Onto Bavaria

Woke up very early today to catch the 8 am train for Munchen (Munich in german). It is the capital of Bavaria, the largest province in Germany. Residents here are unique and the land is what when most foreigners conjure up images of Germany. Munich always happens to be the home of my favorite BMW - Bavarian Motor Works. Reaching Munich, I checked into The Tent, a huge tent hostel put up in the outskirts of the city. For 10E, it was damn cheap too and the reason I reached there. Most of the people were backpackers, travelling for months together discovering and smitten by europa.

I went out to the centre of Munich called Marienplatz. There in the plaza is the Neues Rathaus and Altes Rathaus (New and old city hall). Mike's bike tour takes one around Munich by bike while showing the sights. I took it at Amsterdam, I remember, and the guide had offered us marijuana at the end of the trip - it is legal in holland. So, i met the Mike's bike tour team at 4 pm for the 4 hour tour. There was almost 35 people split up into 2 groups. We went around discovering Munich and learning a little of it's history. As I had heard, most of German cities were completely destroyed in the II World War. So, none of the splendor of old buildings of other european capitals remain. Some are there though, and many are reconstructed from the ruins.
After visiting various monuments and buildings we came to Englischer garten (english garden). It is a huge park, with people nude sunbathing there. Most of those people were eccentric germen men though, we were fore-warned. Right in the middle of the garden was a huge beer garden beside a Chinese pagoda. We stopped there for beer, and I had Weissbier this time - a cloudy blonde beer made from wheat instead of barley. The light and dark beers are called Helles and Dunkles respectively in German.

And after the trip, what did I do? guess. yeah, no prizes for guessing. Headed to the the famous Hofbrauhaus - a famous beer pub in the middle of the city - along with 2 Americans and a dane I had befriended during the tour. We spent most of the rest of the evening and night there, making conversation over the loud noise all around, and live Bavarian music. And beer drinking and talking about everything-under-the-sun again. This is how Let's Go recommended spending in Munich, getting drunk in the pubs. And I just had to follow the recommendation, I like the book so much. :-)