Au Pair-ents in Munich

    Well, there went my intentions on getting caught up quickly! Why is it every single one of my most recent blogs begin with an apology for not updating in a timely manner? Though I suppose it's better to be too busy to blog than update ten times a week with nothing to say. Eh? Eh? That's what I thought.

    Anyway, back to the third installment of the epic-ness that is Smimes Europe Trip!

    I'll save you the suspense now and tell you that, alas, I was unable to convince my parents to stay the rest of the summer and hang out with me, and they are, even as I type, back in good ol' Yucaipa, wowing neighbors with their new knowledge of German culture (I can only assume).

   But put that out of your mind, because we're going back two and a half weeks to the weekend of my parents' visit to Munich!

    Though our weekend trips to Nuremberg and Prague were beyond fun and I had an amazing time, I was most excited for my parents to come here. Whereas in the other cities we were all tourists together (though I like to think I was an A+ tourist, armed as I was with guide books and maps and Yelp-pre-scouted dinner locations), in Munich it was them coming to my home! Like your parents coming to see your new apartment for the first time, just on a much grander scale. They'd been here before, but not since the 70s, and not to much other than Oktoberfest, so I was super excited.

   So yeah, got back from Prague, did something all week (no idea what, clearly paled in comparison), and then it was Friday! I finished all my chores early while frequently phoning my parents to give them directions, and by about 1 they were arrived at my house! They got to come in, meet my host mom, see my room, bathroom, and general environs. It was super weird for me and probably a a little weird for them too. They'd seen my room, of course, but all via various internet video chat conversations, and it's quite another thing to be there in person! It was a weird crashing together of the two most separate parts of my life. We walked around my neighborhood (in disgustingly hot weather, I might add), seeing the various sights (which are of interest to probably no one except my parents), but they included my grocery store, bakery, and bank; the kids' favorite playground; the local beer garden; the wood I go on runs through; and the kids' kindergarten. It was good fun and they were super good sports about it (a grocery store is a grocery store, let's be real). The kids were still at the kindergarten, and I'd graciously been given the afternoon off from any dance classes/football, so we drove off into town.

   I successfully managed to direct us to the hotel, with only about six missed turns (driving in Europe is hard). I was pretty proud of myself. It's surprisingly hard to know how to navigate a city by car when you only ever take public transport. But we made it! Our hotel was, though rather small and unimpressive, perfectly suitable and very well located, just to the east of the Innenstadt and right on an U-Bahn/S-Bahn stop (and coincidentally right next to where I took my old language class). Leaving a note for Neal and Lettie, the friends from the previous weekend in Prague who would again be joining us, we headed out into the city to find some food.

   My parents rather magically managed to pick the one ridiculously hot weekend we've had all summer to be in Munich. I really don't know how they did it, but it was disgustingly humid and in the 90s the whole time they were here, and as soon as they left, the weather resumed its typical rainy high-of-68 pattern. Lucky ducks. Now they won't listen when I whine about the weather. Poor planning, Laura.

   Anyway, our quick walk on in through the city lead to one of the simplest yet nicest eating places I know of, particularly for a hot day: Augustiner am Dom. It's a typical Bayrisch place with good beer, good food, and sits right next to the Frauenkirche Cathedral. My parents were good sports and got good traditional Bavarian food (my mother's even came with Leberkäse, though she totally chickened out on eating it) and fortunately the restaurant came through with some dark beer for my picky father.

   Fed and watered, we walked more slowly through the city to see some of the sights, having probably a few hours to kills before Neal and Lettie would arrive. Our stops were sights you should all well know by know: Marienplatz, Odeonsplatz, the Hofgarten, and the English Gardens (and the surfers!), stopping there to put our hot and tired feet in the ice cold river (and see some naked people while we were at it, of course; it wouldn't be an English Gardens trip without some old-fashioned nudity), then head back to our hotel down the lovely Leopoldstraße, just in time to find our friends back at the hotel and head back out for the night.

English Gardens

  I'll stop here to give my parents the credit they deserve: they rocked the nightlife, man. Okay, not nightlife in the traditional sense; there was no clubbing or anything like that, but we did manage to stay up past even my normal bedtime every night. The sun setting so late certainly helps; at midsummer the sky didn't get completely dark until about 10:20 PM. But seriously, good job parents!

   So we set out again from our hotel, this time in the company of Neal and Lettie, heading for Augustiner Keller, one of the larger and most popular beer gardens in Munich (and highly recommended by yet another guide book, Neal's trusty "Beer Drinker's Guide to Munich" (which he very kindly left with me for the remainder of my stay!)). A short tram ride away, we were there by probably 10 PM and managed to fairly painlessly find a seat (though the place was quite full; there's really not a better choice for a hot and muggy Friday night than to head to a beer garden! Augustinerkeller can fit about 5,000 people, and there were probably at least 4/5 of that there.) and get started drinking Munich style, which is to say, a full liter of beer. We stayed there drinking jocularly and munching on pretzels, radishes, and the last of the food they sold before they closed the kitchens until at least 1:30 AM, I think. A table next to us was full of a bunch of Americans from some Oklahoma university who insisted on hollering their fight songs over and over again until they were hushed by a worker. The only songs you're allowed to scream in a beer garden had better be football-related and during a game.

Mom showing off her first real Bavarian pretzel

   I love beer gardens. Maybe it's because the Germans have more practice at drinking than Americans or start drinking earlier, but they are just not places that exist in the US. Whereas bars exist as slightly tabu, classless joints, beer gardens in Bavaria are filled with families drinking together. Most beer gardens have enormous playgrounds for the kids. When people get drunker, they just have more intense and even friendlier conversations. It's really a magical environment. I've never been at a beer garden when anyone's gotten out of control or been inappropriate. Alcohol usage at its finest, really.

   Furthermore, I'd thought I'd done pretty well upping my alcohol tolerance living here, but apparently I've just been hanging out with lightweights. My parents are beer-drinking champions. Though I would've liked to see them try and find their way back to the hotel without me. Ha!

  After almost zero sleep (not because of the late hour but because of the heat; I literally have never slept so poorly in my life. I miss hotels with air-conditioning), we headed down to a delicious hotel breakfast and took our time and advantage of the buffet. Neal showed off his new toy purchased in Salzburg: a device that cracks the top off of a soft-boiled egg. What will they think of next? We then dallied around in the lobby, waiting for the final additions to our tourist party to arrive. Julie and Colin are good friends of Neal and Lettie's and our family as well; they live in the UK and we've been to stay with them and their kids a couple of times, and it very cool-ly worked out for them to fly over for a quick weekend reunion in Munich. Once they showed up, changed, and drank a cup of tea (which takes about 90 minutes, by the way), we headed out into the heat.

   It is a difficult thing to be a tourist in the heat. I will definitely say that. And I forgive my parents and their friends for being such wimpy ones. The only problem with meeting friends you haven't seen in years in a foreign city is you'd rather talk than spend energy sightseeing! I certainly get it. But boy did I have to drag these guys around. I should've brought a whip. Not in a weird way.

   Anyway, after a short but sweaty walk through the pedestrian streets and Marienplatz, we ended up at the beer garden in Viktualienmarkt, where we camped for the next two or three hours. The garden was very full but well-shaded and with plenty of beer flowing, so we passed a lovely time there (with some ice cream thrown in at the end, much to my relief). We then headed over to a super cute little cafe to meet with a friend of Julie and Colin's, a girl my age who lives in Munich. We'd never met before so we had fun talking. I also got to drink a Hugo, my new favorite cocktail (ask Leigh, I ask her practically daily if she's ever had one): sparkling water, prosecco, Holunderblüt syrup (elderberry), mint, and a slice of lime. NOM.

Beer garden in Viktualienmarkt

Showing off her Hugo

   When the heat had dissipated a bit, we headed again to the English Gardens, where we stopped again to look at the surfers and met up with Leigh! The eight of us then scurried across the gardens and caught an U-Bahn to get to dinner at my favorite Indian restaurant, where we ordered (and ate!) more food than I thought possible. It was delicious and fun and was nice to have Leigh finally meet my parents, since they've both heard so much about the other. We headed home around 12:30, stuffed and satisfied. My tour guiding skills are such that we even walked through the midst of the clubbing district on Maximilianplatz on our way back and got to see some interesting looking people. You're so welcome.

Yes Mom, I stole your picture

   The next morning dawned thankfully cooler than the previous, and we enjoyed yet another delicious breakfast as we made a plan for the day. My parents and I had to talk off around 3 to get to my host family's house for a barbecue, so the others would be on their own for the afternoon/evening. The chance of rain sent us in the directions of Munich's fabulous art museums, specifically the Pinakothek der Moderne, where Sunday admission is conveniently only a euro! We spent the next three hours of so moseying through the displays, which include hundreds of chairs, videos of naked construction workers walking around, and old Macintosh computers, as well as some more traditional stuff like Warhol, Marc, and Kandinsky paintings. There was even a special exhibit of American photography, with one photo from San Timeteo Canyon, about a ten minute drive from my parents' house, and a lovely set of of photos of pregnant women shooting up. It was...interesting.

500 workers in a Japanese factory were given a chocolate bar and asked to make something out of the wrapper, displayed here. Such a cool (and random) idea. Modern museums are cool.

    We then headed across the street for a quick beer (sensing a theme?) and then my parents and I bid farewell to the others and headed out to my house.


   I was excited more than anything for this part of the weekend; it's so weird to think of how well I know this family and these kids and my parents finally get to meet the people they'd heard so much about. And the afternoon did not disappoint. The kids were out on the street waiting for us to arrive and all was very exciting. Kilian and Cliona were on their best behavior and were super cute and charming and their normal adorable selves. We had a delicious lunch of salad, caprese, grilled vegetables, chicken, lamb, and turkey, with ice cream and hot raspberries for dessert. My host dad even went out and bought dark beer for my father to drink. It was way too much fun. My dad got a chance to grill a REAL German about things like healthcare, certain German vocabulary, political views, et cetera, and it was just a lot of fun talking! Kilian and Cliona absconded with my parents for a while and had a game-playing session with them inside (Cliona even obliged by speaking ENGLISH to them, which she almost never does). It was such a lovely afternoon and a great way to end my parents' final day in Germany.

   After about four hours at my host family's (and waiting out a very impressive cloudburst), we bid farewell and headed back into town for the last night in Munich. We managed to find Neal and Lettie back at the hotel (Julie and Colin having left to catch their flight back to the UK), and we did what any good American tourists would do when confronted with a lack of firm plan in Munich: go to the Hofbräuhaus! As touristy as I know it is, it's actually way fun. I've even been known to go there without the excuse of a tourist to entertain! (Though we sit upstairs in the quiet part when that's true.) Sunday night was actually a great night to go--we were able to sit in the main hall, where it's usually a complete and utter madhouse, without having to go to too much trouble, though we were on the late side and I had to beg the waitress to let us get food. There's a traditional Bavarian oom-pa band, which is a lot of fun, though they play "Ein Prosit" (the toasting song) once about every ten minutes and it gets old pretty fast. Especially when your more-than-slightly inebriated father insists on harmonizing at the top of his lungs every time it plays. But it was quite a lot of fun. We headed contentedly back to the hotel and said goodnight and farewell.

Dad and his new best friend at the HB Haus

Fam!

    I headed out early the next morning to get home to take Cliona to English kindergarten, and it was very sad to have to say goodbye to my parents, but after going almost seven months without seeing them, the remaining two (one and a half, now) seem pretty short!

   And now, life's back to normal again. It was way too much fun having my parents here, and I think it really shook me out of my my-life's-so-sad funk I've been in. Leigh and I have resolved (and achieved, for the last two weeks!) to have some thoroughly awesome fun in the time I have left here, and the summer is shaping up to be a good one.

   That's all for now! Next blog is half written, and I SWEAR it will be more timely! Also check back soon for updates on my choir, which I've sadly neglected lately! (That was for you, Sarah :) )

  And happy summer to you all!

Czeching up on our Prague-ress

   Phew. The problem with putting off blog writing because there's a lot to talk about is that the stuff to talk about keeps piling up! Time to dash one off before I end up having to write a novel. (You're welcome.)


   Okay, action. Where was I? Oh yeah, three and a half weeks ago. I am getting lazy.


   So, where I last left you was the day before a whirlwind weekend adventure in Prague! Rewind your mental clocks to Friday, 15 June.


   The majority of the day itself was fairly uneventful (I hope, because I don't remember anything of it). Until, that is, at around 6 PM when I scurried home, hat mich umgezogen (changed my clothes), and headed off to an evening choir concert at a church in nearby Bogenhausen, a yuppie neighborhood on the eastern side of the Isar. We sang through a fairly quick rendition of Palestrina's Canticum Canticorum (Song of Songs), checking watches all the while, hoping we would get out soon enough to catch some of the Euro Cup Germany/Greece match. Our director helped us out by starting at 8:00 PM on the dot and limiting himself to a five-minute intermission. The concert ended promptly at 9:30 (exactly the time halftime starts) and we all ran out the door, smart phones in hand, to the nearest beer garden/restaurant broadcasting the game, and were able to perfectly catch the second half. If you happened to have been watching the Euro Cup games (not holding my breath, don't worry), you may recall five of the six goals took place in the second half, so we chose the right part to watch!


   Fueled by the resounding German victory, we took a bus into the Innenstadt (city center), entertaining the other passengers with some random choral music on the way, interspersed, of course, by various German victory songs. My game plan was to stay out as long as possible, since my bus to Prague left from the northern bus station at 1:05 AM, so it made sense just to stay out until then. So we set off for Leopoldstraße, the large boulevard stretching from Odeonsplatz up through the University and the Siegestor (victory gate).


   Okay. To fully grasp the madness of this scene, we're going to have to do some exercising of the brain. Picture all the people that fit in your high school football stadium during homecoming. Got it? Good. Now multiply that by ten. Now make every one of those people drink at least four beers (that's European style, so I'm talking two liters). Now put all of them in Deutschland Fußball shirts and stick them on the same street. You've about got it. The scene was basically madness, but in the best of ways. There were police everywhere, but their only function was basically to make sure no one got hurt. Cars would slowly brave the masses, driving up over the base of the Siegestor, and wild fans would gather on either side and rock the cars back and forth, screaming cheers all the while. Every now and then, the crowd would sink as a whole to its collective knees, honoring (I guess) the football genius of their home country.


  It was something, all right.

 

 

  Thoroughly impressed by the competitive spirit of my host country, I sadly abandoned the scene and took the U-Bahn a few stops north, where I problem-less-ly boarded a large bus bound for Prague, buckled in, put in some ear plugs, and slept the night away.


  Okay, that last sentence was a lie. There are few things as uncomfortable as trying to sleep on a bouncy bus speeding down an autobahn, sitting fully upright on a slippery leather seat, while a large Czech teenager snores beside you. Let's just say I dozed my way northeast, waking fully up at about 5:45 AM as the sun rose (lies, this far north the sunrise is at like 4, but I denied it as long as possible) over the outskirts of Prague. We arrived successfully at the bus station at about 6:15, and, having told my parents I'd aim for 7:00 at their hotel, I successfully (first Czech interaction!) bought some coffee at the train station kiosk to break my 100 bill (in Korunas, that is. So about 5$). Fortunately the word "cappuccino" is fairly ubiquitous. Thank you, Italians, for so dominating the coffee industry. After fiddling with the ticket machine for a bit, I finally broke down and bought a subway ticket from the counter, and took the U-Bahn about four stops to my parents' hotel, arriving at their door at exactly 6:59 AM. (Let's just say Germany has done wonders for my punctuality.)

My first step after arriving

   And after that, the day sped by in normal touristy fashion! My parents and I breakfasted at their hotel, before checking out and towing their luggage (rolling suitcases + cobblestones is not the best combination) to their new hotel, as city centre-ish as it could possibly be (literally next to the gorgeous Tyn Church), and meeting up with their fellow travelers Neal and Lettie. Neal was my dad's best friend from high school, and they traveled Europe together quite a bit when they were young hooligans, so it was very cool that it worked out for them to meet up here! We took off, armed with only a guide book and the approximately fifteen words of Czech we knew (most of them phrases I had scrawled down in a notebook the night before: "Do you speak English?" "Excuse me!" "I don't understand," etc. And my father helpfully learned the word for beer, so we were ready for anything).

Our hotel was next door to that. NBD.

Good little tourist

Neal and Lettie

   Luggage safely stowed, we stopped only briefly to pick up some more coffee for me (I don't let little things like three hours of sleep on a bus slow me down in a new city!), and set off to see Prague properly, as only Rick Steves-equipped American tourists can. The day promised to be warm and lovely, so we were determined to take advantage of it. Stopping briefly in the main square to admire the clocktower, we boarded a tram and headed up to Petřín Hill, the large hill west of the Vltava River. Eschewing (foolishly) the line at the funicular, we opted instead the walk up the hill, proving to be quite an accomplishment for the heat of the day. Fortunately a beer garden halfway up called to us, giving me my first taste of Czech beer (in this case, Pilsner Urquell). We then headed up the rest of the way to see a gorgeous view of the city stretched out below us. The hill is topped by a huge tower, a miniature of the Eiffel Tower. Though much smaller, it's designed so that when combined with the height of the hill, it's exactly the same height as the Eiffel Tower. We splurged and took the elevator to the top of it to get the full effect.

I can't take these clowns anywhere

Petrin Tower

Dad, Neal, Lettie, Mom

Memorial to the victims of Communist rule

Looking down at the Charles Bridge and the old town

   Morning mission achieved, we headed back down the hill to get some lunch at a Rick Steves-recommended restaurant in Malá Strana, the "lesser quarter" district of Prague. Fed and watered, we wandered back over the famous Charles Bridge (managing not the get pick-pocketed in the meantime; my dear father took extra precautions against this possibility by safety-pinning his pocket shut) and meandered through the winding streets of the Staré Město (old town) and into Nové Město (new town), stopping only to purchase some gelato. Though I feel like I'm leaving a good four or so hours unaccounted for in there, so there may have been a stop at another beer garden somewhere in there.

Mom and Charles Bridge

Vltava River (or Die Moldau, if you're leaning towards German)

Charles Bridge

St. John of Nepomuk

   We headed then to Wenceslas Square, the long boulevard leading up the the National Museum and most famous as the site of the demonstrations during Prague Spring (1968) and the Velvet Revolution (1989). This is a period of history I for some reason know far too little about (I think all of my late-1989-history energy is concentrated a little further north), so it was fascinating to read about all the events that happened there in our guidebook. I won't go into much detail, but you can read all about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velvet_Revolution. There's something sort of magical about being on the site of something so incredible. I had the same kind of feeling about the Berlin Wall. In Wenceslas Square, Communism fell because 500,000 people, led by university students, came out em masse and protested something they thought was wrong. No violence, no war, just their presence. 

Sun setting down Wenceslas Square

Memorial to the two men who lit themselves on fire in protest of Communism

   Anyway, it was cool. We enjoyed the sunset from the steps of the giant statue of St. Wenceslas (also known as Good King Wenceslas, if you're a Christmas song fan. Or a Love Actually fan), even witnessing a real live protest in action (a rather crazed Czech fellow who'd been protesting for over 1,000 days straight about his land being seized by the government, or something like that). We then headed back to a restaurant around the corner from our hotel for some much-needed (at least for me) dinner. Not bad for a day's work. 


   The next day we awoke bright and not-so-early, breakfasted, and headed north from our hotel into the old Jewish quarter of the town. Prague has a long history of anti-Semitism; the first pogrom took place there in 1096 and the Jews were concentrated into a walled ghetto shortly thereafter. The old city was mostly demolished and remodeled in the mid 19th century, but the old synagogues and remnants of the old town still remain. The ghetto was astonishingly not destroyed during the Nazi occupation for a fairly terrifying reason: the Nazis planned on opening an "exotic museum of an extinct race" once their extermination of the Jews was complete; the Jewish museum in Prague is one of the largest and most complete because the Nazis collected artifacts from all of Bohemia and stored them for their future plans.


   Choosing not to pay the fee for entry to the museum (not one literal museum but seven different synagogues, all with various different exhibits), we wandered around from sight to sight, reading about the synagogues in our guidebook as we went, including the Staronova synagogue, Europe's oldest active synagogue, completed in 1270. We also stopped to admire a monument to Franz Kafka, as well as peek through to the old Jewish cemetery, a tiny little patch of ground allotted for the graves of supposedly over 100,000 people.

Klaus Synagogue and neighboring mortuary

So many graves piled into one space the ground is completely uneven

Dad attempting to look properly humble next to the greatness of Kafka

My father has trouble looking normal in pictures

  We then headed across the river and picked up a tram to take us up to the top of the castle. (Highly recommended, I may add, as then you get to do the entire walk downhill). Castle is really a misnomer; it's actually a series of palaces, mixed in with chapels, a cathedral, fancy-yet-quaint old neighborhoods, and the occasional ice cream shop, of course. We bought a ticket that covered entrance to most of the important places, including a walk through the secret parts of the cathedral, with peeks at St. Wenceslas's tomb, a walk through the interior of the old government palace (including a visit to the room where the defenestration took place!), and a stroll down the Golden Lane, quaintly tiny little houses where the goldsmiths used to work, including a house Franz Kafka stayed in for a while. 

St. Vitus Cathedral 

Dad pretending to be a cockroach in honor of Franz Kafka's house

Proper sunburnt tourist

David Cerny's "Czech" sculpture

   Sated on castles, we had a late lunch at a restaurant across from the Kafka museum (my dad and Neal dined on pork knuckles, but I rebelled against the fairly unimpressive Czech food at that location and got all the waiters laughing at my German-ness when I managed to put together a Semmelknödel mit Pfifferlingesoße (dumplings with mushroom sauce), a typical Bavarian dish. We finished the evening at a small creperie, finally having found some beer other than Pilsner Urquell (I confess I'm not a huge fan of Czech beer), and ended the night at a little courtyard restaurant with live music sung by an old Czech woman. It was a lovely night. We walked back to the hotel, content, at the perfect time so see the lights of the city stretch out over the river.

   My parents and I awoke early, caught a cab to the train station, and hopped on our respective buses: I, back to Munich, and my parents, off to Berlin, to meet again the next weekend when they came to Munich! 


  And that was our Prague adventure. Though I really enjoyed the city, I have to confess I didn't fall in love with it the way I did with Berlin or Vienna. It is incredibly beautiful and charming, and I feel like I got to know my way around pretty well, but I don't ever feel like I felt the heart of the city itself. Maybe it's just hard for a city that spent so long being beaten down under Communism then graduated so quickly to the third most popular tourist destination in Europe to retain its essence. 


   I also think the language was part of it. Though Prague's definitely not a city where you need to speak Czech (almost even less so than German in Germany, really; I suppose the difference is there's a fairly good probability that tourists know some German, whereas Czech isn't really one of those languages people just pick up due to exposure), it frustrates me incredibly to not be able to communicate in the local language. I disliked that about my experiences with Sofia as well, even having an excellent interpreter with me at all times. I pride myself on my ability to do well with languages, and having that skill taken away just makes me feel like another dumb American tourist. 


   But regardless, Prague and I got along just fine!


   I do apologize for leaving you still a couple of weeks behind, but it's past my bedtime and when a blog's too long no one reads it anyway! I promise, the next one will be coming very soon: parents in Munich!