Wednesday night I tried to surprise Mark with a steak dinner and pecan pie. But first, this story needs a little background. Every year on his birthday Mark's mom makes him a pecan pie to enjoy. Even though we're in Albania, I figured I had to continue the tradition. How hard could it be, right? Well... I had Mark's mom send me the recipe ahead of time and thank goodness I did because a few of the ingredients I needed were nowhere to be found in Tirana. I had to ask Mark's sister, Sarah, to bring them out with her when she visited. Good thing Mark is oblivious so when I told him the two of us were passing back and forth pecans and corn syrup for a classroom science experiment he totally believed me ๐Fast forward to the week of Mark's birthday. He was working late on Monday night so I went to three different bakeries trying to find pie crust and finally found cold dough in the refrigerator at one of the grocery stores. I took it home and started baking. The pie was an absolute mess- the middle was soupy while the edges of the crust started rising over the pan and burning. I ended up throwing the entire pie, pan and all, in the garbage. But Wednesday was a new day and I had a new plan. I was going to make individual pecan pies in our ramekin bowls. On Wednesday before baking I went to the butcher to find steak. We have a great local shop that is run by a married couple. The husband speaks English and the wife does not. When I first entered there was no one behind the counter so I called "pershendetje" but no one emerged. Instead, our favorite taxi driver, Judi, poked his head in the shop. He told me he would call the owners. He did but it ended up being the wife who arrived, not the husband. At this point another customer had entered the shop so he translated for me and I ended up with what I thought was steak... however, it was not. I cooked it up and while it turned out ok it definitely wasn't what I was expecting. The pies came out the same-- soupy in the middle with hard crunchy edges. We ended up mixing pecans in with some of the leftover fridge batter and calling it pie ๐ It's the thought that counts, right?!
During this dinner I also surprised Mark with the itinerary and location for his birthday trip.... Munich, Germany! We would be flying out tomorrow morning and spending Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday in Munich. We were both really excited. I had also made a google doc of potential activities, so the two of us sat down with our computers and got to work planning our weekend.
Thursday morning our flight left for Rome and then continued on to Munich. Because Germany is part of the EU, once we made it through Italy we were clear to travel into Germany without going through customs which meant no German passport stamp. Oh well. That's what this blog is for, right?
After arriving in Germany we headed to our hostel where we were greeted with complimentary beers. They were oh so delicious. We started chatting with three guys next to us and when they found out we were celebrating Mark's birthday they offered us a candle and a great rendition of Happy Birthday. It was a fun way to start our night.
We then walked to the famous Augustiner for dinner. We had sausages, cheese, bread and potato salad, and of course, beer. It was all absolutely delicious.
Friday we got up and enjoyed the hostel breakfast before heading to Linderhof Castle. The weather was incredibly cold and rainy so I was glad that we would be getting on and off of a bus as opposed to walking from place to place. Linderhof was incredibly ornate.
After leaving here, we took the bus to Oberammergau (say that five times fast ๐) which is a small town with very traditional looking buildings. It's famous because every 10 years the residents in the town perform The Passion of the Christ play. This tradition originated in the 1600s when Bavaria was struck with the plague. Huge numbers of people were dying and no one could stop it. In a last ditch effort, the residents made a promise to god that if he spared their lives they would pay homage to him by performing the Passion of the Christ every 10 years. Sure enough, the plague subsided and thus far, the residents have kept their promise. The next scheduled passion play runs from May-October 2020. This town is also famous because the monks here make their own liqueurs. Mark and I bought a box of six sample bottles to try on the bus. I didn't like them very much.
After exploring we got back on the bus and drove to Neuschwanstein. Here we had a traditional lunch of spaetzle and schnitzel which was really delicious.
We then started our trek up the mountain to reach the castle. We had enough time to hike past the castle to a viewing bridge which gave us an incredible peek at the waterfalls cascading down the mountainside.
The castle was massive.
There were so many nooks and crannies. The tour was incredibly interesting.
On our walk back down we stopped to view a castle in the distance that wasn't nearly as big, but still was really beautiful.
We bussed back to Munich and got out in the pouring rain. We had a warm up beer at our hostel (because why not?!) and then set out for the legendary Hofbrauhaus. To get there, we walked through Marienplatz, a lively square with music and dancing. There were so many people out and about even though it was cold and rainy.
Hofbrau was such a fun experience. The hall can seat over 1300 people. We found a spot at a long communal table next to a group of guys. They got up to leave and a lively group sat down next to us. They were on a business trip and they weren't sparing any expense. Mark and I ordered pretzels and beer (obviously!) and then had potato salad with sausages and sauerkraut (because why not, really?!)
We listened to the music and enjoyed the ambience of old men enjoying a pint donning their traditional lederhosen.
Mark and I ended up sitting next to a wall of steins. They were in little cages with individual locks on each one. While we were sitting there, an old man came over, put a key in the lock, opened the cage and inserted his stein. Then he closed it and locked it. By the time the second man did this Mark and I couldn't hold our tongues, so we inquired about it. The man explained that these steins were traditional and handed down by families from one generation to the next. These coveted stein cages were reserved for the members of Hofbrauhaus. There is currently over a five year waiting list to get one. The man then launched into the story of how he received his stein: He was from Italy and worked in the alcohol promotion and sales business. He traveled to Germany quite frequently for work so stopped in Hofbrauhaus one evening. He ended up at a table with a bunch of stein holders. He got on well with them and when he went to leave they invited him to meet them again. Since he would be back for work he agreed. He started coming to Hofbrauhaus during each work trip. Years later, one of the senior men at his table became ill and since he had no remaining family, he decided to leave his stein and cage to the foreigner who faithfully visited each time he had work in Munich. This foreigner is mighty proud of his accomplishment and touts that he is the only non German with a cage and stein. Pretty damn cool if you ask me.
We were up and out by 10am Saturday for a free walking tour. Our tour started in the main square with Jax, a tour guide from Sandemann's Tours. Here we got to see the glockenspiel with the performing automatons. First, we saw the wedding of a king and then a bavarian knight slaying an austrian knight. After, the coopers dance round and round. It is said that the dancing coopers were the ones who got rid of the plague in Munich so every 7 years they perform the traditional dance.
We then walked to the Frauenkirche, a beautiful, landmark church. No buildings in Munich can exceed its height. Legend has it that the builder of the church made a deal with the devil to help with financing. The conditions stated that the church was to have no windows. The builder got around this by erecting columns on the inside so that the the church appeared windowless from the foyer. The devil could not enter the consecrated church, but was so mad that he had been tricked that he stomped his foot again and again in the foyer, which is why, to this day, there is still a large footprint embedded there.
We continued walking and came upon a shrine to Michael Jackson. Why is it there? No one knows. Why are there constantly framed photographs and flowers for the king of pop? No one knows.
As we walked, we learned that there used to be a wall encircling the city, however, during the 17th century it was destroyed. There is a tiny part that still remains along one of the side streets.
We then saw a memorial, in the form of an eternal flame burning in a jailed tower, which symbolizes the entrapment of humanity, while paying homage to those who died at the hands of the socialist movement. Our guide shared a story about a student resistance group called the White Roses, who printed pamphlets speaking out against the Nazis. The students were eventually caught, put on trial and executed. However, unknown to the students, the distribution of their pamphlets went beyond Germany, all the way to the UK. This is significant because when UK bombers flew over Germany they dropped hundreds and hundreds of these pamphlets to help spread the word about the Nazis. None of this would have been possible if not for the bravery of the five students of the White Rose.
Munich Residenz is a palace where many Bavarian Kings have lived. Ludwig 1 was married in October and invited the entire town to his wedding to celebrate. He threw a party each year to celebrate his anniversary during October, thus creating what we now know to be Oktoberfest. The people of Munich loved him for this, and even more so because he opened the Hofbrau Haus to everyone, not just to the nobles and royalty. Outside of the palace are lion statues. If the lions mouth is open it means that you should speak out against your government if you don't agree with it. However, when you see a lion statue with a closed mouth, it means that if you have disagreements with the catholic church you should keep your mouth shut ๐
We learned about the Maypole, which is a large pole found in each city that lists all of the activities that can be found in the city. This was especially important long ago, when nomads moved from city to city, trying to find work and sell goods.
The outdoor markets in Munich have many stalls, but luckily, there is only a tax on food, not on beer. There are 6 famous German beer brewing companies- Augustiner, Hacker-Pschor, Lowenbrau, Paulaner, Spaten, Hofbrauhaus- which follow the strict law of using only 3 ingredients to brew their beers- water, barley and hops. Because of this, the beers here are pure and delicious. Last, but not least, Jax talked with us about traditional bavarian clothing. He explained that it's incredibly expensive, so much so that the tradition is for one outfit to be bought and then passed down from generation to generation. Bavarians are incredibly proud of these clothes, and therefore, wear them often, not only for special occasions, but for day to day activities as well, which makes sense because Mark and I saw a lot of them while we were out walking. After our tour we went to the viewing tower in St. Peter's Church. We had to walk up 360 steps in a narrow passage, which allowed us to reach the outer edge of the viewing deck that encircled the entire church. While the views were pretty, it was crowded, and the walk around was painfully slow. The narrow passage had us shoulder to shoulder with people who were trying to go up but also come down. It was a bit much.
After this we were pretty hungry so we wandered around in the Viktualienmarkt, an outdoor market that has over 140 stalls. We had a few samplings, including bratwurst and lederkase, a GIANT pickle and crazy ice creams from the crazy ice cream maker. I ordered a scoop of chocolate salted caramel with a taste of augustiner helles beer and Mark ordered oreo and chocolate orange with a taste of weinerwurst. Both were painfully accurate.
During our tour Jax told us about the famous English Garten surfers. He said in rain or shine, snow or sun, there will be surfers out on the dam, and sure enough, when we wandered over, we found a group of them.
After, we took the underground to the BMW Museum which was really cool (even for a non car enthusiast)
We got back to our hostel just in time for a Munich beer tour. Although we were supposed to leave at 6:45, we didn't end up leaving until 7:15. It started with a walk through the train station, followed up by a roadie on the corner from Hacker-Pschor, which was quite tasty.
Our first brewery was Augustiner, where we sat outside at communal tables. Here we had the option of a liter of shandy or a liter of helles (although there were many other choices from the menu, we weren't given the option to order them which was a bit disappointing, considering I'd tried both of these already) Here Mark and I shared pork knuckle with potatoes. It was fall off the bone tender.
Mark and I ended up sitting with a brother and sister who were traveling together from America. Mark also ended up getting included in a game of "save the queen" with the group of boys on our tour who were celebrating a bachelor party. The game works as follows: boy throws british pound coin in full liter of beer and then begins chanting, "save the queen, save the queen", meanwhile, owner of liter of beer must chug beer as fast as he can so that the coin with the queen does not 'drown' in the beer. Mark was not only included in the game, but chugged like a champ. The brits were so impressed that they ordered him ANOTHER full liter of beer, on them. Woof. It was going to be a long night. After leaving Augustiner, we passed two breweries that were closed, but finally stumbled upon a small one that was open.
We had to purchase our own beer here (wait, then why did I pay for the beer tour?) Last but not least we stopped at a castle brewery where we had to purchase our own beer, again.
The other patrons on the tour were great, especially the American sibs and the british stags. We had a lot of fun with them at all of the locations, however, I wasn't very impressed with the tour itself. It advertised a liter and a half of beer at 4 locations. On our tour we only went to 3 locations and were given a half liter of road beer and a full liter at our first location. It would have been nice to split these up and try different beers at multiple breweries. Oh well.
Sunday morning was off to a slow start as we had breakfast at our hostel and then walked to English Gartens where we sat outside in the sun (yay for our first day with nice weather!)
Before heading to the airport we watched a little of the parade and wandered through the food and entertainment tents that were set up for St. Patrick's Day.
Overall Mark and I had an absolute blast. We decided that if the beers and brats are as good in the rest of Germany as they are in Munich, then we'll need to get jobs there next ๐Cheers to exploring more of Bavaria in the coming year ๐ป
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