Exploring Munich

Jenna and me with our "mas" beers!

Guten tag! First of all, let me say that I love Munich! It feels very different than Berlin but I'm loving the culture so far. We have had some down time the last few days which has been a really great way to explore the city. Friday we had a group dinner at Augustiner. The brewery was a big hall with lots of long tables, kind of like what I picture Oktoberfest to be like. The place was packed and the mood felt so lively. This is what I picture when I think of German beer culture. I felt like I HAD to order a helles beer "mas" which came in a one liter beer stein! So much beer but I felt like it was worth it. :] Dinner was good, we had soup, pork and spaetzle, and apple strudel for dessert. Afterwards, a few of us went to a Mexican restaurant called La Cucaracha and enjoyed each others' company. 

Coopers' Dancers!

Saturday morning we had a walking tour of Munich. I was really happy to see the city, but it was so cold... unfortunately I was a little preoccupied with how freezing I was for a portion of the tour! We went to one church that was very beautiful! The tour guide told us a story about how the builder made a deal with the devil to not put windows in the church. However the builder did put windows in the church, but positioned the pillars in a certain way so that when the devil stood in a certain spot, it looks like there aren't any windows. I thought that was pretty interesting. We also went to the Hofbrauhaus, a famous brewery in Munich. There is a room near the entrance with a bunch of lockers for regulars to keep their beer steins in. Our tour guide told us that the lockers are often passed down through generations, and it takes a regular 10 to 15 years to get one of the lockers. I also learned that every seven years, a group of men perform the Coopers' Dance in the street. And it happened to be that day! There were a lot of people so it was kind of hard to see, but it was still great! 

On a BMW motorcycle!

After the tour, we all had lunch at the Hofbrauhaus. It was good, but definitely felt touristy! Jenna and I then grabbed coffee and took the U bahn to BMW World. We felt like we were on the Amazing Race trying to figure out the route to get there! We eventually made it and met up with some of the others who left a little before we did. It was pretty cool; it felt very modern. We took some pictures on the motorcycles! We then walked around the Olympic Stadium which was awesome. The architecture was really interesting and I bet it was considered very, very modern when it was built in 1972. 

Sunday was a free day so I got to sleep in a bit which was nice. Jenna and I got breakfast at Starbucks (not very German but oh well!) and then headed to the Dachau concentration camp memorial. This was the first Nazi concentration camp that served as a model for the subsequent camps. It was a weird feeling stepping through the gate onto the camp. It is definitely a different experience to see something like this as opposed to just reading about it. The large open area was where they did roll call, in which the prisoners were forced to stand motionless for hours. The memorial had reconstructed two of the 34 barracks; it was interesting (and sad) to see where the prisoners slept. The museum within the memorial told a lot about the history of the camp. Walking through the museum was like taking the path that incoming prisoners took when they entered the camp; it went through the areas where the prisoners were first admitted and where they were showered and shaved. The camp was created to house political prisoners, though other groups of people were taken there as well, including not only Jews but "asocials," Jehovas Witnesses, and homosexuals. Each group was marked by a certain color of fabric on their clothing. One thing I learned that really struck me was the medical experimentations that were performed on the prisoners, such as testing to see how the body reacts to extreme, sudden changes in pressure or what hypothermia does to the body. Many died from these experiments. It is really scary to think about how the Nazi ideology was developed and how that extreme level of dehumanization was legitimated and justified. I think it is important that we learn about this in order to make sure it doesn't happen again. We walked through the prison which was very eery and haunting. There were far fewer signs of information in this building which made it seem very real. I am very glad that we visited this memorial. While it felt a little touristy, I felt that I learned a lot about the history of the camp and of Nazi Germany. I would be interested in visiting more of these camps around Germany. 

Kellerbier

Today we first took a tour of the BMW factory. I was a bit skeptical about this tour since I have never been that interested in cars, but it was actually really great. It was very interesting to see how cars are made. Much of the process is done with robots which were so fun to watch. It's amazing what people can do with technology. I think my favorite part was watching the robots paint the cars. Afterwards, we drove to Aying to visit Ayinger Brewery. We got there a little early so we had lunch at a cute little restaurant near the brewery. I had Liebhard's Kellerbier, which was an unfiltered helles. I had never tried anything quite like it before but I really enjoyed it. It was a bit sour and not very overpowering. While it felt a bit heavier in my mouth than a normal helles (probably because of all the yeast) it still felt pretty light. 

Bottling!

We then made our way to Ayinger where we began our tour. I learned that Ayinger is a family owned business that began over 100 years ago.  We got to see the bottling room near the beginning of the tour; it was like a smaller version of the big plants but we actually got to go on the floor and see it rather than looking at it from above. We then went into another room where he talked about the water that they use for brewing. The water is really soft; he let us try it and it was so delicious! Most of the water I have had in Germany has been extremely hard and not very good which definitely makes me appreciate the water back home. Our tour guide walked us through all of the usual steps of the beer making process and then we got to try some beer! We tasted beer straight out of the fermentor. The beer was in its conditioning period so it was young beer. They don't bottle that beer unfiltered so that was probably the only time I would get to try it like that! We then went upstairs to a tasting room to try a couple varieties. I first tried the Ur-Weisse which was pretty fruity. I realized today that I don't really see wheat beers like this back home, though these banana-y beers seem to be all over Germany. I then tried the Jahrhundert which was the filtered version of the one from before. He served it alongside some house made bread, made from the spent grades from brewing. Yum! Our guide was nice enough to give us all bottle openers and a bunch of us bought six packs of a variety of their beers. It was a really great tour. 

Unfiltered beer.

Ur-Weisse!