I feel silly trying to sum up this city in one journal entry, so this is my futile attempt. Even though I only stayed there for a limited amount of time, I truly did fall in love with it. I fell in love with the Germans, the food, the culture, the language, and the diversity.
My trip began at the airport, as most do. The man checking our passports stared at us suspiciously as he asked, "Why would you travel so far for a weekend?" My dad and I looked at each other, almost as if it were some kind of inside joke, and he let us by. I slept almost immediately as we got to the hotel. When I woke up, we walked around near the center of Munich and stumbled upon a supposedly famous sausage-ria. And my God, those sausages sure were throbbing missiles of love. I ate like a deprived African child that night. We waddled back to the hotel and slept off the meal.
I'm almost ashamed to say we took a Segway tour... but we did. Segway tours were newly introduced to Munich, so needless to say we were the only ones taking it. Our guide was an ex-Texan who wore a "Duck Unlimited" cap. He was weird, chewed cigars, and was slightly creepy. He held my hand a little longer than he should've during a handshake. Anyway, seeing the city in that way was jolly good fun. But the most amazing part of my day was dinner. VEAL KNUCKLES. Need I honestly say more? Such a delicacy, such a delight, such and honor to eat something so significantly holy. Along with the veal knuckles, we had piglet knuckles (mmm crispy skin) and potato dumplings. We ended up ordering a cucumber salad to cleanse the palate.
The day after our glorious meal of baby animals, we went to Dachau, an infamous concentration camp. Even mentioning the name Dachau around Germany brought images of bare-naked, starved human beings clumped in a pile of fresh dead ready to be buried people. It was a very heavy place to visit, but like the shooting of the dog in Old Yeller, it was needed. I'll never forget it.
We stayed in the town of Dachau for lunch, when we noticed a lot people in traditional costume walking in the same direction. So we followed them, and ended up in the weirdest local fair. It was pretty huge for such a small town, but just so random. They had fish on a stick. I won an orange squeaky hedgehog there. It was fun.
We took the train back to Munich and walked around the city, trying to enjoy the last night there. We'd be leaving early morning tomorrow, not even time for breakfast, so we soaked up all of Munich's beauty that night. My trip ended on a river.
