Munich

Liz & I in the gardens at the Nymphenburg Palace

We had this past Thursday & Friday off from work so Liz & I decided to brave the trains and head to Munich for two days. We woke up Thursday morning & headed downstairs to grab some breakfast for our trip. When we got to the kitchen we were thrilled to find that Herr Martin (the South African chef) was in the kitchen. He helped us pack a large breakfast and also gave us snacks for later so we head out on our walk to the train station very happy. 

As we were walking away from the hotel we heard a car behind us and it was Katrin driving her daughter to school. She offered us a ride to the train station & we happily took her up on the offer. Once we got to the station she took us to the ticket machine and helped us buy our tickets. We had looked everything up online the night before & thought we knew what we were doing but Katrin surprised us by telling us about a special ticket that would take us to Munich & also let us use all of the buses, trains and trams in Munich. We only needed one ticket for the two of us and it ended up being less for that ticket than what one individual ticket would have been!!

When we got to Munich we checked into our hostel, grabbed a city map and headed out to find the Hofbrauhaus for lunch. I'd gone to the one in Pittsburgh this past winter but I was really excited to go to the original one! After two train stops and a bit of wandering we finally found it! 

 By the time we got there we were so hungry that we didn't get picture of our food, but it was absolutely delicious! After lunch we did have any plans so we just wandered around the city for a few hours. 

 We visited the clock tower at the center of Munich 

After that we headed over to St. Peter's church which was absolutely beautiful!

When we were done exploring the city center we hopped on the train and then a tram and headed over to Nymphenburg Palace. The palace was about to close so we didn't go inside but we did spend almost two hours walking through it's grounds. 

 Liz found some swans out front and pretended that she was the Swan Princess! 

 The palace, which Liz & I have decided to live in!

 In the back they have a really expansive botanical garden including a dozen or 

so green housed with plants from all over the world!

 I really liked the pink bonsai tree but they were all really pretty!

 After exploring the palace we took the tram & train back to the city center to grab a late

 dinner where Liz finally got the plain cheeseburger she'd been wanting since we got here. 

Our room in the hostel

After dinner we headed back to the hostel to get our room. We founded out that we had been overbooked so we were upgraded to a four person room which was a nice surprise! Even though it was only about 9:30 pm by the time we got back we were so exhausted that we went straight to bed and slept for about 11 hours.

The next morning we got up, grabbed breakfast and the hostel and then headed out to take a tour of Dachau which took up most of our second day but was totally worth it. After the tour we headed back to the main train station to grab our train home. 

We ended up having to transfer train in Kempten again which is where we got lost the last time and ended up in Lindau instead of Oberstdorf. We double checked which platform we need to be on to make sure that we didn't get lost again. When we got to our platform we saw this....

According to the sign on the platform the trains to both Lindau & Oberstdorf were leaving at the exact same time form the exact same platform. I quickly went back on my camera and watched the video from the last time Liz & I were in Kempten and sure enough there was the exact same sign on the platform that day. 

Realizing this made us both feel much better about our train navigation skills and we were then confident that we would get on the right train when it came. Once the train came and we realized how it worked I was throughly annoyed. Only one train comes to Kempten but halfway through it's trip to Lindau/ Oberstdorf it literally breaks in half with half going one way and half going the other way. On the way home from Kempten the first time Liz & I had literally done everything right except that we got on the wrong half of the right train...

We made sure to get on the right half this time and made it home without any problems! Our next two days off aren't in a row so we're probably going to stay close to the hotel and just do some short day trips. While talking to Herr Martin this morning he told us about a path that we can take to hike through the Alps over to Austria! If the weather is nice we're probably going to go on Thursday. No matter what we do everything here is so nice I'm sure we'll have fun! 

Kempten "If you can't clearly see the Alps we're in the wrong place"

Liz & I had Friday and Saturday off from work and so on Friday we decided to go to the nearby town of Kempten for the day. It's a much larger town than where we are and it has a really nice city center that is for pedestrians only that was fun to explore.

Trying to navigate through Kempten

The real reason we went to Kempten though was for it's history. It's one of the oldest urban settlement in Germany and it was settled by the Romans in about 15 BC. 

The original city plan of Kempten

 One of the most beautiful things that we saw in Kempten was St. Lorenz Basilica. It's this really beautiful, ornate, old church that was built in 1652. When we walked inside we realized that there was Mass going on so we sat in the back and tried to follow along with the service as best we could. It was a really beautiful service and a really great experience. 

The main aisle of St. Lorenz Basilica

After we left the Basilica we headed over to the AllgäuMuseum. It's their history museum and since it's such and old city we were excited to see everything that had! The museum was actually a lot bigger than we though it would be. We walked in on the ground level to a large room that had a ton of extremely old artifacts, most of them had to do with the history of the city itself, like the original city plan I put above. 

One of the coolest things I saw was this old plaque with all of the Coats of Arms 

from the original families that lived in Kempten.

After we finished exploring the first floor we realized that there were three more floors to the museum so we headed up the whitewashed stairs to check them out. Each of the floors had a different theme to them. Best we could figure the first floor was the history floor, the second floor was about life in Kempten, the third floor was about work (aka farming) in Kempten and the fourth floor was the treasure room with all of the old money.  We probably spent about and hour and a half exploring the museum and since we were the only people there, playing with every thing. 

Liz pretending to be in potions class. 

Me getting ready to head off to Narnia!

After we had finished checking out the museum and playing with everything we grabbed a quick bite to eat and then headed over to the archeological park which was really interesting. At the center of the park was a courtyard that had the old bath in. Surrounding the courtyard was a restored building that was built exactly where the original one was. The building had many artifacts that have been found in the park. 

   

The old bath in the middle of the courtyard. 

After we left the park we decided to head back. We had gotten a ride to Kepmten in the morning but were planning to take the train back. We had looked up with train schedule the night before but when we had gotten to Kempten in the morning we realized that it's train station was kind of far away so we were going to need to take a bus to the train station. When we were walking back from the park we can across a bus stop and after reading the schedule realized that bus 62 should be coming in two minutes and it would take us to the train station. Right on schedule bus 62 came...but then drove right past us. So we walked to one of the main bus stops and caught another bus to the train station. 

We got to the station 5 minutes before our train was suppose to leave so we hurried to the ticket machine to try to figure out how to work it. Well we had some issues and  accidentally just printed out the train schedule instead of an actual ticket, something that the train conductor informed us of as we tried to board the train. So we missed that train but there was another one coming in 30 minutes so we just went back downstairs, bought an actual ticket and then made the greatest discovery of the day, plain water. 

      

I never thought I would be this happy to find a bottle of Evian. 

At this point in the day Liz & I were so thirsty but most stores only sell mineral water which is something that we haven't been able to acclimate to so we were overjoyed to find regular bottled water. 

After that we went back up to the platform and hopped onto our train. It was a little crowed so we had to stand at first but about 10 minutes into our 50 minute trip we got seats. For the first half of the trip everything looked kind of familiar and we recognized some of the cities that we were stoping in such as Immenstadt, which is about halfway in between Kempten and where we live. However after we had been on the train for about an hour and we still hadn't gotten to our stop Liz began to worry and pointed out that we were clearly going in the wrong direction because there weren't any mountains around and we live in a giant valley. 

We took the train to the end of it's line which happened to be a really pretty lake town called Lindau. I looked at a map and realized that while we had started out right but in Immenstadt the train line split and one train went to Lindau and another went to Oberstdorf. We had just gotten on the train to Lindau instead of Oberstdorf. We headed to the information desk where a very nice man, after laughing for a minute, told us which trains we need to take to get home.

Liz, annoyed about having to wait for another train

While we were hanging out in Lindau we picked up a train map so we made it back to our station fairly easily. One we got there though we realized that we weren't totally sure how to get back to the hotel, meaning I wanted to go left and Liz wanted to go right. 

Luckily I convinced Liz to go to the left with me because I told her that I recognized "our mountains" and even more luckily those really were our mountains and after walking about 2.6 kilometers (a little over a mile and a half) we were finally back at the hotel!  

We had been gone for almost 12 hours at that point and even though a good half of that time had been spent trying to get home we had a great day. Kempten was such an interesting, historical city and we learned how to use German public transportation! Even though our first try didn't go so smoothly we made it home and learned a lot. 

Our "Five Minute" Bike Ride, Work, and the Perfect Day of Food

Yesterday Liz & I accidentally slept until 11 am so we missed breakfast but we were able to get ready in time for lunch at 11:30. It was raining a bit in the morning but after lunch the weather became really nice so Liz & I decided to set out on our adventure to one of the nearby villages. One of the ladies who worked at the front desk recommended that we go to Oberstdorf, which is one of the larger villages "right close by" to us. 

Liz on our way to Oberstdorf.

Turns out Oberstdorf is about a 30 minute, uphill bike ride away. By the time we go there we were extremely tired and it had started to rain. So naturally Liz & I did what Liz & I do best which is find food. We parked our bikes and headed into a cute little cafe for a banana split. After we finished eating it was still raining a little bit but we decided to venture out in the rain anyways. Oberstdorf is the quintessential little German village. Because we went on Sunday most of the shops and restaurants were closed but we have this Friday & Saturday off of work so we plan to go back one of those days for lunch. 

One of the few things that was open was the Casino!

After we finished our exploring we headed back to the hotel for dinner and then we both accidentally fell asleep around 7 only to wake up a few hours later and not be able to fall back asleep till past 2. Despite that we still got up at 8 am this morning because we had to grab a quick breakfast before meeting with Katrin, the hotel owner, to fill out registration paperwork. Around 8:30 we headed down fro breakfast and the day of perfect food started. 

This was the first time we were going to have breakfast in Germany and we were a little worried about what it might be. For our past for meals some serving plates were placed on a little counter and we just helped ourselves to whatever we wanted off of them. When we walked into the kitchen we were shocked and worried to see nothing but some bread sitting where our food was suppose to be. As soon as the chef saw us he immediately asked us what we would like for breakfast. He started listing all sorts of things such as cheese, eggs, sausage, bread with marmalade, ect. We were both overjoyed. We just asked for the bread and marmalade. He brought us out a plate with strawberry marmalade, butter, plates with knifes (which we normally have to get for ourselves) and a basket so that we could take all of the bread we wanted. Everything was so fresh and delicious and such a nice change from mystery meat. 

After breakfast we found Katrin and headed out to three different office to fill out all of our paperwork. Luckily Katrin was so well prepared and everything went so smoothly! At one place a lady pulled out forms for us to fill out but Katrin pulled them the same one out of her purse. She briefly explained to the shocked lady that she had downloaded them off of the internet. The paperwork took about and hour and a half but a lot of that was due to the fact that each office that we visited was in a different village and it took a awhile to drive to them. 

Once we got back we had a bit of free time and then headed down for lunch. When we walked into the kitchen I saw the most beautiful thing sitting on our little food counter, there was a giant pan of mashed potatoes, which happens to be one of my most favorite foods ever. Liz made fun of how much I took but I was so happy it didn't bother me. 

After lunch it was time for us to finally start working. We'll be working in the restaurant and at the front desk. I'm spending the first half of our time here in the restaurant and Liz is working at the front desk, halfway through we'll switch. 

After work we each told each other about our days and by the time we finished recapping our days it was time for dinner and we headed to the kitchen to discover that there were crepes for dinner, which were delicious. 

After dinner we grabbed the bikes and headed down the road to the store that is actually five minutes away. It took us a little longer though because we left the hotel at the same time that the cows that live in the field across from us did and so we got stuck behind them for a while until they all got distracted by the grass and wandered off the road. 

We wanted to go to the store to get an alarm clock, which they didn't have, but while wandering around we found two more things that made our food day even more perfect. 

We found an entire section of the store devoted to Kinderschokolade,

one of mine & Liz's favorite candies. 

The best find of the day was the landjager, a type of dried sausage, I found back in 

the butcher shop, it was almost as good as the landjager Oma used to get for us!

Even though Liz & I (mostly me) were worried about all of the paperwork working out and for our first day of work everything worked out perfectly! It really was a great first day of work and we're both excited to see what tomorrow brings. Tschüs!

We're Here!

After a pleasant eight hour plane ride and a terrifying two hour drive on the Autobahn Liz & I finally made it to the hotel! Once we got here we had lunch, took a nap and then had dinner. We have tomorrow off and if the rain stops we're going to take bikes out and go explore the the villages that are nearby. The hotel is right in the middle of two small villages that are both suppose to be a five minute bike ride away so hopefully the weather will be nice tomorrow and we can go check them out. 


First thing Monday morning we have to go to some offices to fill out some paperwork and register so that we can start working. I was really surprised when we landed in Munich because we didn't have to fill out any type of immigration paperwork. They just scanned & stamped our passports and said "Welcome to Germany!" Hopefully what we have to do on Monday will be just as smooth and easy. 


Below are a few pictures I took around the hotel and our room, which is really basically an apartment, but look for some more soon especially once the weather clears up. 

Here's part of the front of the hotel! It's to big to get in one picture unless you walk further away 

and right now it's pouring rain so look for a better picture soon!

 Here's our little sitting/TV room that leads out to our balcony 

And here is part of our balcony! 

  This is my messy, unpacked little room

 Here's Liz's bed & her part of the room.

This is the view from the front of the hotel. The Alps are very tall and pretty but with 

all of the rain & clouds they're hard to see.

That's all for now, look for another update soon, maybe after our exploring tomorrow. Tschüs!