Easter Weekend

Well, another week down and another weekend outside of Prague. Since we had a long weekend for Easter, Missy, Joel, and I decided to go to Munich and explore a bit more of Germany. It turned out to be a pretty good time. The weather was wonderful (I got to wear dresses and flip flops the whole time) and since Munich isn’t filled to the brim with things to see, we got to take out time meandering about the city.

We didn’t get in until early afternoon on Friday so we headed to Hoftgarten – a garden near the center of Munich known for the Greek temple in the middle of it. We quickly found a nice patch of grass and fell asleep to the music of a man playing the accordion while wearing lederhosen. Welcome to Germany. Then we made our way over to the English Garden. This garden is the largest public garden in Europe, bigger even than Central Park. Moreover, it has a small river running through it that, at its mouth, is filled with rapids. So we get to this park to find men actually surfing on these manmade rapids. It was bizarre but also pretty cool. We spent the afternoon roaming the park and ended up in a beer garden (biergarten). We didn’t do a whole lot the rest of the evening. We got back to our hostel around 9 and pretty much just chilled. We’re not exactly a wild bunch, if you haven’t figured that out yet.

Saturday we went the Deutsche Museum (Germany’s science museum). We spent a couple hours playing our way through the exhibitions before grabbing lunch at Subway. *Again, we decided to go for cheap rather than authentic food… over the weekend we had Subway, Burger King, McDonalds, Pizza Hut, and random gyros at a place near the hostel* We spent the second half of Saturday at the zoo. Not exactly the destination of Munich but we thought it would be fun and the weather was so nice, we wanted to do something outside. Of course, we got a little lost on the way there but made in time to see the penguins get fed so it was a worthy trip. That night was again pretty lowkey.

Sunday was Easter. Admittedly, I was a little down to be so far away from my family. It was also Sean’s birthday which made me miss him more than normal (which is saying something). BUT what better to distract you from such sucky feelings? Oh, a 2 hour plus mass held entirely in German, of course. After searching forever, we found a mass online and headed out to it in the morning. We ended up at the wrong church and had to wait over an hour for mass to begin but enjoyed it (at least for the first hour) once it began. Apparently, a lot of people dress in traditional costumes on Easter when they go to church so we also had something to look at when we were completely clueless as to what was going on in mass. We made our way to Schloss Nymphenburg afterwards- a palace built by Ludwig I as a playground for his newly born son. Modeled after Versailles, it was beautiful and absolutely huge. For the evening, we went to another beer garden where we had liters of beer and pretzels twice the size of my head. Good German experience right there. Since Sunday was also Joel’s birthday, we took him back to the hostel and bought him a few drinks at the bar. Joel’s not much of a drinker so this was a rather comical experience.

Today, we tried to do a couple more things but apparently the Monday after Easter is a holiday in Germany so nothing was open. We just walked around Marienplatz and then made our way to the bus station. All in all, though, it was a good weekend in Munich. Glad I saw the city and escaped the cranky Praguers for one more weekend. Really, German people turned out to be very nice and I loved their outfits.