Welcome to Germany! It's still raining! Yesterday we got up early to take the 9:15 train to Munich - the ride was supposed to be 4.5 hours but ended up taking closer to 6. Andy was able to get his pretzel loaf hot dog (I had one as well... with my morning coffee) and we began our journey to Bavaria, the original site of Oktoberfest and home to (according to the German population, at least) the finest beer in the world. Due to the massive amounts of rain, there was a lot of flooding on the tracks and we were delayed quite a bit. The train stopped for a long time in one mid-way station and the man selling snacks and drinks told us we were delayed by about an hour. Then the train started to leave the station in the wrong direction! Thinking we were heading back to Switzerland, we were worried about ever making it to Munich! Fortunately, it ended up being an alternate route... the conductor had been making announcements over the intercom, but this near-deaf, elderly woman kept yelling in German to the person next to her during these announcements. Not that it mattered... the announcements were over a low-quality intercom that you could barely understand and only in German. Not very helpful.
We spent the next hour on the train playing the "have we seen this hill before?" game to see if we were actually heading back exactly how we came. Thank goodness we weren't, and the train pulled into Munich about an hour and a half later. It's pouring rain, of course, and the previous night we had not written down the directions to get to the hostel. I think because it was SO close to the train station that we thought we just had it memorized. After wandering down the wrong street in the rain for about 10 minutes, we decided to head back to the train station and get on the Starbucks wifi. Once we figured out where we were going, we were at our hostel in about a 3 minute walk... so silly.
Our hostels keep getting better and better! We started really low in Barcelona, then Amsterdam was quite a step up, and this one is the holy grail of hostels! We have a private room here for two nights and two nights in an 8-person dorm style. Right now, I'm sitting in this really cool atrium style lounge with couches, lounge chairs and hammocks. We're having a bit of a problem with the internet but I really just think it's because SO many people are on the network. I might not be able to put up pictures for the next couple days :( Besides that, it's been wonderful here. The hostel has a bar with better drink deals than Amsterdam (we'll have to be careful!) and we've already met some really nice people. Last night we chatted with two Americans travelling from the DC area and today we had breakfast with two Australians on a coach bus type tour for youths. We have noticed that the majority of people our age travelling are either American, Australian, or British.
We had dinner at what was supposedly the oldest beer house (dating back to 1328!!) and acclaimed by locals to have the best beer in the entire world. It's called Augustiner Brau, it's only about a 10 minute walk from the hostel, and this is where Andy got a liter of "Augustiner Hell" for 6.50 euros...
Now that's a happy face :)
I'm going to keep this short because we have a walking tour at 1 and I still need to shower and get ready for it! Plus Andy wants to leave early to account for the time we'll inevitable spend lost and looking for the meeting spot... never mind that it's in the exact center of the city in the biggest plaza. I'm sure we'll still get lost!
As a side note, the owner of the Sound of Music bike tour company just responded confirming my reservation, and signed the email "so long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, good bye" ... and I started gushing. I've never been so excited for a guided tour in my entire life.
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