4 posts tagged “munich”

Well, nothing is happening.  In an appropriate follow-up to the previous post, the Uni will not give me back the $10 deposit on my Mensa card, because it was next to a red card in my wallet and turned slightly pink.  I sure wish they had explained to me the CONDITIONS OF THE DEPOSIT when they gave me the damn card.  I also just stubbed my toe.  Hard.

It's funny that school lets out and there is just nothing to do.  We partied on Thursday.  And Friday.  Now Will's back in New York, Rachel's in Innsbrück and Gretchen and Jess are on their way to Hamburg.  I won't see Gretchen and Rachel until we take the bus to the airport.  We're dropping like flies, we are!

On Friday Regina (our German friend) threw herself a going-away party, because she's going to Australia for a semester or two.  Will and I stayed until the end, which ended up being at around 5am.  So of course we did the natural thing and watched an X-Files episode until 6am when the flea market opened, and then went to the flea market.  At around 7 we went out to breakfast, and then went to wake Jess up.  Will's flight out was on Saturday, so at around 9 we said our goodbyes and I walked to the nearest bookstore to buy the last Harry Potter book, and then took the bus to the train station where I met Charles.  We took the 9:44 train to Munich, and Will said I'd crash by 11, but I was FINE!  We went to another flea market in Munich near the Olympiastadion that was GREAT.  Which brings me to my next point:  I am throwing out all of my socks most of my underwear, and a pair of jeans in order to fit everything in my suitcases, and I'm still not convinced it'll work.  I bought a second, pink dirndl in Munich.  I think I'd kick myself if I didn't so it's now over and done with.

I have since finished "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" and I thought it was totally sweet, but it's starting to sink in that there aren't going to be any more books!  So sad!

Today I went gift shopping, and found it difficult.  I probably should've never started, but I got cool earrings from Hannah when she got back from Georgia, so what was I to do?

Tomorrow is more shopping, laundry and maybe one last (er, second) trip to the conveyor belt sushi place.  And hopefully some photo-taking.  And hopefully NOT the crushing realization that I haven't been to a single museum in Regensburg (oops, too late!).

Wednesday is packing.  And a second trip this week to KFC.  Sorry, Mom, they have air-conditioning and free refills of dense calries!  I guess this is where the photos will start:

No Regrets

Thursday morning I take a train to Dresden to meet Jess again.  Then we spend Friday in Dresden, and on Saturday we part ways and she goes back to Berlin while I go back to Regensburg.

Sunday I go to a one-day frisbee tournament on the shore of the Ammersee, which should be sweet, if not eleventh-hour.

Monday, last minute shopping and room cleaning.

And on Tuesday, July 31st, 2007, after six months, I get the hell back to Boston.

Some photos:

From the Thursday night rain walk

also from Thursday

The "Kugel" - ball - at the Uni

Neupfarrplatz at dusk

Marcus-Aurelius-Ufer from the bridge

The Regensburg flea market awakes

Munich's former Olympic Village

And last, but not least:

The Pigsty that is My Room

Remember that scene in the Disney "Sword and the Stone" when the witch does the song and dance and charms everything in her whole house into that little handbag?  Yeah, that is basically my task now.

Today I went to Munich to buy a dirndl.  That was my singular goal for my day off.  Preferably cheap (used), and preferably green (hunter, to be specific).  Now, I know that the picture is gigantic and that you probably looked at it before reading this and there was no suspense, let alone surprise.  BUT LOOK AT MY BABY!

Gasp!

One of the light bulbs is out in my room, and it's dark out, so the colors are not accurate.  The dress (the darker part is one piece) is a slightly-lighter-than-hunter green, closer to the yellow spectrum than blue, to be as accurate as possible.  The apron is a dark chartreuse.  It's not as olive as it all looks.  Hopefully I will have a better photo tomorrow, as tomorrow is Tag des Bieres (Day of Beer), which celebrates the 491st anniversary of the Rheinheitsgebot in Bavaria.  We are not actually sure if it is a dirndl holiday, but it's gonna be.  Then May Day is on Tuesday, and that's DEFINITELY a dirndl holiday.

Here is another picture of my dirndl, with the necklace I bought in Berlin, which matches fairly well, though the buttons on the dirndl are silver, not gold.

Squeeeee!

I promise that the cut of the top is very tasteful.  Anyway, the whole get-up was a little less than 50 Euro, which is a pretty good price for a set.  It was much cheaper than the first store I went to.

The problem with bargains is that you go broke on them.

And I bought it.  It was not pass-up-able.  You'd agree if you saw it up close.

Oh, and if that wasn't a good enough argument, my Felicity doll had this get-up when I was little, and I always wanted the me-sized version.

The color in these photos is REALLY off.  It's dark green, with horn buttons.  It is perfect.

I also went to the Englischer Garten, which was actually more of a park than a garden.  I'm glad I found this out before dragging my mother there.  But don't worry, Mom, there is also a botanical garden, as well as a fancy garden at the Residenz.  One really cool thing about the Englischer Garten is that it has a giant Chinese-style tower in it which is in the middle of a beer garden.  They stick an oompah band in the tour to play while you drink.  A good tip about this beer garden:  it's self-serve.  Though it may not seem like it, this is a HUGE advantage to the foreign tourist, as you can point to the food you want, or at least see it before you order.  I've been to a few beer gardens, and while they're all pretty neat, this one was EXCEPTIONAL in it's beauty and atmosphere, and (as embarrassing as it is) accessibility to tourists.  Oh, it's called "Biergarten am Chinesischen Turm".

Quick Alissa! Do a double-take! (maybe a spit-take?)

Also in the Englischer Garten is a stream called the Eisbach ("ice brook") which is, surreally, absurdly, host to SURFERS!  In a man-made stream in land-locked Bavaria.  It's redonk.

Hängen zehn!

(And yes, the sign does say "Surfen verboten", and yes, that does mean "no surfing".  In Germany, they just put up signs forbidding stuff so it's not their fault when you crack your head open, etc.  In fact, some of the pathways between buildings at the Uni have signs that say "No entry, danger to your life!" (no good translation) so the Uni isn't at fault when you trip over a tree branch that they didn't pick up)

I posted a bunch of new photos from Munich, so look em up, because they won't all be in this entry!

I just had something called Grießklößsuppe  for dinner.  It's like matzoh ball soup, except that instead of matzoh balls, there are these hazelnut-sized lumps of semolina in it.  And this version was vegetarian.  It was from a dehydrated packet.  Good work, Germany!

IMPORTANT: I had an excellent pastry on the bus, and I need to someday identify it.

 So, today we went to Munich and I saw my first American tourists not in our group.  It was three teenage/college-age girls in the  "Pinakothek der Moderne" modern art museum.  They were being yelled at by a security guard for picking up a part of a display.  I later heard them discussing how not-hard it would be to put it back, "geez".

It was a beautiful museum, with wonderful art, including a wooden sewing machine and a Picasso.  That said, I have never been as unhappy in a museum as I was today.  We were lead on a guided tour of about 1/4 of 1/4 of the museum, by an extremely boring guide.  I like art, I do not like being told how it "makes the viewer feel".  I already know that, I am viewing.  So, we were forbidden to walk away from the tour, so we missed most of the paintings, and then were given 40 minutes to see the rest of the museum, which is four parts.  We saw the design part, which was a lot of furniture, electronics and cars.  It was pretty awesome, but we missed the part that was building models based on fictional buildings.

Then we went out to lunch at some random Bavarian-touristy restaurant am Marienplatz, which is the central plaza of the Munich shopping/hanging out/history district.  The coolest thing about the Marienplatz is the Rathaus, which is huge, gothic, and has a Glockenspiel in it, which is like a giant cukoo clock.

Rathaus with Glockenspiel

I had "baked camembert", which was not bad, but did have the unfortunate downside of smelling like a decaying horse smothered in gorgonzola.  Jess finished it for me.

After lunch, we went to this church (Alter Peter) across the platz (from which the above photo was taken) and climbed up to the way top and went out on the observation deck.  It doesn't seem to be that well known, or maybe a lot of people are scared of heights.  Will told us about it, and it's one euro to go to the top (which is a SCHLEP, let me tell you).  Dad, you are not allowed to go up to the top.  We went up at probably, 2:50.  NOT a good idea.  Actually it was.  The bells started ringing.  So there we were, on top of the city:

Will and I on the observation deck

And all of a sudden, the sound of bells is ALL AROUND US.  There are like, 2357987453 churches in Munich, and they were all ringing at 3pm, it was unbelieveable.  The sound just carried out across everywhere.  When the tower started swaying fairly violently, we became aware of the bells in our own tower.  That was kinda vomit-inducing.

Alterpeter

But it was really awesome that we happened to be there, even if I flipped out a little.  And the staircase inside the tower was not only a million miles long, but extremely narrow, and you had to stop on landings to let others past coming in the other direction.  Then we had cocoa:

Tasty!

After cocoa, we went to the Spielzeug (toy) museum.  It was largely teddy bears and miniatures.  It was only three small rooms, but I took a couple cool photos:

From there, we started to wander around, and ended up at one point in the Viktuelianmarkt (is how I believe it is spelled), which is kind of like a farmers market, but with other permanent stores as well.  I am now going to post a photo I took there of some dried decorations/aromatic dealies for my mom:

Viktualienmarkt