Finishing the Munich Visit, and a Night in Frankfurt

Details: Written by Tom Snow; Created: 13 December 2022

Two more days left in Germany: one entirely in Munich, the other mostly in Munich with an afternoon train to Frankfurt, where I'd be catching my flight out the next morning.

Friday, May 20, 2022

Like every other hostel breakfast I've had on other trips in Germany, I got to eat a delicious bowl of Müseli. And unlike every other hostel breakfast, I got to accompany that with some falafel.

There was one thing I really wanted to see that day, one essential stop for anyone visiting Munich that did not involve beer. This would be the Deutsches Museum. The name simply means "German Museum" but this name belies what a huge, involved, wide-ranging complex it is. Before I went there, I didn't know what an amazing experience it would be. Because of how much time I spent in the museum, I think it deserves a whole other blog, so I'll save the museum for that one. All I'll say for now is that the Deutsches Museum is like the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in DC, COSI in Columbus, Ohio, and probably many other smaller ones I've been through, rolled into one. You'll spend hours in there and get quite an education in many, many subjects. After the forgettable walls of text I went through two days earlier in the old castle in Stuttgart, the Deutsches Museum was an experience I'll never forget. And it's all for the reasonable price of 14€.

There was one, only one complaint I could possibly have about the Deutsches Museum. There was nowhere to eat there, once you got inside. They did have an adjoining café, but you couldn't get there from within the museum, that is, from within the space you paid for a ticket for. You want to eat? You've got to go through a one-way exit, and the only way back in is to pay for another ticket. So, as the time approached noon, I had to try to ignore my growing hunger as I slowly looked through all the fascinating exhibits.

After I finally left the museum, I didn't see anything satisfying at the café, so I went further to a Vietnamese restaurant. My lunch was a bun ga salad with chicken.

Now getting into the afternoon, I went back to Wombat's Hostel where I had to enjoy one of those Abate Fetel pears I'd bought the day before. But I also had to charge my nearly-dead phone, which I did in the big atrium that served as a common area, and as I waited for the phone to charge I drifted off on a jet lag nap because it was that time of the afternoon for it to happen.

Later in the afternoon, it was approaching 5pm, and thus time to watch the Glockenspiel do its thing. So I took a short walk from the hostel to Marienplatz where a huge crowd of (presumably) tourists was gathered.

The bells chimed and all the figures did their intricate movements which were hard to discern from the ground. Still, it's something you have to see while you're here. It lasted longer than I expected, something like 15 minutes or so, because there was at least two tunes for the bells to chime through.

After stops at Boggi Milano, because I needed to buy a new pair of trousers, and Dean & David, for some evening coffee, I set off looking for dinner and beer. The first place I found was the Löwenbräukeller.

This historic brewery opened in 1883. There's a lot more to this than what I saw there; there are various indoor event halls, but I only went to the Biergarten.

Just like at any German Biergarten, this is a place where you get your beer and food first from the building where it's being served, and pay for it right there before finding an outdoor table to sit at. At this particular Biergarten, it was kind of like a cafeteria where you get a tray and walk down a line picking out what you want. For dinner I got some kind of wrap with chicken and a yellow curry sauce, and for the beer I got a whole liter of Dunkel.

Next I wanted at least one more Maß, so I started looking around Apple Maps for another beer hall or Biergarten I hadn't been to yet. I tried to find Spaten's, but I don't think they have one.

This building is where Spaten makes their beer, but that's it, there's none for sale here.

I decided on Paulaner am Nockherberg. To get there I had to take the U1 train to Kolumbusplatz, walk up some narrow side streets, quickly run across a much wider road, Am Nockherberg, which had no crosswalks in sight, and then climb a long stone staircase up to Hochstraße on the level above where the Paulaner Biergarten was.

At Paulaner, I had a Maß of something I didn't know existed before: "Bruder Aloisious" which was a wheat beer with "Citra" hops. Not bad!

I was done drinking for the night after the liter of Paulaner. I made my way back to Kolumbusplatz and took another U1 back to the hostel. They had a pretty cool trivia game going on in the dining area which I had to play in for awhile before retiring to my bedroom.

Saturday, May 21, 2022

This was going to be my last day in Munich, with a train to Frankfurt leaving at 3:51pm. After a delicious breakfast at Wombat's Hostel, I checked out of the hostel and left my luggage in a locked room and left for my last explorations of the city.

The first thing I wanted to check out was a huge outdoor farmer's market, Viktualienmarkt. Much of what was on sale there, like fresh fruits, bread, and meats, I couldn't buy for myself since I would be flying home the next morning, but there a few things I wanted to take home. One stop I had to make was the MyMuesli store right next to the market.

All the Müsli and porridge I bought at the MyMuesli store, a couple days later after bringing it back to New Mexico. Not knowing when I'd have a chance to buy more, I had to stock up.

There was another place with some beer for sale. I bought two half-liter bottles of Kellerbier, one Mönchshof and the other Hacker-Pschorr.

At this point I was done shopping at the Viktualienmarkt, and I was still on my half-hearted mission to patronize a beer hall or Biergarten operated by every one of the six Oktoberfest breweries. Right next to the market I found a place called Hacker Wirtsgarten, run by Hacker-Pschorr. But it wasn't exactly the kind of place I was looking for. I asked for a Maß, and they didn't serve them! Only half-liter glasses. OK, I had one of those, and a small salad.

It was about time for lunch, and for the moment I wanted to find a beer that was not one of the Oktoberfest six: Ayinger. I'd had one of these before and thought it was pretty good, and had seen signs with the Ayinger logo above one hole-in-the-wall restaurant after another that day. But the first place I found while actively looking for such a sign was not a hole-in-the-wall, but a Hard Rock Café.

Hard Rock may be an overly-commercialized worldwide chain, but it was still a pretty worthwhile stop, I thought. The first thing I ordered was a half-liter of Ayinger Dunkel. For lunch I had an Asian noodle bowl which was a delicious salmon on ramen and salad. Not only that but I had a concoction called an Irish Kiss--coffee with Jameson, Bailey's simple syrup, whipped cream, and chocolate syrup.

Alright, now what about the last big beer brand, Spaten? There was a place not to far away called Spatenhaus an der Oper, so named because it's next to the opera house. I quickly found it, but when I saw all the outdoor dining tables I glanced at what everyone sitting at them was drinking, and I saw nothing but half-liter glasses. Not a single Maßkrug!

With no Maßkrüge to be found of Hacker or Spaten, I decided my last beer of the trip would have to be at the world-famous beer hall, Hofbräuhaus, even though I'd already been there four years ago. This might be the most famous beer hall in the world. There's even a Bavarian folk song about it, "In München steht ein Hofbräuhaus," which is right up there with "Ein Prosit" in the collection of songs which everyone sings at Oktoberfest while drinking beer by the liter.

Entrance to the historic hall which is right in the middle of the city.

This photo is actually from my visit in 2018; it hasn't changed since then.

Looks delicious, doesn't it? This is a liter of Helles, which Hofbräu is most well known for.

So to rack it all up...the Oktoberfest six:

Hacker-Pschorr: two half-liters at different restaurants
Augustiner: Maß at the Biergarten
Löwenbräu: Maß at the Biergarten
Paulaner: Maß at the Biergarten
Spaten: none
Hofbräu: Maß at the beer hall

Finally, just like with Stuttgart and Schwäbisch, throughout the visit I was on the lookout for written examples of Bavarian dialect in Munich. Here's what I found.

From the menu at the Donisl restaurant.

Also from the Donisl menu, lines from Bavarian folk songs.

Souvenirs with Bavarian phrases on them.

A mailbox I passed by while walking to the Paulaner Biergarten. This I actually know what it means! It's really common all over Germany for people to put labels on their mailboxes telling the mail carriers not to put any advertisements inside. Usually they say "Bitte keine Werbung," but it looks like in Bavaria you can get such a label in the local language.

Well, I could've gladly spent another week here, but it was now time to leave. My ICE train to Frankfurt was taking off at 3:51pm, which I easily caught on time, after picking up my stuff from the hostel. The train didn't arrive in Frankfurt until 7:04pm, over three hours later, but I passed that time reading Sapiens, the book I bought back in Austin, and maybe spending a few minutes dozing off on another jet lag nap.

Inside Frankfurt's central train station, where you can see a couple of ICE trains parked. I don't know how many times I transferred from one train to another during all the trips I took while living in this country.

I definitely needed something for dinner as soon as I stepped off the train, so I got a salmon salad from Dean and David at the Frankfurt train station. After that, I had to go get a rapid Covid test, because this was at that time a requirement for anyone boarding a flight out of Germany the next day. There was, as I found a few days earlier, a place to get this done just down the street from the train station. Walking there and getting the test done was a simple matter, but it would take a few minutes for the results to come in, so I walked back to the station, got myself a coffee from Coffee Fellows, and then made my way back to the testing location to pick up my results. Negative, as I expected.

Now, I had to find my hostel where I was spending the night, a&o Galluswarte.

Frankfurt was taking in plenty of Ukrainians, too.

Frankfurt is the only city in Germany that has a skyline of gleaming modern skyscrapers. I'd tried to get some kind of picture of it, but this was the best I could do from where I was standing.

The walk was longer than I expected but eventually I made it. I checked into the place, got my room key, and walked up to my room which had a few bunks in it. I'd wanted to see something of Frankfurt that day, but by that time, with a flight leaving the next day, I didn't have time for anything except meeting one of my roommates, brushing my teeth, and going to sleep.

My flight from Frankfurt to Dallas/Fort Worth was leaving the next morning at 10:10am. My phone had an alarm already in memory for 6:20am, which is when I wanted it to wake me up on work days. So I just switched that back on and drifted off on my bottom bunk...

Sunday, May 22, 2022

I woke up and noticed the sunlight was unusually bright for how early I'd wanted to wake up. Suddenly I grabbed my phone and checked the time, and it was about 8am! Ack! Whatever happened to the 6:20 alarm?? Yeah about that...when I turned it on I failed to notice it was set for "every weekday" and this was a Sunday morning. Well there was still more than two hours left so there was still a chance...!

In a hurry I gathered up all my belongings and checked out of the hostel. I wasn't going to start running just yet, and I walked very briskly along Gunderrodestraße to the Galluswarte S-Bahn station, bought a one-way Einzelticket to the airport, and hopped on the first train in that direction. So far so good, I thought, as I entered the airport with more than an hour to go...

Then I had to stand in line to check in and show my documented negative Covid test. Also I had to check my rollaround suitcase in. It may have been small enough to bring aboard as a carry-on, but since it now contained two half-liter bottles of beer, I had no choice but to check it.

Then it was a long hike, more like a trot, to find the security line to get to the Z gates. In case you've never been in the Frankfurt airport, I should let you know it is an absolutely massive, sprawling complex on the same scale as Dallas/Fort Worth. It's humongous. It's so easy to get lost in if you don't know your way around it, and I sure didn't. Time was steadily running out. I made it to the security line, and had to stand there for I don't know how long, constantly nervously checking the time on my phone.

I had one carry-on item that I'd been lugging around with me, my Lidl shopping bag which was now full of all those tubes of MyMuesli, and the coffee I'd bought at the Lidl on Thursday. Of course the security people couldn't just let it through, they had to pull it off of the conveyor belt and pull me aside to ask about stuff in it. And of course the agent I get had to be a comedian type. Looking at the Jacobs Gold instant coffee, he goes, "oh, sorry, you can't take Jacobs on the plane..." Yeah yeah very funny but I'm about to miss my flight!!

I made it through security with barely any time to spare. By now I was in the right concourse in the right terminal, and of-freaking-course, my gate was at the farthest end of it from security. So of course I had to start sprinting, not even sure if the plane was even still there. Finally, tired and haggard and out of breath, still clutching that shopping bag, I made it to the gate where the plane was still boarding because there was a bit of a delay...

Everything from the moment I woke up to this point may have seemed like a stressful experience. Yes, it totally was. But I'm thankful for it. You know why? Because not once did I ever notice that I was absolutely starving! Every time I fly from Europe to the States in the morning, my jet lag avoidance plan involves not eating until "lunch" on the plane which is synchronized with breakfast in the Americas. Because I'm someone who has to eat something the moment I get out of bed, on every other occasion I've done such a flight it was just torturous for me to starve myself for so many hours after waking up. But this time, I was in such a panicked rush to get to the plane on time I didn't even notice!

The long flight over the ocean was pretty uneventful. They served lunch an hour or two into the flight, which served as my breakfast, officially starting my metabolism for the day. That may have still been three or four in the morning in New Mexico...whatever, close enough to mitigate the worst effects of jet lag. (For about a week I woke up an hour earlier than usual, but that was it.) This flight was on Lufthansa, which, as I mentioned in the first blog about this trip, was the only flight I paid real money for and not points, a rather alarming $1,548. At least I still earned a good amount of United reward points for it. Unlike Delta, Lufthansa's on-board entertainment system doesn't have Angry Birds, so I spent most of the flight, perpetually in daylight, reading even more of Sapiens while listening to a variety of music that was available on the entertainment system. By the end of the flight I'd made it through more than half of the book. There was of course another meal near the end of the flight which was my lunch.

The rest of the day was pretty routine, too. The plane landed at Dallas/Fort Worth at 2:15pm local time, I had to walk the typically long walk from the gate to passport control, get my entry stamp, pick up my one piece of luggage, check it in again, go back through another security line, get a Starbucks coffee while I had some time to wait, and finally board my final American Airlines flight to Amarillo.

Before I knew it I was driving on the lonely highway from Amarillo to Clovis, stopping for dinner at a Subway at some uninteresting rural town in the Texas panhandle, looking at my surroundings thinking it's so hard to believe I was in Germany this morning...

Stuttgart/Munich Trip: