Germany Day 12

St. Augustiner Brewery. New friends

Munich Christmas Market, Marienplatz

Munich Christmas Market

Ice skating in Munich

Leaving Rothenberg was very hard and sad. We really liked the place, the city and the people, but it was getting too touristy with many (what we believed to be) American Military people coming in for the Christmas market. There is a base pretty close by, too bad it is Army and not Navy, we would love to get a duty station right in Germany. Off to Munich again. This time we made our reservation in a hostel, yes a hostel. It was nice, we looked at it when we were there and we reserved a private room with 2 beds. Every place rents the rooms by the number of people and you get twin beds, sometimes they are put together and sometimes they are apart. We found this hostel we we went to Augustiner Brewery restaurant, it is across the street. Munich's Christmas market was in beginning today and we were there for the lighting of the Christmas tree and listening to the politician speaking. He had to be a politician because even though we didn't understand it, he was very long winded. Anyway, the Christmas Market was packed and we were colder that night than ever before, the sky was clear that's why. It was about 29 degrees Fahrenheit maybe a bit less. Remember we are from Southern California and recently from Hawaii. We had a bunch of Gluhwein to keep warm, but it didn't work. We finally gave up and took the train back to the hostel, well maybe not the hostel more like the brewery across the street. We had met 3 young (20s) American girls waiting for the train and they were also heading to Augustiner. We got to the brewery before them because we knew a bit about the trains and how to get there. Anyway after waiting 5 minutes we found a table. Now it is hard to imagine this, but there are tables and on each side of the tables are long benches on 3 sides and a chair at the head of the table. In that then, sometimes people are sitting at the table already and you share the table, so you walk on the bench seats, even with people sitting on them, you walk behind the behinds and get to your seat. We just happened to get the back part of the table and had ordered our Dunkels beer (dark beer), when we saw the girls walk in. There was room at our table and so Randy invited them over. They had never been here, so they weren't sure how to get a seat. Anyway they ended up getting to our table and sitting down with us. It was fun, they were just in Munich staying for the weekend, they were students studying in Spain. We had people to talk to. The guys at the head of the table were egging on their young friend to flirt with the girls. It was so funny to watch, the more he drank, the more courage he got. Anyway it was a good time, Randy talked with the guys and they were aerospace mechanics they worked on "We". Huh? What is a "We" mechanic. After a bit of listening, talking and finally understanding accents, he found they were "Huey" helicopter mechanics. It was a very good night, but Anne didn't eat enough and she had a few too many Dunkels, by the time we left Augustiner and walked across the street, Anne was done and Cameron was very tired too. Randy tucked us in bed and went down to the bar in the hostel were he met a couple from Norway.