Deutscheland, YAAA!

Hey everyone! Another update from the train. As we left Venice we stopped at a (very touristy) restaurant near the train station and made a few new friends. Don’t blame us, we just had a little bit of time and didn’t want to walk around with our packs anymore. Plus the majority of Venice seemed to be more of an imitation of former authenticity. The first friend was a nice man outside who promised us the difference in their food was all of their homemade pastas. Right after being seated I walked near the restrooms where you could see into the kitchen - dozens of bags of Barilla. YUM! Our second friend, a creepy old American woman seated near us, overheard me being me and telling Hallie she could have anything she wanted off the menu since she was my gal and she gets only the best on her birthday. Well, twenty minutes later, we hear a shaky and soft “Happy Birthday....” and Hallie looked up to her new friend staring at her with a giant grin on her face. She didn’t even remember me commenting or know why the lady thought it was her birthday, but a new friend nonetheless. 

An overnight train swept us from Venice to Munich in a little over eight hours. We had our own six person private car with seats that turned into beds for €8/person. Not bad! The only train friend we made was some large and imposing German man slamming our door open in the middle of the night screaming in German. After we both shot up with looks of bewilderment, he smiled and said “... I AM ZE CONDUCTA!!” That settled that. 

As we woke up and got off the train in Munich at 6am, everyone was already drinking entire liters of beer at the train station. My kind of place. After killing time in a Starbucks for a few hours we wandered a block to our hotel and checked to see if we could leave our bags when we were pleasantly surprised by the man saying we could check in at 9 am. Nap time. 

Wandering through the streets after the nap took us by numerous pretzel shops, bierhalles, the Glockenspiel, a street full of about 40 German meat markets, and other typical Bavarian delights such as plump mustached men wearing forest green hats with feathers and matching suspenders and pantses probably named Udër. You could very well say he was an Udër man. 

Meat as far as the eye could see

Glockenspiel

Ein pretzel, ya?

We stopped for dinner and some beers at the famous Hofbräuhaus where they had a German Polka/Folka band jamming away to the patrons seated in the picnic table style dining hall. After a few liters of beer, a platter of sausages and kraut, some onion soup and a few pretzels, we went across the street for dinner number two. This time more beer with more meat and some type of potato ball. Amazing. Breakfast the next day? You guessed it. Beer, meat, kraut, potatoes, and pretzels. 

Hofbräuhaus  - Hitler held first Nazi meetings here

Yaaaaa

Liter by liter

Beers for the band

Dinner #2

Breakfast

Typical German breakfast ya

The train ride to Cologne was filled with plenty of little dutch-like towns packed with little houses with steep roofs. Once we dropped our baggage off at a hotel, we found a dinner spot near us that was jammed packed with locals and served nothing but enormous schnitzel (hammered and battered pork or veal) with pots of gravy... and beer. 

Massive schnitzel yaaa

The only problem here, along with every place in Germany so far, is their lack of acceptance of credit cards. Everyone seems nearly insulted and/or disgusted when you try to pay with any form of electronic payment. After the bill came and they didn’t take cards I knew I had nearly enough to pay in cash, but not quite. So I strolled the frigid streets nearby to find three ATMs - two that didn’t take VISA and one that was out of order. After I returned we scrounged up every coin and bill we could find and somehow got within 5 cents of the bill. Crisis averted. At this point, we really could have used Denny’s money breeding trick.

Cologne was far too cold last night and this morning for snaps. Sorry. We will make sure to do a better job at bundling up in Amsterdam to not let anyone down.