Germany/Austria day 1

Day 1

Munich

- Rental Car

- Walking tour of Munich

- German fooooooood

First of all - We had struggles with the internet last night, and I just completely zonked- so I apologize this is technically coming in later than usual. But here we are! 

In Munich Germany! 

Germany is just a magical place. Seriously. I've been able to come here to visit Russ' mission (in Northern Germany, but we traveled South as well) right before and after my own mission.
I really love it here. My aunt and uncle served as Mission President in Munich and I remember Brenda walking into church and there were small flowers scattered on the grass and she said "Even the weeds are enchanted here!" haha It's all just too dreamy. 

Kody and I have several stops planned for our Germany/Austria part of our trip, but have left things pretty open so we can kinda decide as we go. We rented a little car so we could totally be free to do whatever. As we were walking around the parking garage (which was full of nice cars) Kody joked "what if they gave us this little mini van" and then the worker stopped and said "Heres your car!" 

 We had ordered a compact car, and Kody was not about to drive a mini van, so our little German helper scooted off to find us a different car. Literally, he whizzed off on a little scooter and I just had the biggest smile on my face. Adorable. 

 Sorry for the poor lighting, but here is our actual car! Cute/cool little thing with red accents everywhere. 

 Thats more like it. 

 And what the devil will you look at this key? It's a power start, but this key looks like an ihome remote, for real! 

We drove straight to the city for our walking tour. It's a really cool program that lets you decide at the end how much you are willing to pay for the tour you had. It really puts the pressure on the tour guide to give you their best, so it's just a win-win situation for everyone. Our tour guide was awesome and hilarious, we really really enjoyed the tour! 

 We started in Marienplatz, right in front of the New Townhouse. Coolest building! 

 This has the famous life size Glockenspiel that goes off several times a day. We would finish our tour right on time, so it would be the little cherry on top. 

 The building with the two towers is the Frauenkirche or Cathedral of our Lady. 

 The guide said that basically all of Munich was bombed during WWII, except for these (and a few other) towers. You may think it's because they didn't want to destroy something so beautiful or sacred- but it's really so they could have an easy marker for where to come back and continue bombing. Pretty dark stuff...  

 Apparently there is a story about the architect wanting to build this huge church, but didn't have money...so the devil appeared to him and said he would give him money if he builds a church with no windows. The architect took the money and built the church - full of windows, but included huge pillars inside so that when the devil came in the door way, all of the windows would be blocked...except that far window in the back. Once the devil saw it, he stomped his foot and left. We didn't see it when we went back into the church later, but I guess there is an imprint somewhere of a foot. haha Pretty fun story. As our tour guide said "absolutely true...it's size 9.5 UK" ;) 

Thought this was funny. This little makeshift memorial for Michael Jackson just right on this statue. This is outside of a top notch hotel where celebrities stayed, and Michael Jackson stayed often. People made a little memorial for him but so many things were being added that they decided to stick it on this statue. Why not? haha

 Inside a mall.... magic I tell you. 

 Ludwig the First was the big guy that made Munich what it is. He named all sorts of streets, churches, and anything after himself. hahah He would travel to other countries, see something he liked, and would replicate a similar building in Munich.
Another funny thing about this little building are the Lions at the steps. They are the same, except one lion's mouth is open and the other is shut. They seriously planned it this way to have the one with the open mouth near a government building- meaning you can come to Ludwig and the government with problems or anything- you were free to speak. The lion on the other side with its mouth shut was near a church. Meaning - you do not talk back to God and the church. haha

 The outside of the church was under construction, but we went inside and oh man- 

it was pretty incredible in there!

 Look at this classic German man in his lederhosen and long socks!

 This was a funny part of this building- Some of these circular windows were real, some were built half way then just painted in, and some were just completely fake and painted. 

 The tour guide shared some interesting stories about WWII and Hitler. He talked about how there was a time after the war that Germany was ashamed to talk about their history and tried to keep it quiet...but now they want to teach and learn about it so that they can learn from it and never repeat this dark time again. Munich is the birth place of the Nazi movement, so there were some places where he would say that Hitler gathered people to start the movement.
This intersection had a cool story of people being forced to give the Nazi sign at the end of the street- whether you supported them or not. To protest, people started going down this alley to avoid the spot. Unfortunately, the Nazi's realized what they were doing and stationed a guard to stand there to make people explain why they had to go down that alley instead of the main road, and they would get hurt if they tried to continue.
You can see down this alley a lighter path of stones representing the path people would take down this "dodging alley" because they would rather stand up against the Nazi's than give the sign.
Wow. 

 Pretty Germany. And the famous Hofbrauhaus on the left. 

 It started raining halfway through our tour. Kody is the best and made me wear his jacket. Anyway- sorry the pics are dark and we are wet in all of these! 

Here we are at the famous Hofbrauhaus! 

 Beer. is. everywhere here! 

 This is inside the restaurant/bar where literally everyone had huge glasses of beer! hah But it's a really fun atmosphere in there. And I mean come on! 

The tour guide said that Munich was so well mapped out that when they had to rebuild, they were basically able to completely recreate it just how it was before! If you can see on the big window here on the top right at the base of the arch of the brick (wow- if you followed that, nice work!) there is a dark circle. Years before the city was even destroyed they were attached and cannons were shot and somehow a cannon got stuck in this building just near this window! It was there for hundreds of years. When the building was bombed the cannon fell and someone came and picked it up and hung on to it because it was part of that building and its history. When they rebuilt the church, the guy just brought it over saying "hey heres that cannon" and they put it back in the same spot it had been before! So when they say they tried to rebuild it the exact same. They mean it! 

 Here we are back at Marienplatz to see the glockenspiel 

 I'll just show a quick clip here... Sort of anticlimactic but great nonetheless.

The first half shows the upper section of a big wedding and even jousting, then the lower half has people dancing/spinning. So it goes for quite a while!

 We found a great and classic German place to eat called Augustiner and boy was it fun to people watch!
Pretty positive we were the only ones without beer in the entire place.
Check out our waitress saying hello to one of the regulars! haha! The braided beard just puts him over the top in my book! We knew he was a regular because that case behind him has mugs that he just came in, pulled out a key and unlocked his little door and grabbed his mug. Amazing. haha

 I ordered the Bavarian pork roast and it had this potato...ball thing.
I'm pretty sure I died and went to heaven. 

Also- I sneezed and a big German man said gazuntite.
Life. MADE!