Munich and Everything Else

Oh my. I'm not even entirely sure where to start, except to say that I should probably start with Thursday, since I haven't done a proper blog post since then.

Thursday I got an email from one of the guys from my program saying that there was a huge party sponsored by the university on the main campus that night. Everyone was going to meet at his flat beforehand to hang out for a little while and then walk down to the party. I didn't really want to go to the party, because they really aren't my sort of thing, but I did want to go hang out at Mitran's place. I wanted to get to know some of the people that were going to be going with me to Munich, as I had only met most of them once or twice. Anyway, long story short, I got to Mitran's flat, everyone had a great time, and they convinced me to go with them to the party.

Again, I am not much of a party person, but I guess it was fun. They had the party both inside and outside of a big building on campus (I think it was the Mensa). Mostly it was just frustrating because there were too many people, it was too warm, and I kept losing the group of people that I was with. I ended up standing around a lot going "hmm....I wonder where in this crowd of 600 people they could be?"

Eventually though, I met up with everyone else again and we had a pretty good time. There was one point when Frank and I were trying to catch up with everyone else, so we were talking to each other about the best way to navigate through the crowd. Apparently, one of the German guys heard us speaking English and wanted to know where we were from. Of course, there were too many people around to have a proper conversation, but it was still funny.

Anyway, at some point I got bored and decided that I needed to go home, since I had to work the next day. Frank was really nice and walked me back to the MPI. I would like to note that there is no real concept of a "work week" here, in which all you really do is go to work and go to bed early so that you can go to work the next day. If they want to have a party on a Tuesday night and stay out until 3AM, then that is what they are going to do. Or maybe that is just the college students (who may or may not be on holiday right now, I'm not sure).

Friday I left work early so that I could figure out how to get to the Bahnhof. That was actually quite an ordeal. I was going to just walk, but it was so hot that I really didn't want to. So I decided to test out the bus system. Unfortunately, I didn't know that the buses don't really work like they do at home. The buses don't run every 10 or 15 minutes or so. They run maybe once or twice an hour (i.e. at 3:25 and then again at 3:55, or something like that). I was starting to panic because I asked one of the ladies when the bus was supposed to come, and she said 3:25. Then I asked her how long it was supposed to take to get to the Bahnhof and she said 20-25 minutes. Well, I was supposed to meet everyone at 3:55 because our train was leaving at 4:00. If the bus was late or something happened, I wasn't going to make it in time to catch the train, and I had no way of getting into contact with anyone in my group. And unfortuately, by that point there wasn't time to walk to the station, as I was more than a half hour away by foot. So, it was a rather tense bus ride, but I made it on time and met up with everyone. Everyone, by the way, is defined as Ginni, Jim, Andrew, Kyle, Mitran, and Jamie.

The train ride was nice, but it took longer than expected because we got caught in some bad weather and then had to switch tracks. So, our three and a half hour train ride turned into five hours. Oh well. We all got to Munich in the end, and found our hostel without too much trouble. We had booked a big room with three sets of bunk beds in it (for the six of us). Mitran was also there, but he was staying with some friends living in Munich and we didn't see him much during the weekend. The room was pretty nice, and relatively cheap (15 Euros/night/person), but it was a bit of a trial to share one bathroom among six people. ::Laugh::. Also, we had to pay for our towels. Which was odd. So, once we got settled we went out to dinner at this little cafe, which had a great atmosphere but only mediocre food. Then we went back to the room and crashed.

Saturday (the fourth!) was a ridiculous amount of fun. We started out by going to the city center, called Marienplatz, to see the Glockenspiel. Jim, who requested that we go to see it, was a bit disappointed, I think. It isn't very high tech.

Then we just wandered around for a while and took pictures of all of the crazy buildings and such. For instance, buildings like this:

Jim and I, the only two Americans in the group, were super excited when we found a fruit stand

that was selling big hunks of watermelon. We bought one and shared it, because of course, there is nothing more American than eating watermelon on the fourth of July! Or at least, something like that... Anyway, it was fabulous!

Eventually we wandered over to the Deutsches Museum, which is this HUGE science and technology museum. We spent three or four hours in there, and still only saw maybe 5 or 6 exhibits, and only made it up to the 2nd of 7 floors. It was NUTS. My favorite exhibits were the musical instrument exhibit and the chemistry exhibit. The chemistry exhibit was interactive! How cool is that??? Most of the guys (because they are all physics majors) were having fits over the particle physics exhibits. It was really funny to watch Jim, Andrew and Jamie "oooh" and "ahh" over stuff.

After that we went and had dinner at a different little cafe and decided to strike out towards a popular place called the Hofbrauhaus for dessert. We got hopelessly lost, and ended up wandering around for at least an hour and half before we finally found it. It was quite fun. We all had a great time there. At one point Jim started singing the national anthem. All of the Canadians joined in too, which I thought was really confusing but still neat (Ginni, Kyle, and Andrew are all Canadian. Jamie is from Britian. He just sort of sat there, completely clueless, until we finished, and then he shouted "God Save the Queen!"). By the way, we all pick on each other relentlessly about our nationalities. It is really quite a lot of fun. Jim and I harass Jamie to

death about being "a snobby Brit" and of course, he teases us all the time about being "mannerless Americans."

And here are a few pictures of everyone:

From left to right, it is Ginni, Jamie, Jim, and Kyle. Here's another one, where Jim is actually looking at the camera and you can see Andrew too.

After dessert, a few of people went out to a club and the rest went back to the hostel. I went to the hostel, as I was tired and in no mood to do anymore partying. Once in a week is enough for me, thank you.

Sunday we weren't really sure what we were going to do. While we were at the train station saying goodbye to Kyle (who wanted to get back to Gottingen early), it started raining. Which was sort of gross. But we waited for a bit and the rain stopped, so we ended up going to this place called the Englische Gartens. Essentially, it is a huge park that has a place in the middle where you can buy food. I ended up sharing this delicious pancake/waffle/french toast-like thing with Ginni. It had fresh strawberries on it and it was wonderful! We spent the rest of the afternoon in the park, sometimes walking around, sometimes just laying in the grass or on a park bench and enjoying the weather (which had very much improved and had turned into a warm, breezy, beautiful day).

We got lost while we were leaving the park and missed the train that we were originally going to take back home. At first we thought that the only other train was leaving at 8 PM and arriving at 3AM, but Jim managed to find another train that was leaving at six and getting in at around ten. No, I can't really explain why there is such a vast difference in the length of time to get back to Gottingen. I think that it is very odd. But anyway, Jamie, Ginni and I took the 6PM train to get home. Andrew and Jim were staying in Munich because they were leaving to go spend a few days hiking in the mountains. They are supposed to meet everyone at Heidelberg this weekend.

And so, that was my trip. It was excellent, and I loved every minute of it. I can't wait for Heidelberg this weekend with all of these folks!