From Munich, With Glee

What a successful weekend! I just got back yesterday from my trip to München (Munich) and Innsbruck, Austria (or I guess if I'm being picky and using München I should also say Österreich). It was an amazing trip, and because I have a lot of pictures from Innsbruck to share I'm going to stretch this trip across two posts. The hiking bit shows up tomorrow.

Because last Thursday was a holiday (Feast of the Ascension, or Christi Himmelfahrt) I could leave on a Wednesday afternoon and still not miss any class. Hilary and I booked it to the Südkreuz train station after our class and caught an express train that got us to Munich by 8:45pm. We checked into our hostel and then went to find our friends in the Glee Club. They were staying in a hotel very close to us. The Notre Dame Glee Club is currently on a European tour, and Munich is their only German stop so Hilary and I planned our visit accordingly. Surprisingly and thankfully we had no trouble meeting up with people on Wednesday. We walked to their hotel and were greeted by Glee Clubbers in the street outside, and we found more inside. So fun to see domers again! We gathered up a few of them, as well as our ND friend Susie who's studying in Munich this semester, and headed out to one of Munich's famous Bierhallen, the Augustiner Bierhallen, to enjoy a Maß together.

Joe and I. You need muscles to hold up that drink.

On Thursday Hilary took me, Joe (my good friend who was studying in Mexico City this past semester), and a few new Glee Club friends around Munich. The weather wasn't ideal but we didn't let it stop us. We listened to the bells of the Glockenspiel play on Marienplatz and we walked through the Englisher Garten. The holiday had its ups and downs: all of the churches were open, but the open market (the Viktoulian Markt) where Hilary wanted to take us for Wurst was closed, as well as the university where Sophie Scholl and her brother were arrested for their resistance work against the Nazis.

The Neues Rathaus in Marienplatz

A close up of the puppets who dance when the bells play

We ate lunch in a Biergarten, and later we hiked up many narrow, wooden staircases to the top of the Peterskirche, for an astounding look out across the city. Munich wasn't as destroyed during WWII as many other German cities, but it wasn't left untouched either. For example, part of the Peterskirche was bombed out, but the tower remained standing. Munich is a very old city, and has churches built in almost every style of architecture. If you're interested in architecture it is fascinating to read about the presence of almost every epoch in different buildings around the city, but I'm afraid I don't have the background or the time to go through everything here.

The famous Frauenkirche, dating back to the 1200s, on the left (one tower covered in scaffolding), and the Neues Rathaus on the right.

Hilary and I decided we needed a quick nap, and we left Joe to wander around the city with our new friend, Father Driscoll, the priest who's been traveling with the Glee Club (I love Notre Dame). We picked up Joe about an hour and a half later and joined some other new friends at the Hofbräuhaus Bierhalle. The Bierhalle was lively and busy, a great atmosphere--until we sat down. We had terrible service, "wirklich unglaublich," but it gave Hilary the chance to go off an a manager in German, which was pretty fun, and after the manager yelled at our server for neglecting us and one other table things picked up a little. We tried not to let it sour our evening, but I wouldn't really recommend the Hofbräuhaus to anyone. Munich is a city full of friendly people and pleasant Bierhallen (Gemütlichkeit is the great German word for it) and even though we didn't experience much at dinner I know the city is full of it.

Most important part of the story: we still had fun!

But I don't want to end on a sour note! Overall, the Munich part of the trip was very fun. I loved seeing a Bavarian city, because the atmosphere really is very different from that of Berlin. I would love to go back and visit Munich again. And I really enjoyed catching up such a good friend in a foreign city. BFFs together again! I'm sorry, Kaitlyn, there were no matching outfits, but that didn't stop us from having a great time.