Hallo Deutschland!
Day 12
Most of this time is spent on the train towards Munich. I remember that train is filled with drunk people. This is probably the pre-drink party before Oktoberfest.
Day 13
At Munich, we signed up with this walking tour called the Sandeman Tour. These tours are awesome because they are free and are given by people who can speak English. Most of these tour guides are actually from North America, whom they moved to Europe to study history or for work. As a part time job, they give local tours to tourists and only ask for tips at the end if their service is great.
With Sandeman, we learned about the general history of Munich and the Night of the Broken Glass.
This is the model of current Munich.
According to our walking tour guide, most of Munich buildings are brand new. Due to the World War, most of the city is destroyed and therefore the entire city is pretty much re-built. During the world war, the government knew that most of the city will be destroyed, thus they ordered people to take photographs of every building for documentation purpose. If the city is ever in peace, they can use these photographs to rebuild what it looked like before the destruction.
You can see from the picture below, there is still an undetonated bomb left at the church (top right corner of the arch).
Here is a very interesting story of Munich. Before Munich was part of the great Prussian empire, it was an independent state known as Bavaria. At that time, the great Swedish Empire invaded most of Europe during the 1600s. While they invade, they ransacked cities, steal gold and women. When the people of Bavaria knew that the Swedes were going to invade their city, there was little that they can do. When the Swedes finally marched to Munich, the Swedes summoned every important person of the city to their main plaza - Marienplatz. It was pretty much customary for every city to offer gold to the Swedes in order to negotiate peace. However, Munich had no gold. The leader at that time had the brilliant idea to offer something else of significant value - liquid gold. Liquid gold was the term they used to refer what we call beer. The Swede apparently never had beer before. The first time they tried it, they loved it. Apparently, it was liquid gold that offered the City of Munich peace. Below is an image of a tower at Marienplatz.
You can't say that you've been to Munich without going to any of the beer halls! On our walking tour, we also toured around beer halls. The famous one is the Hofbrauhaus, which was the beer hall that Hitler delivered his speech before World War II.
On our tour, we were also able to learn about the ugliest church in Munich, because it is yellow in colour.
This picture below is of significance. As you can see, there are two lions: one with open mouth, and one without. They symbolize that people should voice their opinion against the government, but say nothing against the church.
At night, we were treated ourselves with a taste of tomorrow, Oktoberfest. We actually bought the traditional Oktoberfest outfits. The girls got dirndl dresses and I got myself the shirt - not the full lederhosen outfit.
