A Visit from Smarty

After living in Arizona for the last 4 years we have missed that experience of watching summer turn into fall.  However, we got the full experience of the seasons changing this year in Munich.  We were swimming outdoors in August and then wearing jackets while watching the trees change colors in September.  That nostalgic and homey feeling of the fall season commenced with a visit from my big brother Seth and his wife Marty in early September…aka Smarty!

I was so excited about their visit that I dragged Julie to the airport unnecessarily early to greet them.  Their flight status said delayed, but I didn’t care because I figured there was the chance they would make up time in the air.  So contrary to Julie’s request, I said let’s just go anyhow.  And then as we were on the train to the airport I got a text from Seth saying their flight from Rome was just about to take off; which means we left before they did!  My goofball brother later told me he fell asleep immediately when they boarded and when he woke up he thought they had landed in Munich already (when really they had not even departed yet).  So we got to know the Munich airport really well as we had about 2 hours to shop.  We ended up stocking up on some discounted Christmas décor before their arrival.

We started their visit off right with our traditional Bavarian beer garden feast, catered by Aunt Ellen and Uncle Rüdiger, and joined by dozens of friendly bees.

Later that night, we went out for dinner and beers at the Hofbräuhaus, and met up with our friends Eddie and Laura.  Also an older couple visiting from Maryland joined our table and jumped right in our conversations, and they were so lively it was a big surprise to Eddie at the end of the night when he found out we didn’t know them beforehand (I guess he thought they were our other guests).

Saturday we gave them the city tour and did some shopping.  And although we have done this for all of our other guests, it never gets old showing off all the cool sites and stores which are so unique to Munich.  We even bought ourselves a little Bavarian Nutcracker figure to join our newly purchased discounted Christmas décor.

Saturday night we cooked dinner at home and went back out to our local beer garden.  We arrived to find everything closed because of the colder weather...boooo!  We didn’t let that stop us though and we brought our own food and drinks from home instead.  Seth and I ran home to grab the supplies and we returned to see Marty and Julie talking with an older couple.  We were joking that they looked just like the couple from the night before and as we got closer we realized it WAS!!!  We pointed them in the right direction as they continued there trek to the train station to go home…or perhaps stalk us a little bit more?!  

We spent the night catching up on lost time together and reminiscing on old memories while sitting in the cold underneath dim floodlights in the middle of an empty park.  It was the simplest of activities, but being so far from family it is these kinds of moments that we really love when we have visitors- just to have some familiar human contact.

Sunday we walked through the English gardens, made it to a biergarten that was actually open, and strolled along the Isar River.  We forced them to see the river surfers, something they were neutral about but we kept pushing on them until our route somehow crossed paths with them.  We had to cut our ventures short when Sadie started limping and her natural puppy-dog face became even more pathetic looking.  We still made our detour to Oktoberfest to see how the construction was progressing just one week before the opening (with Julie and me carrying the little princess).

We had a family dinner at Aunt Ellen and Uncle Rüdiger’s charming German house just a few kilometers from ours.  But before we ate, we meandered through their neighborhood to see more of the cute town of Pasing.  We strolled through the really quaint ‘Klein Gartens’ where people can rent out plots of space and are required to maintain a beautified space enforced by ridiculous HOA-like mandates.  The whole scene felt like a fairy tale.

Then sadly, after two and half days in Munich, we had to say goodbye and send them on their way to the rest of their Euro vacation.  Thanks for visiting us Smarty, we miss you guys already!