A long walk with long breaks
I left Reichenbach at 9am after having slept well in the hotel and having enjoyed an okay breakfast the same place. I knew from the day before that I was approximately 250km from Munich and I was absolutely in good time do I didn't have to hurry.
On the contrary to night before the traffic was quite heavy; amongst others Sachsen had started their holiday season and everybody was heading for the sun and besides that there was a lot of road construction.
I took it calm until I found and Audi A6 3.0 to drive together with. If I see a good fast driver in Germany I just tag along; this one was driving good and fast. I looked afterwards on my GPS and the fastest I went trying to follow him was 211,2 km/h. It was fast but the roads were also good.
I arrived in Munich city centre before noon and I went out shopping until I could check-in to the hotel at 2pm. The hotel was situated right in the middle of the old town and 250 meters from HB Hofbrauhaus.
I used the hotel garage to park the car and the way to reach their garage was using a car elevator; another first for me. Once in the garage I had to park on a ramp that could be hissed to the ceiling so every space could host two cars.
I went to the room and dropped of all my stuff and walked towards and passed the HB, knowing that I would be back later in the evening. I walked around for a while until I felt for lunch and I turned in to Zum Franziskaner.
The last couple of days there have been a gay festival in Munich and the main entertainment has been on the square in front of the Town Hall (Rathaus).
The entertainment on the stage was fun; I have always enjoyed people who are happy as they are. I saw a lot of brave people I must say that I saw more bravery today than I seen the last couple of years and I am not staying in the mainframe places in general.
I left the square and walked towards the central station where I stayed the last time I was here 5 weeks ago. I returned walking the parallel street and end up in the Augustiner Brewery and restaurant where I enjoyed a couple of beers in their beautiful bier garten situated in the middle of the big complex. They would have loved me to eat there but drinking Weisse beer is like eating a whole bread each time so hunger no way.
I tasted some of their Weiss beer, mainly due to a misunderstanding again.
I entered half an hour later in the Schneider Weisses Brauhaus and tasted some of their special beers of which one of them only could be tasted in the brewery; that was the strong Aventinus Weizenstarkebier. While I stayed there I had a long talk to an elderly woman sitting next to me at the table about München, Bavarian food and beer. It was quite entertaining I guess due to my fantastic German vocabulary.
I ordered a new beer and it turned out to be the strongest that they have; like I didn't read the speise carte! When I ordered it she laughed; I had already tasted a lot of their beers and this one I saved for the last.
The beer had so much sugar that it could have been made in the sugar fields of Cuba. I even had some German ladies coming over to look at the beer; it was not a regular beer. It held 12 degrees or the same power as a good red wine. I was happy that the car was in the garage and would not see me before after noon tomorrow. This one was bound to hit my head hard, really hard.
I headed for the hotel to my sixth floor and the little room to get a shower before I turned back to town.
I went back to the hotel to relax and have a cold shower: It was needed after a long day of walking and drinking, well only on every planned stop! I watched some TV and then decided to hit the town again; bloody hell hasn’t this guy had enough!
Just around the corner from my hotel, I walked it to a bar; Mara. This bar had seen it best days and after one beer I headed for HB which was only 350 meters from the hotel. After one beer there I had enough of it and decided to walk to another part of the town.
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I chose to eat a traditional Bavarian dish: sweinhaxe. What I thought was potatoes were not! It was some kind of bread dough, the ham was a bit dry but there were loads of gravy and I truly enjoyed the pork rime.
It is not a place to eat if you want a good meal but you can have a beer here and some Bavarian authenticity.
Many of the places like this have a beer garden situated in the middle of the house, where peace, calm and traditions meet in a wonderful cocktail. To sit a place like this and drink a cold home brewed weissbier or pilz is great. The beer garden in here is truly recommendable.
The atmosphere these places are always good but there must be a lot of people getting married the coming weeks because the city and this place as full of stag parties.
I tasted two of the local brewed beers here both being very good. The first one was the Schneider Weisse Original; a little bit Christmas scent and Muscat nut. The other one was a strong beer (Bock bier) for being in Germany the Aventinus Weizenstarkbiern which held 8.2 degrees. The colour was influenced by chocolate and there was a light fruit taste in it.
This place is situated on the Square on the corner of Herrnstrasse and Hochbrückenstrasse. Mara is open mornings until 10 am, so maybe I was way too early and not a part the group of regulars who meet after spending the night awake on the job: taxi drivers, doormen, and the employees of surrounding hotels and restaurants.
I ordered a Weiss beer but I was too late! To LATE - they had just opend!! They did not serve Weiss beer after 9pm - she told me! There had to be the enormous amount of female anger in the air that triggered me, because I could not see the reason, besides the fact that the bartender just wanted to make a stupid point! There were only two other persons in there besides me, so I was not going to change the pattern of ordering!
After a short debate, where I quickly realized that I never could win, I ordered any beer what so ever! I got a Helles Lagerbier Hell!! I took the HELL beer and a glass behind the bar and sat down at a bench just next to the bar, but apparently I did something wrong again. How the HELL did they find this beer for this bar! What a match!
The super sensitive bartender caught up on me and be-righted me; it was the wrong glass and as it was the first time for me in there, I had no history to use the glass I took! It was not easy to be a non-local with thirst.
Otherwise the place resembled a log hut from Austria with pine wood work everywhere, but the most amazing thing was the ceiling. They were apparently getting ready for Christmas with small mirror balls everywhere. I had not seen anything as kitschy as this since I had a Swiss diner in Brussels New Years eve with some friends where they had cows everywhere!!
Maybe it was the environment that triggered her early customer service approach!!
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