Bavaria

I just returned from a four-day trip to Munich, Germany.  I went to Munich for three reasons: 1.) to hike the Alps, 2.) to drink beer, and 3.) to buy yarn.

My trip started off a bit rocky Friday when I had trouble contacting the host I was staying with.  I had booked a room through Airbnb with a small family (a mother and her two teenagers).  I was jet-lagged and culture shocked, and I had trouble calling her to arrange to drop my bag off.  (FYI buying a local sim card in the airport was cheap and easy). I called for hours and couldn't reach her (turns out I had copied the number wrong).  My bag was awkward, and I couldn't really do any sightseeing with it.  After struggling with pulling it down the cobblestone seats in the city center, I finally decided to just show up on her doorstep.

Although I figured out the complicated metro system fairly quickly, the house was on the other end of Munich, and by the time I got there I was feeling pretty exasperated.  I channeled Ford from The Hitchiker's Guide and repeated "Don't Panic" every time I found myself in a situation I wasn't sure how to get out of.  Luckily, the host was there waiting for me.  All I wanted to do was retreat to my room and be still and quiet to process everything I had just done, but she wanted to talk and visit a bit.  We sat in her lovely garden and talked until I had to leave to meet my friends.

This is the calming view of her garden from my room:

Hugh, one of my dear friends from college in Mississippi has been living in Germany for six years, so he and his husband took the train down from near Hanover to spend the weekend in Munich.  We had planned to meet at Aumeister, a lovely and non-touristy biergarten in the north part of the English Garden.  It took me a while to get there,  especially since TWICE I got on a train that did not go far enough and stopped in the middle of the tunnel between two stops.  I sat there (twice!) and watched the conductor leave and sat alone in a hot, empty metro.  I finally figured out the right metro to take and made it to the beautiful biergarten in the Englischer Garten.  It is nestled in a green forest near a river and is relaxing and not crowded.

It was delightful to see Hugh.  He looked exactly the same, and I recognized him immediately.  He introduced me to Mario, his husband, a kind German man Hugh met in Atlanta nine years ago.  Not only is same sex marriage legal in Germany, but the law was recently changed so that the tax benefits are the same for all marriages.

Here's Hugh looking dapper on his birthday:

We caught up on the last 15 years of our lives.  They told me about their life and neighbors in the small town they live in, and I told them about life in Dubai and my family.  I drank a Helle beer that was fruity and delicious.  We decided to go downtown to get dinner.  We found a sushi place, and they educated me on some German customs, such as tipping, which I was doing wrong.  "Never leave money on the table," Mario told me.  He said the next customer would just take the money, and it turns out I was also leaving too much because waiters are salaried unlike they are in the US.

I was quickly learning that it was quite difficult to get around without German.  I had learned some basic phrases before coming, but with the jet lag and stress of culture shock, most of those phrases flew right out my head.  Of course I know that "nein" is "no," and "thank you" is "danka," but for some reason the words wouldn't come out when I needed them to.  It was pretty obvious that Germans found my lack of German rude, and I became painfully shy in social situations.  I remember learning about this in my Socio Linguistics course in grad school; there's even a name for it that I can't remember.

American Hugh has learned German so well that he could even translate the ingredients on the back of my vending machine gummy candy.  So well, in fact, that he forgot English to some extent.  Talking with Hugh was entertaining at times, like talking to someone with aphasia.  It had been so long since he had spoken English regularly that he forgot some words and use the wrong words in place of his intended words.  It was fun, like playing word association.

The next day we met at the Deutches Museum, which was interesting.  It is a technical museum that displays at things on micro levels.  I saw pumps and drills that I didn't know existed.  Especially riveting (actually it was), was the exhibit on weights and measures.

It was marvelous seeing Hugh.  He's one of those friends that you don't have to talk to or see very often to stay close.  We still finished each others sentences, and we fell into place just like we did when we were 19.  We reminisced about old teachers and friends and poems we wrote together.

After the museum we went shopping at a traditional Bavarian clothing store.  Hugh had been wanting a  janker, a traditional jacket that is often worn with liederhosen.  So he tried a few on before finding the one he wanted.  That was fun.  Then we had dinner before parting and saying our goodbyes.

The next day was Sunday, and that was my hiking tour day.  Please see this post for details about the hike.

Monday was my last day, but my flight didn't leave until 10 PM, so I had time to sightsee in the morning.  My day started with this beautiful breakfast:

This was my view while eating breakfast:

Unfortunately, the yarn store and the museums I wanted to see are closed on Mondays, and the guidebook had the timings wrong, so I walked far distances to each to discover this fact.  However, the Nueva Pinacoteca was open where I saw famous works by Picasso and Monet, among many others.  On the way to the museum I found the street sign with Hugh's family name.  He had wanted to see it while he was in Munich, but it was pretty far from where they were staying, so I don't know if he ever did.  However, fortunately, I did!

To Griffin's delight, I stumbled across a Tesla car dealership:

I saw guys surfing on the rushing river in the English Garden:

I took my last walk through Munich and saw the sights:

I finished my time by buying some candies and things at the Viktualienmarkt, and I stopped in the city center and bought pretzels and apple streudel to take back home to Woody and Griffin.

At the airport biergarten I had my last Bavarian meal of white sausages, a pretzel, mustard, and beer:

I thought this was an interesting item on the menu: tap water, roll, and one cigarette:

With my last hour I drank a can of beer in the airport lobby and chatted with Woody on FB.  I'm glad I saw Hugh and met Mario.  I'm glad I hiked the Alps.  However, I was very glad to get back to a place where I don't feel like an ass for speaking English, and I was even gladder to get back to my sweet little family.  Now I'm recovering (my quads are still sore!) and resting up for our trip to Denmark and Sweden for which we depart in just five days.  

My guided hike in the Bavarian Alps

My primary reason for going to Munich was to hike in the Alps.  Since I was traveling alone, I hired a guide, which turned out to be invaluable since it's so hard to get by without knowing German in Bavaria.

This hike was one of the highlights of my trip.  Chris Gretz, my guide, made it such and easy and enjoyable experience that it deserves its very own blog entry.

The hike was on Sunday, and I had been in the country since Friday and had found it challenging navigating the city not knowing German.  It had actually been a rather stressful trip for this reason among others.  I was looking forward to my hike on Sunday because someone else would be responsible for the navigating and planning.  As I was leaving the neighborhood of my host's house to meet my guide, I saw this rainbow, which I took as a sign that it would be a good day.

Chris met me at the metro stop near my host's house.  He made me feel comfortable right away.  We took the metro, then a bus, then a beautiful hour-long train ride through the countryside to Riederstein.  Coming from Dubai, the green open spaces, lakes, rivers, and trees were breath-taking.  I don't think I would have been able to figure out all of those connections without knowing German, so I was already feeling very grateful for hiring a guide.

On the train he told me that he had packed a picnic lunch for us.  He also explained that he loved cracking open a beer when he got to the peak, so he brought one for each of us.  Since beer was my #2 reason for coming to Munich, this was fabulous news.

He knew the mountain and the hike well.  I didn't know what to expect.  I was hoping it would be a good climb, but when Chris emailed me about it beforehand, he said it was an easy hike.  When I hear "easy hike" I picture basically open fields.  However, that misconception was banished as soon as we approached the mountain.  He warned me that we the first ten minutes would be steep hiking, and he was right.  The climbing started immediately.

At the half-way point we stopped at a lovely little restaurant.  Chris partook in his tradition of ordering a mug of buttermilk so thick there were actually chunks of butter floating in it.  He kindly offered me a sip, but I didn't think my dairy-sensitive stomach could handle it, so I declined.

Me in front of the Bavarian flag:

As we were sitting at the restaurant, he told me about a church that was built on top of a rock above where we were sitting. I couldn't really picture it, but when we left the restaurant, he pointed it out.  The church is so precariously sitting atop a jutting, oblong rock that it looks unnatural and almost magical.  It took my breath away.  It was beautiful and unexpected.  As we headed toward the peak of Riederstein mountain, that church was our next destination.

The climb was steady and challenging with good breaks of flattish trails.

We reached the church.  Come to think of it I don't even remember what the church looked like up close, but I do remember what the view from the church looked like.  It was stunning.

We left the church and hiked on through the beautiful forest.

The views started making appearances as we climbed higher:

Our next stop was the peak.  Naturally, the hike became steeper and more narrow. Often the path would diverge into two; one would be steep, and the other would be flat.   As soon as I thought, phew, a break (!), he would lead me toward the steeper of the two.  At one point we came to a path that was virtually 90 degrees.  There was another choice that was less steep; when I asked if we could take that one, he said it was no problem and that they both lead to the same place.

He frequently encouraged me to walk first so that I could set the pace.  This was especially helpful since I was wearing running shoes, and they were quite slick on the rock and uneven surfaces.  There were moments that were really challenging to me.  It was constant climbing for a while, and there were times when I wanted to sit down and give up.  However, I knew that a view and a beer awaited me at the top, so I stayed focused and headed upward as quickly as possible.

This is me trying to wipe the sweat out of my eyes near the top:

Just before the last leg I asked Chris the altitude - I don't know why I didn't ask how high we were going before the hike!  He told me it was 1448 metres.  When I told him that I didn't know what that meant in feet and would have to convert it later, he pulled out his phone and converted it for me.  It was 4,750 feet.  The highest I had hiked before that was 3,500 feet in Colorado.  He congratulated me on the new height.

We noticed as we got closer to the peak that clouds were moving in around it.  The weather started cooling a bit, but we didn't noticed at first because were sweating from the climb.  When we finally reached the top, the temperature started dropping rapidly, and clouds were forming around us.  We got there just in time to see a view of lakes and towns down below in the valleys.  It was an amazing view.  We just got about two minutes of it though, and then we were enclosed in a white room.

We sat on a log and watched the temperature drop to 11 degrees Celsius while we ate.  It got quite cold, and Chris jokingly said that when the temperature stopped dropping, we would leave.  I told him that would depend on how low it got!  Fortunately, it only dropped to 11, which he kindly converted to Farenheit for me, which was about 52 degrees.  That made me feel warmer because, as I told him, 50 degrees is running shorts weather for me.

Also, I didn't notice the cold much because Chris pulled out a fantastic assortment of food, so I was well-distracted.  There were Bavarian pretzels, cheese and cheese spread for the pretzels, Bavarian sausages, cherries, strawberries, and tomatoes. There were also the beers.  I drank an Oktoberfest beer that was delicious.  For dessert Chris pulled out organic creamy milk chocolate that we snacked on on the way down.

We finished our lunch, and the temperature stayed at 11, so we hiked back down.  I was glad he had brought walking sticks for me to use.   They helped because there were times that it was quite steep both up and down the mountain.  On the way down we took a different route, so we saw some new things.

(When I showed Griffin this picture, he asked me what the snail was thinking.)

When we got to the train station, we had to wait a half an hour for the train to leave, which was just enough time for Chris to buy us a couple of beers for the train ride back.  That was a really nice touch.  In Dubai and even in the US you can't drink out of open bottles in public, so it felt a little rebellious, but it made the train ride go by faster and was a nice end to an exhausting day of steady hiking.

I think everyone who likes hiking should fly to Munich just to hike with Chris.  It's not often in life when someone else takes care of all of the details.  It was so luxurious, too, with the thoughtful touches like beers and chocolate.  The easy conversation made it feel like spending a day with an old friend.  This is perfect for a woman traveling alone (especially if you don't speak German), but Chris also offers this tour in small groups for anyone who wants an expert mountain guide in the Bavarian Alps.  You can email him here if you're interested: mail@ui-muenchen.com or find him on tripadvisor: http://bit.ly/12xTaiE