trying to picture what happened at the various spots I stood at the camp.
From the far end of the camp (I have more pictures of gas chambers and furnaces, but let's keep this a happy blog)
We returned to Fresing by 7:30pm and offered to cook for Claus, again, and his girlfriend who had come into town earlier that day. Since all the stores were closed we had more of the same... chicken stirfry. We were again feeling very tired around 9pm and thought, 'this will be the night we stay in.' Claus seemed to be showing mercy on us this night so it looked like we might get our wish. However, as we were preparing our mattress to sleep on Clau's roommate, Mo, invited us to play Texas hold 'em poker with some friends he was having over.
Apparently, they had just started seeing this game on American television and just starting to play it. It was hard to turn down playing cards with a bunch of locals, a luxury most tourists don't get to have. Friend after friend arrived until there were 12 of us packed around a table. The game started around 10:30am and didn't end until 3:00am! Lucky for us they all spoke English very well and were able to communicate with us. Over cigarrettes and beer we battled each other while Brandon and I tried to latch on to german words we understood and joined in when the conversation occasionally switched to english. I was happy to be eliminated in 5th place and went straight to bed. Brandon, who went out a little earlier, decided to stick around and see who the victor was. To me, sleep seemed more important to my prosperity.
The next morning we got up around 10:30am. Claus had left for a class vacation earlier that morning. Our first couchsurfing experience was fantastic. Claus and his friend Moritz were funny and entertaining to hang out with. It was shocking to me how nice someone could be to a complete stranger. Claus drove 40 min to the train station and then back, walked us around town, drove us to Dachau, paid for drinks and party bus tickets, and let us stay at his place for free. It was impossible to try to repay all these favors and I think we definitely failed to do so... but we tried. Thanks Claus if you're reading this!
Anyway, we wanted to spend one more day in Munich so we took our time packing up and headed downtown to find a hostel. Our plan was to meet up with some Australians that Brandon had chatted up pretty well while I slept on the train from Vienna to Munich. Because none of us reserved a seat on the train we had to spend the first 1.5 hours between carts trying to sleep in the stairwells that people use to board the train. Well, when we went to find our hostel we killed two birds with one stone; in the lobby were the two Aussies, Luke and Tim. They told us they were leaving for a bike tour in an hour and then going out from there. We decied to do the same.
The bike tour was led by Rob, from New York.There were about 14 people in our group. When Rob was giving his initial tour speech a drunk local walked up to our group and started talking, then sat down right by us. We joked with him a little and then tried to ignore him. He started mocking rob as he talked. And then, which may have been the best part of the tour, started licking the exposed breast of the bronze statue behind us! We left our drunken friend and went through the city and talked about its history. I was beginning to think Munich, although a great place to live, didn't have much to do for tourists. That was until our bike tour went through the English Gardens.
This city park is 10x the size of Central Park! It contains a huge population of local residents, pick-up football games, artificial waves that surfers tried to tame, volleyball, nudists, and two beer gardens. It is impossible for me to describe how great this place was. Where we entered the park was a large clearing of grass with a fast stream running through it. As big as this clearing was there seemed to be people everywhere! there was a gathering around some immigrants from Africa who were beating drums to a beat. We rode farther and made it to a giant beer garden completely enclosed within the park. There were 1000s of people drinking and eating here. We stopped for an hour to do much of the same. The two Aussies we were with ordered 2 Mass beers each (one mass is a liter of beer). From there we saw the surfers (and saw a girl with a UofM shirt that was an alum) and then left the park. I wish we had another day to spend entirely in the park.
After the beer garden our Aussie friends were feeling pretty good. Bike riding took on a whole new challenge. Brandon ordered a a mass of darker beer and seemed to be feeling good as well. Under the influence of alcohol we rode our bikes to a few more spots and then back to where the tour started. The tour ended around 8pm. Rob said there was 40 girls from Georgia in another tour group and he invited the 4 of us to come out with him and some other guides. Ummm, yes!
So we went to Hofbrauhaus with Rob and waited for the group of girls. While waiting a waitress wanted us to follow her. She said she had 4 girls than were looking for 4 boys. Okay! Feeling like jigaloos we went to meet the girls who had requested us. They were from Macedonia and spoke great english. We talked to them until about 11:30P, when they had to leave to catch a bus to Amsterdam with the rest of their class. We left from there to go find Rob, but when we got to the bar he said he would be at... well, he wasn't. So Luke, Tim, Brandon, and I took a bus to the part of town with all the clubs that Claus had taken us to two nights before. We got there around 12:30am. Desolate! So we headed back to the hostel. I think we got to bed around 2:00am. Who knows.
We jumped on the 9:00am train to go to Prague the next morning. Despite only drinking 3 masses of beer (wimp) Brandon still felt a little buzzed in the morning. That buzz turned into a hangover about 3 hours into the train ride. That hangover turned into the contents of Brandon's stomach being projected out the window of the train car. Some of it reached the window of the cabin behind us so the guy next door came over and looked into our cabin to investigate. Brandon treated him to a magnificant display of sauerkraut and bratwurst from the day before being sprung from his mouth. The man went back to his seat. after a couple more hours of watching Brandon's stomach acid dry on our cabin window we arrived in Prague.
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