"Do not fear the sausage!"

An Egyptian, a Russian, and three Americans arrive in Munich...beginning to a bad joke or an awesome weekend? Clearly it's the latter (proof is in the pictures on facebook).

This trip was my first time driving in a foreign country (well, I'd driven in Puerto Rico before, but that's not really a foreign country so it doesn't count). A smarter traveler might have done some cursory research on how roadsigns or road rules might be different than in the States, but I am not that person. Just getting out of Vienna was an adventure, as I had no idea how to get out of the small outer ring road to the main one. Anyway, we got on the autobahn, and boy do people drive fast on that thing. I was still skittish since I hadn't driven in 2 months, was driving in a foreign country, and was feeling strongly I didn't want a speeding ticket. This was before I realized there are large sections of the highway that have no upper speed limit. For real.

We got to Munich that evening, and trying to drive around a foreign city with only printed directions to guide your way is quite stressful. Zach did an excellent job, though. By a small miracle, we managed to find our hostel, park, and check in. Our room was fabulous - 6 very comfortable beds, clean sheets, a bathroom, etc. The hostel itself was a run-down hotel that was right by a metro station and just a 10 minute walk from Marienplatz. Some people went out that evening, but Nikita and I are old and need our beauty rest, so we went to bed early.

The next morning, we got up early so that we could wander around Marienplatz before a free city tour. After grabbing breakfast, we found Viktualienmarkt, which is Munich's major open air market. There was lots of food and cute arts and crafts related to Easter. The minute we stepped into the market, I proclaimed to the group that all I wanted to do was eat all day long. So we sat down in the beer garden to partake in what we'd been seeing locals do since 9am, which is drink beer and eat pretzels. Yes, 9am. Well, we wanted to blend in, so naturally we had second breakfast at 10am, consisting of aforementioned beer and pretzel. I managed to get through a fifth of my 0.5 liter beer before declaring defeat (in my defense, I didn't like the beer I ordered).

While we were drinking our beers, eating pretzels, and generally looking like very happy tourists, an older man with broken teeth in a green jacket wandered over to our table from his adjacent table, where he had been sitting with his wife. He proceeded to introduce himself as a Bavarian named Max, told some really bad jokes, and then offered us snuff. Some of us tried it, and he was completely thrilled by this, so he sat down with us and started yodeling: tra-la-la-la-ooooo. He wandered back to his table, but we toasted him a couple of times, and he yodeled at us when he departed.

We went back to Marienplatz for a fabulous free tour by Sandsman's. Our tour guides were from Scotland and England - their accents were lovely, and they were both quite charming and entertaining. We began with seeing the huge clock in Marienplatz do its thing at 11am, which was less impressive than I'd hoped, but still entertaining because it was so charmingly lame. After that we made our way to Munich Frauenkirche, which is one of the few pre-WWII buildings in Munich still standing. Allied forces apparently used it to orient themselves: "Ah, yes, this is Munich - commence bombing!" Anyway, there's a footprint in this church that is supposedly where the devil stomped. See, legend has it that the only reason the church was completed in such a short amount of time (20 years - fast for that time period) was that the devil helped out, under the impression it would turn out dark and unpleasant. When it turned out to be full of light, he lost it, and retaliated with...a footprint. Watch out for that devil - he may make shoeprints in your house too if you upset him.

It was at this stop that we also learned that prior to the bombings of the city, officials knew it was likely the place would be bombed, so they commissioned artists and photographers to capture the look of the city. That way, when they rebuilt it, they were able to recreate many of the buildings and retain the Old World small city feel. After another general history lesson, we made our way to Viscardigasse, or Dodger's alley. Just around the corner is the spot where a plaque listed the names of the "20 Nazis" who were killed in the Beer Hall Putsch. During Hitler's rule, townspeople were required to salute the plaque as they passed. If they didn't, they were beaten or thrown into concentration camps. So people started going through "Dodger's Alley" to avoid having to salute the memorial on their way to Odeonsplatz. Unfortunately, the Gestapo started recording people's names and the number of times they went through that alley so that they could punish people who were obviously avoiding saluting the memorial.

We walked around some more, past the Residenz, down the ridiculously expensive street of stores, and to the opera building. There, we learned the origin of Oktoberfest. We arrived at Hofbrauhaus and learned how disgusting the place was back in the day - I will never look at walking sticks the same way again. We stopped for a beer and pretzel at another beer hall, but I think that 10am beer ruined me for the rest of the trip. After seeing some more sights, we climbed up the top of St. Peter's Church, which offered a fabulous view of the city. We were hungry after all of this walking, so we headed back to Hofbrauhaus and its live music and ever-flowing beer.

I ordered Viennese sausage. Now, our waiter was very kind and made sure to tell me to take the skin ("like a banana") off of the sausage prior to eating it. However, this is no easy feat, and I ended up having to use my hands to peel the darn thing. Next to us, there was a table of guys in lederhosen, on their 3rd liter of beer, several of whom appeared to be laughing at me. Yes, I said lederhosen. Did you know that people in Munich wear lederhosen and traditional dress completely unironically? Some men's hats have the small pen-like thing released so that the feathers poof, and others didn't. I asked Val if she thought there was a reason behind this, and her reply was: "Yes: drunk." In general, if you ever wondered why something happened in Munich, it was due to one of two reasons: 1) drunk or 2) beer. Anyway, the upshot is that one of the lederhosen-clad lads came over to try to explain, again, to me how to peel the skin. Then our waiter returned and began an even lengthier discussion of peeling sausages, the tragic story of his foreign friend who was so flummoxed by it that he was fearful of the dish, and he ended with the proclamation: "Do not fear the sausage!"

We then walked off the heavy meal at Englischgarten, which is this beautiful park in the middle of Munich. There were a lot of people taking advantage of the warm sunny spring day. After a brief shopping stop, where I bought the world's tackiest tourist umbrella of Munich, we walked to the fountain in Marienplatz to meet some friends of Nikita's who are living in Munich. It was only 8pm, and there were already black-and-white lederhosen clad drunks trying to fish beer bottles out of the fountain with fishing poles. OK, there are so many questions here: why is the beer in the fountain? why are they wearing those outfits? why do they have fishing poles with them? Answer, per Val's Maxim: drunk. Then, some random guy pushed another guy into the fountain, which was a bad idea since the now soaking victim took great offense to that and proceeded to chase the other guy down and threaten to beat him with a beer bottle. He settled instead for kicking him. Naturally, they both complained to the police.

We had a lovely dinner, I made new friends, and then we walked around Munich at night, by the river. It was a perfect ending to a lovely day. I slept like a baby that evening.

The next day, we had a fortifying breakfast before a 6 hour tour of the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial. It was the most important concentration camp during WWII because it was the first camp and the testing ground - everything that ever was implemented at the others began in Dachau. It is also largely intact, whereas many camps were blown up after the people within were liberated. Today, Dachau is an extremely important research center for those studying the Holocaust. We had a very knowledgeable tour guide named Marcin, who did a fabulous job of giving historical context, explaining the different structures, daily life, and supplementing the tour with knowledge he gained from reading memoirs and seeing the memorial's archives. Of course, no experience is complete without a drunk Neo-Nazi following your group around, but Marcin swiftly warned the memorial officials about him and got him removed. I spent most of the tour teetering between hunger and nausea - hunger because we hadn't eaten anything since 10am and the tour went until 5:30pm, nausea because of some of the things we learned (in particular, one very gruesome act of torture that Marcin saw photos of and felt it necessary to explain to us..I'm glad he chose not to talk about the horrific medical experiments that went on at Dachau).

I could talk about a lot of things from that tour: I could tell you about the clothes and shoes we saw, the registration room, the torture room, the torture cells, the barracks, the crematoria, or the only remaining fully intact gas chamber; I could tell you about what we learned about the impacts this camp had on its victims and the people in Dachau. But it would be no different than what you've read, assuming you've read anything about concentration camps. To actually physically be there to see for yourself how large the camp and its structures were and what everything looked like is a completely different matter, and I would encourage anyone with the chance to visit Dachau to do so. In the meantime, if you're still curious, ask me about it and we can talk.

It was a heavy day, but when we returned to Munich, we had to depart very soon to return to Vienna. As we were walking back to our hostel, who did we bump into but...Bavarian Max, the yodeler! And he yodeled at us as we passed him! It was brilliant. On the drive back, I'd become wise to the fact that you can go super fast on the autobahn with little consequences, and we totally zoomed back home.