jleyrer::blog

Munich: Day 2 (March 25, 2009)

Day 2 began with the sounds of construction. Though I admit we slept in later than we probably should have (almost noon), adjusting to a new time zone is even harder when someone is pounding nails right outside your door. By now, most everyone else in our 8-bed room had already gotten up and left, so I figured there was no time like the present.

After getting cleaned up, Karol and I headed out to stroll around town for a while. Adam was nowhere to be seen, so we took off without him. We all had working cell phones so I figured we’d meet up eventually. We stayed mostly south and west of the Hauptbahnhof, which is an area I hadn’t explored the last time I was in Munich. Along the way we passed some pretty cool-looking buildings like this church:

Before long we were thirsty/hungry and happened upon the Hacker-Pschorr Bier Hall. This beer hall is MASSIVE, though it was virtually empty since we were there so early. Karol and I promptly ordered beers (of course!); he had pumpkin soup with pretzels and I had a goulash soup that was truly awesome.

Also, it’s worth noting that Hacker-Pschorr has the largest bathroom I’ve ever seen and probably will ever see in my lifetime. It’s square footage dwarfs the dining rooms of most restaurants in Chicago. No, I don’t have pictures.

From Hacker-Pschorr, we slowly made our way back to the hostel. Unfortunately, it was snowing at the time.

In front of the hostel, we just happened to run into Adam who had woken up only about a half hour earlier. By now it was late afternoon and we headed into the hostel bar, armed with Karol’s computer, in order to look up things to do that night. We found a handful of bars up on Munich’s north side that sounded interesting and after hanging out for a few hours, decided to check them out.

First up was Schwabinger 7. Though the atmosphere in there was cool, it was totally packed and we really couldn’t make it very far into the place. Note to anyone who visits this bar: Watch out for the last step on the way in! I was the first one in the door and got almost up to the bar before stumbling over this hidden step. I recovered though, with minimal laughter from Karol who was right behind me. Adam must not have seen this because he did the same thing, except he went down… hard. I think he face planted into the base of the bar, knocking into a girl sitting unsuspectingly nearby. That was about it for our first Schwabinger experience.

We moved on to bar #2 (I don’t remember its name) hoping it would be a little less crowded. It was. Though the description we found said it was a rock music bar, it had a lounge atmosphere and they were blasting jazz. It wasn’t a bad place, but it wasn’t really what we were looking for at that point. We stayed for a drink, though, and Karol opted for a shot of absinthe complete with melted sugar.

We left in search of bars #3 and #4 which, in hindsight, was a terrible idea. We walked for what seemed like forever in a cold rain/snow mix and could not find either of these damn places. Finally, we called it quits. Since we had fun at the hostel bar the night before, we retreated to there.

Back at the hostel bar, we met three Irish folks (2 girls / 1 guy) and a drunken asshole from Boston, who we just referred to as “Boston”. We didn’t last as long as we did the night before, but put in a good showing nonetheless.