We had dinner with her at her house. Unfortunately, her husband was really sick and their son was resting so we didn’t get to meet either of them that night. After dinner, Astrid gave us some recommendations for things to do in Munich and then she brought out the photo album she had made of her year in the States. It was amazing! I looked through the entire thing, finding pictures of my parents and uncle and grandparents from when they were young. I really enjoyed hearing her stories about my grandparents. Talking with Astrid, I feel like I got a glimpse of a part of my family’s history that I was not familiar with. It was really special.
 

The next morning, we grabbed a train to Marienplatz, a plaza in the middle of a large pedestrian-only area in central Munich. The main attraction in the square was the giant glockenspiel on top of the town hall. A couple times ago, the glockenspiel plays for fifteen minutes, accompanying an automated performance reenacting two scenes from Munich’s history, a joust and a dance. We arrived just as the glockenspiel was about to start, so we watched it. It’s cool, but if you’re in Munich on a tight schedule, I wouldn’t make it a priority to see it. 
 

After the glockenspiel performance, we made our way to the Viktualienmarkt for lunch. We got a Leberkäse sandwich, on Astrid’s recommendation, at one of the many butcher shops in the open-air market. Leberkäse is a sort of meatloaf adjacent food. It was pretty good! To fill out the trio of German food along with meat and carbs, we both got Radlers (half beer, half lemonade) at the Biergarten in the middle of the market. In my opinion, Radlers taste about 50% better than normal beer, and lemonade about 100% better, but it was alright.

We didn’t bring any cash with us into Munich which was a mistake. The market had a bunch of cute little shops selling German food that we wanted to try. Unfortunately, they were all cash-only for anything under 10 euros. We briefly considered buying 10 euros worth of 60 cent pickles but decided against it. They looked really good though.

The BMW museum is right across the street from the Olympic center from when Munich hosted the Olympics in 1972. The area was crowded with runners. After asking someone, we found out that there was a 5k for a bunch of German companies. Each one sent a few employees dressed up in company running merch. It was fun to see people representing the wide variety of companies in the region.

For dinner, we headed to the Hofbrauhaus, a very famous Bavarian eatery back near Marienplatz. The hundreds of tables were crowded with tourists and maybe a few locals, so we decided to eat across the street in another Bavarian restaurant. In the middle of the restaurant sat a group of musicians dressed in traditional Bavarian garb. After every song, they’d go back to their eating and drinking for a few minutes before they played another. Music really brightens up the world. 

That night, I took another nap and then we took Bolt scooters to a bar where we met some of the people we’d met at Kit Kat the night before. They were from Mexico, Colombia, and Argentina and I had a great time speaking Spanish with them. It’s fun being in a bilingual environment where people switch in and out of different languages. 

After the bar, we went to Tresor, another Berlin night club. This one was a more standard techno club and I loved it. I did not expect to vibe with the loud music and the strobe lights and the sweaty people packed into the fog filled basement. That’s not typically my thing, but when I closed my eyes, I felt like I could just chill out with the music and dance to my heart’s content. I really enjoy dancing and yet I don’t find myself doing it enough. While I don’t think that I will regularly attend techno clubs and dance for hours on end, I’m glad I did it once. 
 

The next morning, we were planning on going to Sachsenhausen, the concentration camp an hour outside of Berlin. While I think this would have been a very powerful experience and is one I would like to have at some point in my life, we did not end up making it there. We got a late breakfast at the House of Small Wonder, an amazing Japanese fusion breakfast place that used to be a Jewish girls school, and we were having such a nice time and were in a such a great mood that we thought going to a concentration camp might be a dampener. We also didn’t have much time and we didn’t want to rush that experience. 
 

So, we spent a calm afternoon in Berlin, going to see the Trains to Life/Trains to Death sculpture outside of the train station that both served as a launching point for young Jewish kids to emigrate to England in the early 1930s and as the launching point for Auschwitz a few years later.

You’ll hear about my adventures in that part of the world in my next blog. Bye for now! 

- Justin Dunn