Munich

On Saturday we said goodbye to the staff in the lounge who had looked after us during our stay. They had been very good to us, helping Mindy a lot with the kids, getting them cups of milk for the evenings and generally putting up with us being perhaps a little louder than the average guests in the executive lounge!

We then left for Munich. According to the car navigation system it was supposed to be a 3 hour drive. However, this did not account for the strange German practice of doing road works in 150km sections! Seriously, there literally was about 150km of their highway that was getting repaired, so lanes were removed and it ended up being 4 hours of traffic to get there.

Well, Munich is very different from Heidelberg! Heidelberg is a small town while there is certainly no mistaking Munich for being a big city. More crowds, more dirt and lots of stuff happening - kind of had a New York type feel to it in some ways. There are also more people here wearing burkas and head scarfs than I have seen before, even in New York. There must be a large immigrant community from the Middle East in this area as you cannot walk down any street without seeing many examples of this. In contrast to the burkas and scarves are the strp joints and porn shops. One shop we passed had an array of colorful "play things" and Naomi said, "Look at that pretty shop!". Mindy just kept pushing the stroller past the window.

After grabbing lunch we met up with my school friend Jon who had driven down from The Netherlands to see us. We set off to the main part of the city, Marienplatz, where there is a large pedestrian walkway and outdoor mall, as well as a few nice old buildings, churches etc. We plan to come back on a weekday when it is a little quieter as there was really no room to move and it was tough to appreciate it. We continued through here and set out to find the Hofbrauhaus, to sit, relax and drink some beer. The Hofbrauhaus is famous for its 1 liter beers and so Jon and I decided to appreciate this aspect of German culture. We also ate a huge Bavarian pretzle as well. Inside there was a traditional German band playing and the atmosphere was quite relaxing.

Heading back towards the hotel we stopped for dinner and a few wheat beers before getting Mindy and the kids settled in for the night. Jon and I then went back out to a local bar specializing in hookah pipes. We tried the Apple tobacco with a couple more drinks and an enjoyable evening was had. Unfortunately, most of the bars closed at 11:30 (even the Hofbrauhaus) so it was a relatively tame evening, finished with another round at the hotel bar.