After Vienna we headed to Munich via Salzberg. I am still kicking myself for not staying at least one night in this place as it is the home of the Sound of Music (one of my all time favourite movies) which means you can do a tour of all the places. It also looked like a beautiful city so it is definately on my ‘To Visit List’ – which keeps growing day by day. Anyways after a pretty short drive day we arrived in Munich just in time to catch the Aussies in the world cup.

I’m not sure if you all remember (or if I mentioned it) that last time I was in Munich it was raining and freezing cold and I spent most of my time doing a walking tour then sitting in the Hopfbrau House drinking and eating. Well my second time around nothing much else changed. I was promised that Munich really is beautiful in the summer and it doesn’t usually rain this time of year. Turns out it only rains when I am there (so hopefully this pattern changes during Oktoberfest – otherwise Im really sorry to everyone else).

Our first night in Munich was a Saturday so we decided to hit the town for a bit of a night out and check out the nightlife. After a couple of drinks at the hostel bar while watching the world cup and basically trying to psych ourselves up for walking in the rain we headed into the city centre to the Hopfbrau House where we were going to meet the Californian girls and their German friend that they were staying with. We couldnt find them in the crowd so we decided to snag a table as soon as we found one and get ourselves some traditional german food and drink. Caroline ordered a Pork Knuckle while I decided to get a pretzel. Not nearly as exciting but definitely the cheaper option (more money for beer!). Caroline even tried a beer – I’ll admit it was a shandy but still thats a big deal for my lovely Caroline as beer isn’t her drink of choice. After about 10 minutes four men in Leiderhosen come up and ask us if they can sit with us because they are in the band and on their break so they need to eat. So while we were drinking our German beer and eating our German food we were sitting next to four German men who were wearing traditional costumes so we snagged a few photos!

After awhile the girls somehow found us and we headed over to their table to have a drink with their mates. It was fun being around German people except it was a bit hard to hear and to talk because of all the noise. After the Hopfbrau started winding down (its illegal for them to be open after 12am) we headed to a tiny little bar around the corner. It was a cute place and definitely somewhere the trendy people hang out because when we walked in I swear nearly everyone in there could have been models. Needless to say we felt extremely under dressed but its ok because you can get away with it when your a tourist! After a drink there me and Caroline decided to call it a night so we headed home and left the girls to it. Luckily we left when we did because apparently they were out til 5am at a nightclub and I don’t think I could have handled that!

The next day I was lucky enough to get a phone call from home so I spent the morning chatting away and catching up on emails and basically just lazing about because I could. Caroline and I had decided to go on a ‘free’ walking tour around Munich to get our bearings. When I say ‘free’ I mean you just have to tip them how much you think it was worth (which works well for a cheap backpacker). It was probably one of the best guided tours I’ve had. I’m not sure if he was really good because he knew he had to be paid depending on his performance but he certainly earnt his tips. He was really captivating and spoke passionately and was really informative without being over the top. I learnt more about Germany history from him in three and a half hours then I had during my whole visit to Germany. We visited the Glockenspeil (which is the clock tower in the city centre that has a little show on the hour), the beer hall pusch (where Hitler and his soliders marched after he commited treason), the Hopfbrau House hall where he commited treason and the beer gardens (learning much about the beer which is definately a need to know in bavaria). We also learnt the difference between the Bavarian Germans and the rest of the country which was interesting because as I had not visited Berlin the differences were pretty obvious.

After the walking tour me and Caroline tried to find a little cafe or pub to visit but it was hard as everything was closed because it was Sunday. We ended up grabbing a pizza from a nearby cafe, heading back to the hostel and having a lazy arvo watching the Kiwis play in the world cup. As we were pretty tired and it was raining (for a change) we thought we would have a quick nanna nap then see what the girls were doing. Three hours later I wake up, groggy as hell but still tired. We thought we would try and be social by hitting the bar but one coke later we were back in the room reading our books and watching movies on Caro’s ipod. Not the most pumping day but pretty much a perfect way to spend a Sunday – after all they are supposed to be lazy!