Die Englischer Gartens

Today was a beautiful day in Muenchen. It must have been in the 60's today, and it actually felt pretty warm for me. Sunny, partly cloudy... all in all a wonderful day to take some pictures! So, Jake and I grabbed our cameras and made our way to the English Gardens. The leaves are still in the process of turning, so we strolled through the park, taking pictures of the people surfing, the fall colors, and some of the local fauna (a ladybug landed on my neck).

English Gardens 25-10-2009

Neuschwanstein und Wieskirche

Jake, Kevin and Me in front of Neuschwanstein

What an awesome trip! We started out at about 9:00 in the morning, and we wound our way through the German countryside for about an hour and a half. Along the way, our tour guide supplied us with the history of the castle: commissioned by King Ludwig II (who was declared insane in a parliamentary power play, only to be found dead days later under mysterious circumstances...), built as a tribute to Richard Wagner, never finished, etc. I have also heard this castle was the one that inspired the Disney castle:

(http://artemisiatridentata.wordpress.com/2009/06/09/an-inspiring-castle/).

Once we arrived, we immediately climbed the hill to the castle and started snapping some photos of the exterior. Unfortunately, the exterior would be all we could photograph, because cameras were contraband once we entered. We went on a quick tour through the castle, then made our way to the Marien Bruecke a little ways away to get some pictures of the castle from a distance. There's actually another castle, Hohenschwangau, built near Neuschwanstein by Ludwig's father. I got the feeling that Ludwig wanted to outdo his old man by building another castle so close, and on a slightly higher hilltop than the castle his dad built...

Neuschwanstein und Wieskirche

After we got back into the village, we had a great lunch at a local hotel. They served us either a pork schnitzel or rumpsteak, along with fries and spaetzle, topped off with a custard like dessert with lemon and berry sauces and some fruit. Oh. Man. It was awesome.

When we had finished eating, we all hopped back onto the bus and took a short drive to the Wieskirche. This church is a pilgrimage church, the home of the miraculous Scourged Savior statue. It was designed in the rococo style, which is very exuberant and impressive to behold. It was such a beautifully constructed church, in the middle of nowhere, really. They built it at the site where the statue's miracle was first witnessed, in the middle of an open pasture. We couldn't stay long, though, so we took a walk around the church, snapping photos, then made our way back to the bus for the ride back to Muenchen.

Die Lange Nacht der Muenchner Museen

I have an interesting experience to tell you all about: Die Lange Nacht der Muenchner Museen. It was a huge event in Muenich where almost 90 museums were opened up from 7 pm until 2 in the morning, and you could get into your choice of as many you could get to for only a 15 euro ticket. It was a pretty awesome night!

We started at the Max-Planck Museum, which had colorized prints of highly magnified objects. They turned out to be quite interesting.

The light was a little dim, hence the blurry.

Next, we caught a bus to St. Paul-Kirche. They had an amazing light show with accompanying music. It was really quite incredible.

After the church, we stopped by a Siemens exhibition with old, present day, and possible future technologies, but I forgot to take pictures. But, after Siemens, we went to the Pinakothek der Moderne, and I got plenty of pictures there!

Die Lange Nacht Der Muenchner Museen

We spent about an hour and a half at the Pinakothek der Moderne, then we tried to make it to a tower... who's name escapes me at the moment. Needless to say, we couldn't make it in there, because by this time it was about 2:30 in the morning and the Lange Nacht der Muenchner Museen had ended. Unfortunately, the U-Bahn stopped running at about 1:30 (i think) and we were quite a ways away from Stusta, so we decided to make our way to the MilchBar to pass the time until the U-Bahn started running again... at 5 in the morning. So we got some beers, hung around, and danced a little (not me of course :P). I left before the others, at about 5:20, because I had been up for close to 24 hours and was incredibly tired, but man, what a night!

It's Snowing!!

Short one today, gang! It snowed today! I got some quick footage, and I'm going to take a bunch of pictures once the snow starts to stick!

Yeah, the window was closed... It was cold out there!

Faces

Good stuff today guys! I was making breakfast today, when I realized I had inadvertently created a smiley face! Even the cheese slices helped give it a goofy, toothy grin! I'm afraid he has very bloodshot eyes though.

I call him Alfred.

I thought Alfred was pretty neat, but I guess this sign was not amused.

Yoink!

Today was interesting. I finally received my scholarship money, so I decided to celebrate by making some Tacos!! They were delicious, if a bit interesting; You see, apparently die Deutsche don't really like things spicy, so the salsa I bought was like a sweet tomato sauce. Also, I couldn't find just ground beef, but instead a ground beef/pork mixture. That actually wasn't so bad, as it turned out.

Also, when I was washing up, I had to grab the dish soap that was sitting next to one of my flatmates. As I did this, I said "Yoink!", as I usually do in situations like this. Of course, this didn't really translate all that well, so what followed was a twenty minute conversation where I tried to explain to him (in my rather imperfect German) the grammatical complexities of "Yoink". That, my friends, was a very amusing conversation:

Tshue: But wait, I wasn't using it, you were free to take it!

Me: No, I wasn't really asking for it, I was just, well, "Yoinking" it...

It got to the point where I was questioning my own knowledge of Yoinking. It's like when you repeat a word so many times that you no longer think it's even a word...

Meine Damen und Herren... Oktoberfest!

Well, I would be remiss if I didn't wind you guys up a little bit first, so to start off, I took a couple pictures on my way to class one day. I was in the Odeonsplatz and they have a pretty epic group of statues. Honestly I don't know what they're commemorating, but I've included a couple photos in the slide show later on.

This next one's for the ladies. I think you'll all appreciate this.

So would she be a pirate, or a wench? Or perhaps a pirate wench? In either case, she wasn't pillaging and plundering (for example, after taking this picture, she didn't stab me and take my camera and wallet), so I don't think she was "legit".

Anyway, I've been taunting you long enough: on to the meat and potatoes! Oktoberfest started on the 19th of September. I went on the very first day, but there were so many people I couldn't find my way into Bierzelt. I got a really tasty Currywurst, but no Bier though. I know, I know, that's analogous to blasphemy in Bayern, but I didn't think you could get Bier anywhere outside the Bierzelts (I later found out you could buy Bier on carousels, of all places). After this rather uneventful first outing, I remembered that I had another two weeks to get a good seat, so I decided to leave.

It gets better, though. Round two came on Thursday the 24th. My German friend Alex was going with some of his friends to celebrate a birthday, and he invited a couple of us along with them. We couldn't get a table ourselves, but we were able to convince some people who did have a table to buy us a couple beers (in order to order anything in the tents, you have to have a table, or, as I found out later, you have to be near enough to a table that the servers think you're sitting there :-D). Unfortunately, I couldn't order anything to eat, which made the two liters of beer I drank rather effective. An interesting note here, though. It appears that as I finish my first liter, my ability to communicate in German improves, but as I finish of a second liter, that ability drops precipitously. It's an interesting phenomenon that I will have to research further...

Anyway, after two liters I was done for the night, so I left and managed to find my way home without much incident. I was pretty useless the on Friday, though. I managed to recover enough of my wits to make it out again on Saturday, which was awesome because I managed to try some real Bierzelt food! I went with my friend Jake Venzor, from Cal Poly, and some friends he knew traveling in Europe. We were waiting to get into the Bierzelt for over an hour before we decided to leave, and as we left we found a really easy way to s

neak in on one side. I kinda felt like an idiot for waiting so long, but we got a table this time, so it all worked out! So, I was either done with or close to being done with my first liter of the night when I tried to order some chicken. Being ineffective (apparently the word I learned for chicken doesn't work translate to Bayerish) we enlisted the help of a German guy next to us, and just a half an hour later I had some food. It was awesome! They basically took a chicken, removed the innards and cut it in half, and it tasted incredible (well, I mean, they cooked it first, too). Totally worth the wait.

Ok, I've kept you waiting long enough: here are the pictures!

Oktoberfest!

So, after that last trip, I had to take a bit of a break. I had my language class Mon-Thurs, and I already knew it took me a full day to recover from a night on the Wiesen. This, coupled with the fact that my bank account was running on fumes, led me to postpone another trip until Saturday the 3rd. I had plenty to do in the meantime, I got my Aufenthaltserlaubnis, which is a document that allows me to stay in Germany without fear of deportation, and that process along took something like four hours. I also discovered that government buildings close at noon on Fridays. Kinda makes it difficult to do some things.

October 3rd is German Unity Day, and it commemorates the day that east and west Germany re-united. As far as I could tell, they celebrate by closing down all the shops in the city. So... this left me, as well as everyone else in Muenchen, little to do besides going to Oktoberfest. I was still poor, so Jake and I decided to go late and just take some pictures, both to miss most of the crowd and to get some night shots. We got some pretty cool shots, but when we went to leave, the U-Bahn stop was blocked up by Polizisten and MVG workers. We had to walk about a mile to Marienplatz before we could catch the U-Bahn back to Studentenstadt.

This is a long post, but I'm almost finished! Sunday was the last day of the Oktoberfest. A nice guy from my building gave me a coupon for a free Mass (a liter of Bier), so I got up... somewhat early and left for the Theresienwiese. Chris and I managed to find a table at the Schottenhamel Festzelt, and we both got some beer. After we finished, we went to the Augustiner tent to meet some friends, and somehow I ran into an Aussie guy from my language course named Dave. The lucky punk worked at a youth hostel that had some agreement with the Augustiner people, so they got to sit on the upper balcony (I got him to take a couple pictures for me from up high). We left him to his drinking and found our friends near the bandstand. I was hungry as heck, so I got some Goulash! I swear, everything they sell at those tents is fantastic!

After the food, Chris and I left, to return later that night for the rides. I had heard they let you take your cameras with you, so I shot this video on the giant swing!

Ok! That's all for now, guys! Hope you enjoyed it!