Munich!

I finally went to Munich! One of the four universities in my program is in Munich, but the research is very specific and not my thing, so I won't get a chance to live there as part of this program. But I've been wanting to go and visit at least. Munich is, however, one of those places that is nearly impossible to reach from Montpellier. Europe in general is well-connected, but not always. So I had been putting off the trip but finally picked a block of a few days and decided I was going, no matter what. My flight options were crazy expensive, whether I tried to go from Montpellier or Paris. And the train? More reasonably priced, but 12 hours and two changes. The bus? Fine price, at least 20 hours. Mmm, tantalizing options, all of them. Not. I went middle-road and took the train, since the trains are actually comfortable and I can work or sleep, whereas buses are miserable. It took me this many train tickets to get to Munich and back!

So after 12 hours and three trains one lovely Wednesday I arrived in Munich! I was met by a classmate I love who was kind enough to "host" me, even though she didn't have an apartment of her own at the time (the Munich housing market it, to put it mildly, saturated). But enough classmates had apartments we could play musical beds and not get on anyone's nerves!  I arrived in the evening, so we headed straight to a beer garden. I immediately fell in love. They're not kidding with the whole garden thing--this one was outside and surrounded by a wooden fence, with plants and strings of lights along the fence. I had an awesome schnitzel and weissbier. Then I was given the night tour of Munich, which is very grand, with big open areas, wide streets, and some truly monolithic granite buildings. A very different feel from the windy streets and sandstone buildings of Montpellier. And the weather was cool! Absolutely beautiful early fall weather.

Thursday was nice, with more city exploring including a nice lunch in the market part of town (sausage and beer of course) and a trip to the top of city hall to look out over Munich (which is one of those cities which is short due to the rule that nothing can be taller than a certain building, in this case a church). But then, Thursday night, it was time for Oktoberfest!! Whoa. The whole thing is like a carnival, with rides and food and game trailers. I didn't really expect that! But Oktoberfest has the added loveliness of the beer tents. These "tents" are buildings though. They take them down and rebuild each year, which seems crazy to me, since they are real buildings. No canvas roofs here.

The outside of a "tent"

And the inside (from the balcony)

It was wonderful. Liters of beer were a staggering 9.10 euros each, and the waitress never gave you change for your 10 euro bill, but it was awesome. It's hard to see in the picture above, but there is a and in the middle playing, and everyone is singing along. They played everything from Sweet Home Alabama to German drinking songs to Happy Birthday to You. All the seating is big long wooden tables with benches to sit on, and people spent most of the night standing on the benches and singing. And wearing dirndls and lederhosen. I felt completely out of place not wearing one, they were so prevalent. It was great walking down the street and always seeing herds of people wearing what I previously considered a costume. But my friends who live there say it's completely normal to see people wearing the outfits anytime, whether it's Oktoberfest or not, Monday, Thursday, Sunday, whatever. I had no idea! It was really funny seeing fancy and random stores (Tommy Hilfiger anyone?) with lederhosen and dirndls displayed in their windows. And they're expensive! Whoa.

Friday morning it was off to see some castles. Specifically, we went to see Neuschwanstein, the castle that inspired the Disney logo. It's a two hour train ride from Munich through beautiful countryside to get there, then a short bus ride to a cute but not cutesy town that is in the middle of the valley between Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau, castles on either side. And there's a gorgeous little lake you can see from each castle. It was just autumn enough that the leaves in the mountains were beginning to change colors. It was really almost too beautiful. We spent the whole day wandering around the areas, taking walking paths through gorgeous woods to get to the castles, climbing down below the bridge to the river, and finally finished off with dinner at a beer garden in the shadow of Neuschwanstein. Love.

Schloss (=Castle) Hohenschwangau

 

Schloss Neuschwanstein

 

Neuschwanstein again, picture taken from...

 

 

 

 

...this awesome bridge. 

 

 We had to get up early to get to the castles, so Friday night was lazy. On Saturday, my friend needed to send off some apartment-hunting emails, so I ventured off on my own and tracked down the English Garden (not hard, given it's one of the largest urban parks in Europe). I promptly fell even more in love with Munich. The Garden is huge and really varied, with everything from a huge flat open field to covered little streams and a huge Chinese tower with... a beer garden around it! There were even people surfing on the little river in areas where a bridge or small dam concentrated the flow! So cool.

Chinese tower beer garden

 After the garden I checked out the palace Residenz),  one of those crazy places with some rooms seemingly entirely furnished with gold and red velvet. Then it was off to dinner in the University area and back to Oktoberfest. This time we stopped for "one beer" at a sort of side-tent outside one of the big ones and ended up staying there all night. Much more relaxed, so a nice, different experience. Unfortunately, the next day it was time for me to leave. Such a good trip! Munich is very highly recommended! I think I'll have to go back sometime. Preferably soon...

The New Zealand food and drink update (lots of beer)!

One of my favorite things about being in any different country is, to no surprise to anyone know knows me, the food and drink! I am a huge fan of eating and drinking. I'm not picky, and will try nearly everything once. That being said, New Zealand is not one of the countries that pushes the frontiers of crazy food. Just different enough, and awesome.

One of my favorite things about food in New Zealand is the lamb! Not only is it good, but they have it frequently.  It's their standard everyday meat, which is awesome to the visiting Americans who usually only have it for Easter and Dad's birthday. It's funny-they consider lamb to be such a usual thing that whenever kiwis entertain, they serve another meat. It led to an awful situation last time we visited where, because we were guests, we were actually fed ham over and over again. I'm not a ham fan to begin with, so getting ham when I expected lamb was crushing. This time though, the hints were dropped (not at all subtly) that we wanted lamb, and lots of it! Legs, chops, we got it all. It was amazing. One meal was TWO roasted legs of lamb. I was so happy.

Another thing we always eat way too much of in NZ is fish and chips. Now, this isn't Captain Ds or some restaurant frying up a piece of fish they couldn't sell any other way. This is real, wonderful fish fillets (of all kinds) and hot, fresh chips (fries) and sometimes even oysters! And it's all wrapped in the classic newspaper, sometimes even tied with twine. I had at least four fish and chips meals.

The seafood overall deserves mention. There was tons of it, and it was fresh and amazing. Particularly awesome were the bluff oysters, which are from southern NZ and are totally amazing. We had them fried a few times, but the real deliciousness was having them raw, dipped in pepper-laden malt vinegar. Unbelievable.

Another interesting side note on food-they eat something called kumura, often as kumura chips- it looks like a sweet potato on the outside, is a bit darker than a regular potato on the inside, and tastes kind of like yucca. It's actually very good! I don't remember seeing it on my previous trips...

Last food: fried, meat-filled pastries of goodness and heart attacks. We're talking mince pies, sausage rolls, and all other manners of fried things. They are absolutely one of my traveling trash eats! I think we grossed out my NZ family by actually eating that kind of stuff...Kiwis in general are a really health conscious people, and don't usually eat such crap.

On to beverages! I won't lie, I focused on the alcohol, but first, there are a few non-alcoholic ones that need mentioning. The first is classic-their lemonade. It is not like ours, all actual lemon and sugar. Theirs is carbonated and clear to very light yellow. It's maybe more what we would think of as a lemon Italian soda or a Sprite even, but not as sweet-just really good and refreshing. And one drink we had on this trip that I didn't remember was Lemon&Paeroa- an awesome lemon drink sort of based on their lemonade.

Alright. So I will preface this next part by saying that I was sent to New Zealand with the mission of assessing the beer situation. This all started when my Mom and I asked my Dad one day about the beer in New Zealand and what it was like. When he couldn't answer (beyond the fantatsically helpful "it's just beer, it's like beer") we gave him choices--were there stouts, wheat beers, light beers, all kinds? He still looked confused, so we went to brands. Which one did he stop us on? Bud Light.  So NZ beer is like Bud Light. Ok. It might be good to know that my dad will only drink really crappy beer, and only in a can-he's a real fan of Natty Light and Coors Light-but still. Could he be right? I told some friends and was told to check it out, and that if that was the case, we were opening up a microbrewery in NZ ASAP. So, while on this trip, I tried as many beers as I could. Here's the list as far as I can remember:

Tui (named after a bird, has absolutely hilarious billboards-google image Tui beer ads-they have three books of these bilboards. I read through one and laughed the whole night).

Mac's Golden Lager
Mac's Coudy Wheat
Mac's Sassy Red
____ Armageddon IPA
Canterbury Draught
Monteith's Radler
Pilsener from Sewell's Brewery(?)
Speight's
And I know there were others...

The verdict? I was actually disappointed. By far the most interesting was the Radler, and it was the first one I had, so I was excited. It was really light in color but had one of the most complex flavors I've ever had. Awesome. The others were mainly just bland! Several relatives (and future relatives-Trent!) gave me beer tastings, which was awesome. I was at one point warned that my next one was a really strong beer that I might not like (one of the IPAs-Tui maybe) and it was really nothing at all. They told me that there are a lot of microbreweries (they call them boutique breweries) down there now, so maybe some of those would be more interesting. I do wonder if maybe US beer has a lot more sugar, preservatives, etc, in it and so has more flavor? Don't know. It was definitely fun to try all the beers though. And, knowing that NZ is big into wine now, I made some room in my schedule for that! I mostly had sauvignon blanc, and it was excellent.