So let me paint you a picture... after a hard day of traveling you get to your cute little hostel, and curl up in your comfy (ok, well not very comfy) bed, drift off to pleasant sleep dreaming about fairytale castles and delicious german sausage, when your eyes snap open to the sound of 4 incredibly annoying roommate girls bustling around the room. You look at the clock... 6am. WHAT ARE THEY DOING? Forget that there is a lovely large bathroom, complete with showers, sinks, mirrors and outlets 2 doors down from us and forget that there are 2 people sleeping in this room. Nope, these girls were pulling out their giant suitcases and putting on makeup, repacking their bags, all at the lovely hour of 6am. Good start.

We finally pulled our tired selves out of bed around 8:30, to an empty room *sigh. We enjoyed the great free breakfast downstairs, which included cheese, meat, and bread (surprise!), and cereal and pre-packaged fruit. We wanted to do a free walking tour of Munich, the same company as the one we did in Amsterdam, and we were met at the front desk by an extremely excited, talkative female tour guide who quickly led us through the city to Marienplatz, where the tour began. The tour began with looking at the giant Glockenspiel, the 2nd over-rated tourist attraction in all of Europe, we were told. And we were not let down. The clock goes off 3 times a day and consists of out-of-tune bells, and little figures moving in a circle. So the tour continued on, after the guides did their rendition of the Cooper's dance- very funny, and we saw all the sights of Munich. What was really neat was hearing about the rise of the Nazi party in Munich and seeing the memorials, which are very hidden in the city with no plaques, so most people don't know they are there. During the tour we had lunch at a beer garden which was full of locals on their lunch break drinking liter beers (not sure that's a great idea). But we tried our hand at the local cuisine and order some sort of sausage on bread with sweet mustard. It was delicious!

After the tour we returned to one of the places we saw, St. Paul's Church, which is the oldest church in Munich. We climbed the 300 steps to the bell tower (feel the burn!) and was up there when the bells went off and got to watch the glock go off again (not much better the second time). We headed down and, after a little shopping, found a place to eat, the Augustiner. We sat down after asking the waitress if she spoke English and seeing the absolutely terrified look on her face and ordered off a menu that we didn't really understand. What we got was a pile of meat on a pile of potatoes. Yum. Actually there were 3 kinds of sausages which were all really good.

Next we went to the famous Hofbrauhaus, where we were instantly flagged down to sit with some people that we on our tour earlier. So we sat and listened to the great Bavarian music, and drank delicious German beer, and ate the biggest pretzel I have ever seen. The people were sat with were very entertaining- a med student from Pennsylvania, a guy from Munich, a German father who kept falling asleep, his son who knew only enough English to comment on our looks and tell us he loved us, and an arrogant guy from Oxford who claims he once punched Price William in the face (right...). We had to walk back in the pouring rain which we didn't expect because it was sunny all day, so we didn't bring an umbrella, of course.

I think I like Germany (minus the rain).

-Tiff