03/07/09 - Munich Day 1

We took the night train from Venice to Munich. I barely slept because it was so incredibly hot in our compartment. It must have been 100 degrees, so I ended up out in the corridor for several hours. I don't know how anyone else could stand it.

At 6:30 AM, we arrived in Munich and headed for The Tent. It's exactly what it sounds like: a tent. A giant tent. Two giant tents, in fact, that apparently hold 250 people between them. The staff are all really nice here and speak English.

A lot of people in Munich seem to speak English, actually, though several have assumed that I am German.

After checking in and picking out bunks and a locker, we got on the tram to Schloss Nymphenburg, only a few stops away. It is a large palace in the middle of Munich, built by Ludwig I and modeled after Versailles.

It's definitely not Versailles, but the gardens make a huge effort. It's like a park, complete with people jogging down the paths. There were some older baby ducks following their mom in a pond and another duck came and starting chasing them around. It was pretty funny.


The best part of the Schloss was the Gallery of Beauties. Ludwig was obsessed with feminine beauty and had various portraits painted of women he liked. Allen thought they were "alright" except for the one that looked like a man. That one wasn't alright.


Our next destination was the Deutches Museum. We stayed there until it closed at five o'clock, so probably around four hours. There was so much to see there, and we didn't even see it all. There were six floors packed with educational exhibits about everything from the history of boats to computer science.

Highlights include the recreation of an alchemy lab and a cave...which I don't recall the name of, and the cross sections of ships. Allen liked the U-1 submarine--the original!

At around two, we noticed it getting a bit stormy outside. It began pouring down rain and continued to thunder and lightning for a good two hours. It was still raining by the time we left the museum, and we still hadn't taken showers since riding the train, so we headed back to The Tent. For dinner we went to a grocery store and got sandwich fixings and some Ritter Sport chocolates. Allen wanted me to mention that I pulled out his first white hair (he insisted I pull it out so he could look at it). We did laundry in an actual washer and dryer for the first time since arriving. It's all quite exciting.