Sunday, June 29, 2008

Munich adventure and beautiful Prague!

Sorry I havent been able to post the past few days...it's been insane. When Greg and I were in Munich I might possibly have had the greatest adventure of my life. We went to the Dachau concentration camp during the day with our friend Karen from D.C. we met at our hostel who became a really great friend of Greg and I. Dachau was soo surreal. It was the most beautiful day and in the most beautiful setting and then to see where such evil took place in that exact area affected all of us. I'm happy I went, but it's not something I ever want to do again.
After Dachau we realized we needed something to cheer us up immediately and embarked on our journey to the world famous Hofbrauhaus and drank liters of the most amazing beer ever. I also had a ten minute conversation with an old German guy that apparently would not accept that I didnt know German so I just said "ja" and nodded my head for 10 minutes which seemed to make him happy. Greg is of the belief that I explicitly agreed to some manly love of some sort... I sure hope not haha.
After the hofbrauhaus, we said goodbye to our friend Karen who had to get on an overnight train to Rome and we walked through Munich which is an AMAZINGLY beautiful city! We made our way to the "English Gardens" of Munich = kind of like their central Park - and we watched german guys surf in the rapids of the river there which was an incredible sight. We finally made it over to the beergarten our friend Torsten told us about there and I must say...if we can somehow choose what our heaven is like...mine will be the beergarten in the English Gardens of Munich. We ate pretzels the size of my size 14 shoes and drank liters of "strong beer" which the German guys would not let me have any other kind. I wanted just normal beer but they insisted since Greg and I were strong men, "you must have strong beer, ja!!" They weren't kidding when they said strong haha.
ok now is where the adventure truly begins...after we had our "strong beer".
Greg went off to find the bathroom and I was sitting just enjoying my beer and the beautiful park and people watching when I hear Greg's unmistakable laugh coming from about 100 meters away. I see him with a group of about 10 German guys our age wearing huge hats with feathers in their heads stumbling around laughing. I go over and Greg is talking to this kid named Rupert Moka from Bavaria who...I and everyone else we met that night...swears to God is Greg's German counterpart. He was a hilarious short, stocky guy and Greg and him were freakin inseperable haha. We found out they just got out of the German military that night and we're out partying it up. They asked us to enjoy them and this was probably about 11 pm that night and we agreed.
some words about the German guys:
one of them was called "The Chaplain" and was their army chaplain our age who was probably the most drunk out of all of them and carried around a wooden crucifix he would drunkenly flash at people
anither guy was what we called "penis kneck guy" because he had a huge penis drawn on his neck but apparently that did not affect him with the ladies bc the German guys started with about 50 bells pinned on their shirts and every time they made out with a girl, one would be taken away. Penis kneck guy had one at the end of the night - a German Costas haha!
Almost all of them were wearing the Bavarian "liederhosen" pants and had giant hats on
they all carried around whistles which would help them stay together when they drunkenly got seperated throughout the evening
...ok so we headed out with Rupert and the other Bavarian ex=military guys and went from bar to bar until about 4 in the mornign where we came to a cafe and they ordered us German sausages and spatle soup which they referred to as pancake soup. We finally left them about 5 amish as the sun was rising and I thought Greg and Rupert were going to cry haha.
On the tram back to our campground, boith Greg and I fell asleep and missed our stop, riding the tram to the end where I was violently awoken by the tram driver who wouldnt stop screaming at me in German. We stumbled back to our campsite somehow and were able to sleep for about 3 hours until we had to get up to get on the train to Prague.
On the way to Prague we sat in this compartment with this awesome German guy who was very religious and blessed us and my knee which had been hurting the past few days magically feels soooo much better now...I'm not making this up.
As for Prague...
I really did not know what to expect when we were coming here. Our first impression was the Soviet-built train station which was pretty scary haha. Soon, however, we realized that the train station is the antithesis of the rest of the city. Prague is like a smaller, less crowded Paris, wehere everything is 10 times less expensive and equally as beautiful. I am soo impressed with this city and the Czech culture. The culture seems almost like you took the best aspects of Italians and French and then mixed those with Germans and Russians in a blender...amazing. Today we saw the beautiful Prague castle and the famous Charles Bridge. Tonight we are going to watch the finals of the EuroCup in the famous and absolutely beautiful Wenceslas Square (probably spelled it wrong). As for now, Greg and I are going to eat a late lunch, try to grab a workout, then eat dinner and watch the game with 30,000 other people in the square.
Tomorrow is Berlin which should be equally amazing!

1 comment:

West Beach said...

You gotta love the German spirit.