Hallo Munchen

I don't really know how to start off a travel blog, especially since most everyone who's going to read this knows the basic idea of my trip anyway, so I guess I’ll get right into it.  My mom, my sister and I got to Munich a couple of days ago and it’s basically been a non-stop eating and wandering fest ever since. Our hotel in Munich is right across from the central train station, the Munchen Hopfbahnhof which is a great location.  We’re about a 10 minute walk from the very touristy but beautiful city center, which includes the apparently famous Munich glockenspiel (think a giant version of a cuckoo clock with dancing statues in the city’s main square) and some cafes, shops, etc.  We wandered around the city center for a few hours then cleaned up and went out for dinner at the Augustiner Biergarten.  If you real the guidebooks, they’ll tell you that this is the most authentic, local biergarten in Munich, and it’s easy to see why.  There’s an outdoor section where you can hang around outside under a stand of chestnut trees and put away fresh beer from 1L mugs, or, if its too cold out, you can go inside to the crazy loud and crazy awesome beer hall.  I asked what kind of beer they had, and without even answering my question the waiter brought over some pretty awesome lager-type something or other, and when I asked him again what it was, he just said “beer.”  Good enough for me.  A few more of those, a plate of wurst and a good weiss bier later, and my day was done.

Today we took a train ride to Salzburg, Austria, birthplace of Mozart (had no idea about that one before we got there actually) and backdrop to the film The Sound of Music. Of course unless they work in tourism, no one in Salzburg even knows what the Sound of Music is, but whatever.  In order to get there, we took an extremely scenic 1.5 hour train ride through the foothills of the Bavarian Alps.  I’ve never seen anything like this before and it’s freaking awesome, exactly what you would imagine.  Little villages with the typical Bavarian white and brown buildings set into the fields and hills; really gorgeous.  Of course Salzburg itself was awesome too.  There’s an older section of town (die alterzentrum) full of the expected tourist shops and then, in the hills above the town, a 15^th century fortress with more sweeping views of the countryside.  On our way back to the central train station we stopped at the public gardens.  We ate dinner at a nice Italian restaurant (that’s actually run by real Italians – go figure) where they do something a little odd: when you’re done eating your main course, they take the little paper placemat that was under your plate, rip it in half, and throw it on the floor.  The restaurant is littered with the remains of every diner’s placemat from at least the night, maybe even the week.  Strange. 

One other thing I noticed – a lot of the younger Germans and Austrians (in their early 20’s) are really creepy and scuzzy looking.  Mohawks, weird piercings, blaring car stereos and all that seem to be the norm.  Kinda makes me feel uneasy walking around sometimes cause I don’t know who I really have to look out for, but it’s also funny to know that they basically all aspire to the American style of dress and way of life – invariably they’re dressed in American branded clothing and playing American music through the cars.