Oh Munchen.
We began our tour of Munich on the outskirts at the Olympic Stadium by Herzog and DeMeuron. It looks like an alien spacecraft fell out of the space. It was fun to walk around but there really wasn't much there beyond the skin. After that we stopped by the O2 village, which is student housing at the University of Munich. Apparently Munich has a huge housing problem for students because it's a relatively expensive city to live in...especially close to the university. The university's response to this problem was to create movable 8'x8'x8' cubes (it's acutally about 8'-8") that serve as "pods" for one student. It was an interesting solution to design problem about conserving space. We manage to get a tour of one. After that we got lunch at on campus student bar...great pizza...and had a discussion of what it would be like to live in a cube. Would we be purist and stick to the cube idea to a tee? We thought it would be necessary to eat only sugar cubes and bouillon cubes while wearing cube shoes and hats. There was a a bit of an argument on how to consume cubic beverages. But we finally came to the decision that one would simply freeze the drink into juice cubes or ice cubes or beer cubes and let them melt in a cubic glass. After that we visited another Herzog and DeMeuron building building--the Goetz Museum. It had some rather experimental video installations...a little over my head. I spent my time figuring out the section of the building.
After that we checked into our hostel...lots of very loud Germans and it was above an even louder discotheque that looked like a bowling alley. Apparently things got a little out of hand there and there were a number of loud and somehow drunk 14 year olds that got in an epic fight involving beer bottles. I missed it as I was hanging out at a nearby biergarten...thank god.
The next morning we visited the Olympic park to view the other Olympic stadium. We climbed to the top of one of the hills and got the best view of the city. It was beautiful. We walked around the stadium and park for a while and then stopped by the BMW museum and took motorcycle gang pictures outside. After that we met up with a number of people from Riva (Nick!) and then joined Heiner for a verrryy fast walking tour through the Marienplatz area of Munich. That night we went to Hofbrauhaus, just to say we did, and I had my first real German liter of beer. I was verrryy full afterwards. After that we went to the biergarten from the night before and hung out and talked for a while.
The next morning we visited three museums all within the same general vicinity. My favorite was the modern museum simply because it had the best Alessi teapot collection ever. I think I've decided to collect teapots when I have money (when I'm sixty?). That night we went back to the Marienplatz area and visited Augustiner, a different biergarten that was adjacent to the Hofbrauhuas. We walked around the area for a few hours after that just to enjoy the city.
On our last full day we visited the Herz-Jesu-Kirche, the Architecture House, and another church that had side by side Lutheran and Catholic chapels. It was rainy and freezing that day and honestly not very enjoyable. The Riva people left and I think the combination of that, the weather, and the last two weeks just all came together and I was just exhausated. I packed when I got home and literally just crashed. Today we arrived in Bregenz (Austria!) and I finally took a real two hour nap and had my first non-push button shower in a week. Believe me, I felt much better.
Also, I apologize for my lack of pictures. I have yet to find a stable wifi connection here that I can use to offload pictures from my laptop. I've even taken to copy and pasting emails into Word when I get them and typing up my responses there before cut and pasting them into the actual reply. I'm even writing this post in Word right now in the hopes that I can find real internetz sometime soon! I'm on the hunt though and hopefully I will find them soon. Otherwise, expect to be bombarded with pictures when I get back.
In closing, things I miss from home:
-being able to understand what is going on more than 5% of the time
-ice cubes
-free water
-internetzzzz
So long...farewell...Auf Wiedersen...Goodbyyeeeeee
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