Surfing Munich Style

On our second full day in Munich, we went to the Englische Garten park, which a big park located in the city center. It's partly known for being home to the Chinese (Tower) Beer Garden. We hit up the beer garden and then decided to go back to the old part of the city via a nice walk through the park. About five minutes into our walk, we came to a bridge that crossed over a section of a small river/stream. What I saw was like a human soup of floating Germans going down stream. When you look at the picture, keep in mind that these people are floating towards you at a decent speed:

...and the other direction as they head away from you (Note the Locks of Love attached to this bridge. They're pretty much everywhere I go now.):

If the river of humanity isn't unusual enough, we came to another spot where some creative folk had rigged up a few bungee cords to a tree and were "water skiing" on a small board. The better folks would partly submerge themselves and the board so that they were pulled down the river while still holding onto the cord. Once the cord was fully extended, and using the momentum of the passing water, they popped up out of the water and shot upstream on the board. This photo makes it look like water skiing but they were actually moving from the right to the left at a pretty good speed.

So, human soup and guys river water skiing using bungee cords instead of a boat or jetski? Yep, I guess that's okay. But wait, it gets better. Just two more minutes up the river and we came to this:

Yep. People were SURFING the river! It's was pretty f'ing amazing because I would have never expected to see surfing in the middle of Europe at least a few hundred miles from the closest beach.

Apparently, there's a semi-natural bottom feature that results in a standing wave functioning something like a FlowRider, which are somewhat common at water parks. The surf spot is located just a few feet downstream from a bridge where the water comes out a fairly quick pace.

From what I understand, people have been surfing this spot since the 1970s. They may have been surfers but the scene was much more skateboard style in that everyone waited on one side of the river or the other for their turn. Each person would go until they fell and then the next person would drop in. It was much less aggressive than most of the ocean surfing that I've seen and, therefore, appealed to me more.

A shot of the crowd watching from up on the bridge. My guess is that there were around 200 people or so just hanging out watching. It was pretty cool.

Surfing. Munich style. Whoda' known??? Photoshop out the trees and you could almost believe that this scene is somewhere in the ocean:

John, who's an avid surfer, told me that riding the wave would take a little getting used to for him but that it looked fun. Hell, I wanted to try it but I'm guessing that it'd take a bunch of tries to get decent. First, you'd have to learn how to drop in like a bomb drop into a halfpipe on a skateboard, then you'd have to learn how to keep your balance on the wave, and then you'd have to learn how to make turns. That's a lot, but, with the skateboarding-like vibe of the place, something that I'd probably like to try. How about you? Are you up for a session?

Munich Part 2

This post is Part 2 of my short trip to Munich last weekend. For Part 1, click here.

My friend John John and his girlfriend Stacey successfully made it to Germany and met up with us at the apartment. I was surprisingly happy to see them (not in a bad way) and it made me realize how much I miss so many people in my life. Moving all over the world is great and all but it sure makes for a lot of people to miss. In other words, it was great to see them again!

The center of Munich is pretty amazing. There are a lot of the historical buildings and, in some ways, it reminded me of the older parts of Barcelona with its small, curvey cobblestone streets. We wandered around for a couple of hours checking everything out, including the impressive Rathaus (city hall). Hey Rowdy, is that you on the left???:

There's a tradition in Europe to go all out for Bachelor and Bachelorette parties where they'll dress up the bride/groom in some silly outfit while the rest of the group wears some other outfit. You can see the groups on weekends in the center of lots of towns. One of the things that the bride or groom needs to do is sell items to "earn money" to pay to get back home, to buy drinks, or whatever. The things for sale are usually small bottles of alcohol, condoms, or some other silly trinkets, which are sold for a "donation" of a euro or two. It's kinda' silly but, overall, it's (usually) the outfits that really make it awesome. To see a couple of funny photos, check out the photo at the bottom of this story from back when I was in Granada two years ago and the middle photo in this story from when I went to southern France to visit Carcasonne and some other castles.

Anyway, this group (sans great outfits) approached John while we were walking around and got him to buy some stuff. He didn't have any change so he ended up buying a few candy bars and gave the guy five euros (John's a generous guy!):

John really wanted to go to the Hofbrauhaus, which is apparently the classic beer hall to visit when you're in Munich. Since my tastes go more towards wine, it's not something that I probably would have done if they weren't with us...

...but, as with most opportunities that I just say yes to, it ended up being a great experience. They've got a live band playing traditional, regional music and a food menu that was full of interesting things to order. And, best of all, the prices were relatively cheap, especially when you consider that the place caters mostly to tourists. Our dinners were delicious and it's one of the handful of tourist sights that's definitely worth visiting. Thanks for the recommendation JJ!

I didn't know it when we went in but John had a secondary motivation for the visit. I guess that a bunch of years ago, he visited Munich and the Hofbrauhaus and took a photo that's been in a frame in his bedroom ever since. He wanted to recreate the photo on this trip. What he didn't know is that Stacey had brought with her the original photo, which you can see next to John in the updated version:

I think that I really like Munich and Bayern (the state in which Munich is located) in general. The people are friendly, the scenery is great, and GIANT soft pretzels are available everywhere (!!!), including Saturday evening at the Hofbrauhaus:

...as well as Sunday afternoon in the Chinese Beer Garden:

Yep, it's carbo-lover's paradise! Actually, the food and drink at the Chinese Beer Garden (confusingly enough, located in the Englisher Garten city park) were equally as good and, even better, they had Apfelwein on tap! What a combo -- pretzels and Apfelwein!

After leaving the Chinese Beer Garden, we walked through the park back towards the center of town. I was amazed at what we saw in the park, but I'll write about that in the next story. From there, we went to the BMW Museum, which, again, is another story.

The BMW Museum is across from the Olympic Park with its Olympiturm tower. JJ and Stacey really wanted to go up in the tower to see the view. I'm glad that we did it as the view was spectacular. This photo is looking towards the center of Munich and the Alps beyond on the horizon:

 We managed to squeeze a lot into our day for sure. I have to hand it to John John and Stacey for their ability to fight off jetlag and power through the city bus tour, drinking in the park, a full museum, and a trip up in the tower, among other things! Klase!

Munich Part 1

A couple of months ago, my long-time friend John John let me know that he would be going to a wedding in Austria towards the end of August. He and his girlfriend would fly into Munich, stay there for a couple of days, and then come to Stuttgart for a couple of days before going on to the wedding. I figured that it was as good of an excuse as any to go to Munich so we contacted Esther, a friend that used to live in Barcelona and went to stay one night with her, her boyfriend Toni, and their new baby.

This post (Munich Part 1) is a quickie and covers the first half of the weekend (with Esther and Toni) while Part 2 is the second half of the weekend (with John and Stacey).

After arriving via carpooling on Friday evening, Esther and Toni took us over to wander around the 1972 Olympic park. For me, it's Munich's version of New York's Central Park and it's pretty impressive with rolling hills, a lake, the left-over stadiums, and the iconic Olympiaturm tower. In this photo, you can see the tower with the BMW headquarters building to the right and one of the original Olympic structures (the curvy, pointy building in front of the tower):

The night we were there, and I'm guessing all summer, they had a carnival-style event happening. Diana, of course, got her beloved corn on the cob (keep your hands away from the opening!) and we walked the whole park. It seemed pretty busy probably because there was a concert, an open-air movie, and some fireworks all scheduled for the evening. Hmm...Munich might turn out to be a pretty interesting city...

(By the way, an editorial note. I've greatly reduced trying to eliminate random people when taking photos. I think that it might make the photos more interesting if you can (also) see some of the people who happen to be there. Let me know if you agree or not.)

Artsy-fartsy, after-sunset photo of BMW and the Olympiaturm tower through an opening in one of the Olympic structures:

Everyone was starved so we went out to a local Chinese-food place and filled up on carbs. It was more of an Asian-food restaurant with some Vietnamese and Thai dishes as well. Yummy!

The next morning we woke up to a local bakery assortment (more carbs!!!). The reason why I show this photo is because breakfast included fresh-baked, Bayern-style PRETZELS!!! Woo-hoo! And, yes, here in southern Germany, they put butter on the pretzels. I've grown to love that too...

After breakfast we went to the Schloss Nymphenburg, which is a large palace complex a few miles from the city center. This lovely fixer was originally built in the second half of the 17th century as a summer residence for the ruling family of Bavaria. The building, which reminded me a lot of Ludwigsburg, is giant and the grounds around it are even...gianter! Oh, in case you're wondering, I didn't see any of the namesake peeps...maybe you've got to go back at night???

We walked around the grounds for about an hour but it was, believe it or not, way too hot to be out in the sun. This has only happened maybe two times since I arrived to Germany in March. Have I mentioned that, unlike California, the weather is NOT a reason to visit Germany??? Anyway, we high-tailed it out of there and went for some ice cream at a small but very busy place right down the street. From there, it was back to check in at our airbnb-rented apartment and to wait for JJ and Stacey.

A big hug and an even bigger thank you to Esther, Toni, and baby E (shortened to protect the innocent!). We had a great time and can't wait to do it again soon...like maybe real soon??? Hmm...secrets are fun!