Munich & the Hofbräuhaus

On Friday morning we woke up (in Munich) bright and early to head to the airport to pick-up Nate. Once we collected Nate we swung by the hotel to drop off his stuff and grab some breakfast before we hit the town. Nate's plan was to stay up all day and try to fight off the impending jet-lag. Luckily we had a day of soccer and beer awaiting us!

From the hotel we took the train to the Marienplatz, which is a large town square in the heart of Munich. We walked up from the train stop and saw the huge Rathaus Glockenspiel. Completely by accident, we arrived right at noon when the glockenspiel does one of its three daily shows.

As you can see from the photos it was another gloriously gray day in Germany.
We keep thinking summer is just around the corner...

After the neat glockenspiel show, we consulted the map and made our way to the famous Hofbräuhaus. The Hofbräuhaus has been in Munich since the late 1800's and even more impressive is that there has been some sort of beerhall in that exact location since the 1500's. Here are the boys outside of the Hofbräuhaus:



Team Germany was playing in the 1330 World Cup match so we figured we needed to get a seat quickly as the town was going to get pretty wild pretty soon! We found our way up to the 2nd floor in the Hofbräuhaus (which is HUGE by the way) and ended up sitting next to some other Americans at a table near the big screen. Here are some shots:



The Team Germany game was fun to watch. It would have been more fun if they had pulled off a win (or if the refs weren't totally hosing Team Germany with yellow cards), but nonetheless it was fun to support our host country. After the Team Germany game ended a little curtain was pulled across the big screen and we, unfortunately, realized they wouldn't be showing our game in the big hall. A little frustrated we went downstairs as fast as possible in hopes of getting a seat near one of the smaller screens that would be showing the game. We lucked out and found a bench right in front of the TV and got ready to cheer on the good ol' US of A. There was a large contingency of Americans there and the place went absolutely bananas when we scored our two goals. During halftime we saw some very drunk Germans being "escorted" out of the building via the side door by the Enforcer. (And by escorted I mean dragged on the floor by his arms). Brian and the Hofbräuhaus Enforcer:



After the game, we dined on a delicious 1/2 chicken and German potato salad:

It turns out that spending nine hours at the Hofbräuhaus watching soccer and drinking beer is the perfect way to combat jet-lag. Nate was a champ! So although we didn't see much of the city of Munich we had an awesome time soaking up a local experience at the Hofbräuhaus.



Next stop: Salzburg!