well, george and i are here in munich, just about ready to rent our car and head off towards rothenburg for a night, and then its back to frankfurt. hard to believe really that george's time is nearly up, time for me is starting to FLY by... entire weeks seem to just disappear, um, like THIS ONE. so strange. but its been the best time, eating well, visiting some AMAZING places.. and there's still time left i guess..
cesky krumlov was the most amazing little town ever.. soo much different than the hustle and bustle of prague, and we could tell that even on the walk in from the train station. a steep downhill (and unfortunately, a steep UPHILL on the way back), we could practically see the entire little town from the top of the hill.. nestled along this winding river. we get settled into our hotel, the zlatny-andel, have a bit of lunch, wonder around a bit, and spend the rest of our time on a tour of the town's castle. following that, we had yet another authentic czech dinner, and again had not a clue what we were ordering. as before, it ended up tasting quite good, and the two of us managed to get quite stuffed for a whopping 350 thingers (roughly $11) (note: in my confusion over non-euro foreign currencies, i refer to them ALL as thingers.) oh, and the czech beer, both the original budweiser, and the original pilsner.. not bad. i suppose i'm not quite enough of a beer lover to know if they're the best in the WORLD, but aparently, they are..
from there, a lovely 8 hours (4 changes) on the train. somehow, in our confusion, we did not get me a ticket out of the czech republic, but thankfully, the conductor was not ARMED, and was actually quite nice about the whole ordeal. it cost something like 96 thingers to make it right ($3). riding through austria was spectacular, rolling green sound-of-music scenery.. i'm quite excited to be returning there next week on my way to eastern europe.
munich sort of let us down, however. its a rather large, modern city, and doesn't really have anything of MAJOR significance to see aparently. we wondered around, pretty much aimlessly, through the old center, and were relatively unimpressed. we then rented bikes, and with them were able to see much more of the city. highlight for me, seeing the OCTOBERFEST grounds. its just IMMENSE. the festival's not for another month and a half, but already they're constructing MASSIZE "tents", which are actually not tents but huge wooden-framed buildings. its an impressive sight. not sure if i'm going to make it back for the festival or not, but even the thought of a million people, all drinking huge mugs of beer, all crammed into this area where we were, is hard to imagine.
we finished off our day in true german fashion: at the hofbräuhaus. the most "famous" of munich's beer halls, aparently. we ended up having dinner there, but had gone with 2 goals in mind. first, i wanted to merely drink a liter of beer in a german beer hall, and second, we wanted to watch the 200 japanese tourists, also drinking beer in a german beer house. funny, we managed to accomplish both. it was an interesting experience, complete with some sort of BAND, and people singing along. ha. we also learned that aparently in german, "grilled" means "fried", "fried" means "double fried", and "salad" consists merely of potatoes, and pretzels come as big as your head. too funny.
and now, like i said, we are off to the rental car place to pick up our autobahn-tester. wish us luck.