On Friday, 9/24, I got up, bright and early (actually at 5 am) to finish up an English assignment. After e-mailing that over to my professor, showering, making breakfast, finishing up packing, and making a bagged lunch, I was finally ready to leave around 8 am. I met Laura at the train station, Hlavni Nadrazi, and we waited there until our platform number came up on the electronic board.
We boarded the 9:04 train, and all, for the most part, went smoothly. I had reserved my seat for an additional 3 euros since we didn't need anything else to go wrong after scrambling for the train tickets in the first place. Anyway, a young gentleman was in my seat with his friend in the same cabin. Long story short, I stood with my belongings in the hallway for about 10 minutes until he finally got out of my seat. The ticket taker was making her way down the compartment, so it was coming regardless.
We got to the Munich main train station at 3:00 pm and made our way to the bathrooms (1 euro each!) and to reserve our seats for the way back (which we couldn't do for some reason). On the way, we ran into our host for the weekend. It was pretty funny having this short, spiky haired blond kid run up behind us. "You're Jennifer right?" (Umm, yes, I am... Who are you, random kid who knows my name?) My friend Alex at Bucknell met him, Ben, last summer when she was interning in Poland for a month. Ben's friend has a work-study apartment in Munich, and was nice enough to lend us his floor to sleep on.
We walked to the apartment to drop off our stuff, and the apartment is in an amazing location. The place was about 300 cubic square feet, and right in the heart of the city. You could see the local Oktoberfest grounds from the balcony, which was 50 meters away.
The view from the balcony. That's St. Peter's Church in the center.
I wish I had more interesting things to say about my explorations of Munich of that day, but I really don't. Alex had arrived in Munich that morning with friends in her NYU in Florence program and they were taking a bike tour of the city so I couldn't meet up with her just yet. Instead, we explored St. Peter's Church, and walked around the city... taking a tour of all of the grocery stores. The church stands on Petersbergl, the only raised piece of land within the historic Old Quarter of Munich and is located in the spiritual centre-point of the Graggenauer district. As for the grocery shopping, Ben was hellbent on cooking us an authentic German dinner and apparently none of the stores had ingredients good enough for such a meal.
Laura and I with the church in the background
St. Peter's Church
Walking around the city, with all the crowds. Notice the traditional clothing?
He finally found something suitable and hours later he finally started cooking. Alex was taking forever to arrive, but we were starving. He basically threw all ingredients into pots of boiling water, no cleaning anything.. no seasoning.. You can imagine how tasty that was. But did I forget to mention, that we were starving? I ate everything in sight.
Food at last! Cloudy apple juice, cherry tomatoes, sauerkraut with pineapple, white sausages (Weisswurst), bread, and potatoes.
The night skyline from the balcony of the local Oktoberfest grounds.
That night we went to a local Italian cafe and had hot chocolate and plum cake. It wasn't as good as Prague's hot chocolate, but hit the spot - especially in the rain that was showering down!
We called it an early night and set our alarm clocks. We had an early day to look forward to!
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