Munich

Pari and I have just returned from a wonderful long weekend away in Munich. It's a very pretty, clean city. The people there were friendly and I got to practice my German quite a lot. I could have stayed in Munich.


One evening we happened upon this quartet busking along the side of the main square. Busking! With a baby grand piano!


One highlight for me was visiting the Residenz Museum, the palace where Bavarian kings lived. There are so many rooms to see that half are open in the morning and a different group are open in the afternoon. The audio guide was excellent and the historical rooms were fascinating.




Another highlight was all the interesting food I tried. Of course, there was some Bavarian food, for example on Monday when we went to the Englischer Garten and had lunch in the beer garden. I quite enjoyed my bratwurst and sauerkraut! I even managed to drink (and perhaps enjoy) a half litre of Hell Bier.


Pari enjoyed the pretzel that is bigger than your head.


But apart from the Bavarian food, we ate lots of other cuisines as well. I had a meal in a Japanese noodle bar with Sutapa (Pari's friend). Then we all went out for a tasty Tibetan meal. The next night Bipro (Sutapa's husband) cooked us a Bengali meal (which I ate with my hands, in the traditional style), and then we ate Ethiopian food another night (which I also managed to eat with my hands). Ethiopian honey wine was delicious (although very sweet, and I needed help finishing it).

Our visit to Schloss Neuschwanstein was excellent as well. It's a couple of hours outside Munich. First we travelled by coach to the base of the mountain and went for a cycle tour to Swan Lake (Schwan See).



Then we hiked up to the castle itself and took a tour inside.


Oh, how I enjoyed Munich! I feel newly inspired to continue working on my German. I brought home some children's books for language practice and Ant and I read a few pages last night--slow going but very rewarding! Our German lessons start up again in mid September.