Welcome to the Hotel Weiss (such a lovely place....)

Last week, Hotel Weiss officially opened for the 2013 season with our first visitors this year – our friends from Phoenix, Stacy and Adam (though none of us live in Phoenix anymore as of 1 week ago).  They are the first of 11 total guests over the next 3 months – or at least those are what we know of today.

They landed around lunchtime on Tuesday, so I took them for some tried and true good jet-lag lunch food – döner kebap over by Rotkreuzplatz.  This is the same place we have taken a few other guests – including my mother, who took this awkward photo of one employee with the döner:

Noah made it home early from work, so we picked up some chicken from the Tuesday chicken cart and headed over to Hirschgarten’s biergarten for dinner and beer.  We all Noah lucked out in that Hirschgraten was showing the UEFA Dortmund vs. Real Madrid semifinal game on the big screens.  Stacy and I started with our backs to the screen, but had to eventually turn around - it just became too creepy to have all those faces staring our way.  

The next day the pups got to join us for a pizza picnic in Hofgarten followed by bocce ball in the Englischer Garten.  Sadie became obsessed with a woman riding horse around us – I had to keep her leashed up or she would have tried to become friends with the horse – and most likely fail miserably.  And while I kept her from that danger, it might have been my fault one of the bocce balls hit her in the face.  I have never felt so guilty in my life – I think I was more upset about it than Sadie was.

We spent the evening over at Frühlingsfest for more chicken and beer, and again… Noah was able to watch the UEFA FC Bayern vs. FC Barcelona semifinal game in the beer tent!  The place definitely had a different atmosphere with the game playing (as we were there the Saturday before with some international friends… and 1 authentic German), but it was a very happy one with FC Bayern winning 3-0 and clinching a Germany vs. Germany UEFA cup final.  We also got surrounded by a German boy band ‘flash mob’ – but not sure how flash mob it really was when there isn’t much room between the tables for their few dancers.  And a huge shout out to Stacy and Adam for partaking in the traditional Lederhosen and Dirndl!  Now they really need to come back for Oktoberfest to get their money’s worth out of it!

Thursday we stayed in the city center spending money… what else can you really do in bad weather?  We continued our theme of daily German food at Zum Franziskaner – this time treating our guests to an eclectic combination of Weißwurst, authentic Wienerschnitzel, and Kaiserschmarrn.  While all three authentic German/Bavarian food on their own – I don’t think they really go together.  But no one complained.

We switched things up for dinner and went to a Greek restaurant.  Our old Munich friend Laura joined us, so Noah and I were able to toast her goodbye (again) at dinner.  She found a job in Cincinnati and was here in Munich to finish up her last 2 weeks at Intel.  That just means her and her soon-to-be husband need to come to Munich on vacation, instead of business trips.

Our plans for Friday originally included walking through the Partnachklamm Gorge, as we had heard cool things about it.  We even pre-booked one of our car sharing vehicles for the day.  Unfortunately for us, they decided to ‘close’ the gorge for the week for maintenance, and it would open again Saturday.  But we had a car for Friday – not Saturday!  We decided to be resourceful and just find another place to visit with the car.  Solution: Eibsee and Zugspitze!  

We began with a nice 7km hike/walk around the Eibsee – a lake at the bottom of the Zugspitze mountain (which, by the way, is the highest point in Bavaria – the mountain, not the lake).  Here we made fast friends with the ducks, who clearly are used to people feeding them.  At one point we stopped to look at the lake on a small hill, and this little duck came walking all the way up the hill to try to beg.  Impressive little climber!  We also found a rock shaped like Texas, so naturally I had to stop and give it a photo shoot.

After the 7km hike/walk, we took the cable car to the top of Zugspitze, which left both Stacy and I rather uneasy.  The mountain is 2,962 meters above sea level – or an elevation gain from the bottom of 1,950 meters.  Whatever way you look at it – you are going very high, very fast.

Once at the top, you take an elevator up 3 floors to get to the actual summit.  It is amazing how tiny Eibsee looked from up here.  After stomaching all I could handle of the heights, we moved to Deutschlands höchster Biergarten (Germany’s highest beer garden) for lunch.  I can say I had a real beer at the top of Germany – no Radler for me that day!  

For our guests’ last day in Munich, we decided to focus on the biergarten experience (again).  We first went into the city center to hit up Viktualienmarkt – the large open market near Marienplatz – to pick up a nice lunch spread.  After a quick detour to see the Hofbräuhaus, we hopped on the Ubahn up to Olympiapark, where Rita and Sadie cuddled in the small space between the seats.

Once there, we somehow managed to hit up two separate biergartens.  We did split them by stomping around the park grounds and making it to the highest hill there for some nice views of Munich and the Alps.  It was also nice that Stacy and Adam had one day of beautiful weather in Munich – how we wish it was every day!  Sadly this marked the end of their Munich leg, and we woke up Sunday to an empty apartment.  Well, not too empty – we had two waggly little dog butts to greet us in the morning.

In 9 days, Hotel Weiss will welcome my parents, and we will do it all over again!

525,600 minutes later…

We started our journey in Munich exactly one year ago – landing January 5^th, 2012 at 12:30 pm.  There were a few uncertain moments in the beginning, and we both had our “that’s it, I’m moving back to the USA” kind of moments (we still do sometimes – just not as often).  Though after settling in, the last year has been the most fun and transformative year of our lives.  There are absolutely no regrets, except for the decision to study Spanish instead of German in high school.

For those that do (or don’t) follow our blog regularly, here is a recap of the best and worst from Weiss aus Deutschland 2012.

Top 1^st year moments in no particular order:

1. First night in our completely empty apartment except for 6 suit cases, some hand me downs from Ellen, and a dorm sized kitchen….an unexplainably weird and amazing feeling.
2. Seeing a male stripper at a public restaurant on (or for?) my birthday and Julie ‘accidently’ taking me to a strip club after my first day at work (check the previous blogs).
3. Watching, partying with, and later practicing with the Munich Caribes baseball team.
4. Cramming in with 40,000 fans to watch the greatest sporting match I have ever seen in the FC Bayern vs. Chelsea Champions League final in Munich.
5. BBQing on the Isar River, if you ignore the multitude of naked old men.
6. Traveling all of Europe.
7. Living the Bavarian way- in the mountains, in the beer garden, or attending some festival in the city.
8. Our 13 visitors from home…thank you for all the trips to Marienplatz!
9. Our ‘Pangea’ international party – 18 countries represented!

Bottom 1^st year moments in no particular order:

1. Julie’s face plant and trip to the ER for stitches.
2. Counting down the days before we can move back to the US….after our 3^rd day here (Noah).
3. Getting locked out of the apartment, spending 200 EUR, even though we had our keys!
4. Getting speeding ticket my first time driving through the city of Munich.
5. Eating a sandwich out of partially raw bread, not realizing what ‘Fertigbacken’ means – ready to bake (also Noah).
6. Train delays/misses.  Especially the 3-hour delay after my train was hit by lightning.
7. Continuing with public transport – trying to figure out where a bus/tram stop is, only to learn by watching it leave you standing in the wrong spot.
8. Wearing canvas shoes (aka sponges) through snow that one (or ten) time(s).
9. Outfitting an entire apartment, from the light fixtures to the curtains to the furniture to the kitchen.  Though not as bad as it could have been without all the help from Aunt Ellen!

Hopefully 2013 comes with more ‘Top’ moments than ‘Bottom’ – but either way, we wouldn’t change anything in 2012.  Well, maybe one: eating that raw bread.

FC Bayern... Stern des Südens

The year’s biggest moment in soccer, the Champions League Final between Bayern and Chelsea, took place here in Munich last weekend.  For those that don’t follow soccer, this is essentially the Superbowl of soccer, with the best competitors from all of Europe.  Adding to the drama was that this was the first time the host city has had their team made it to the final match, and get to compete in their home stadium.  Since FC Bayern had already written history with the first ‘home field’ advantage, all the odds were in their favor to write the perfect story book ending.  But they fell short in the end, losing the championship in the most dramatic of fashions.  Here goes our experience of it all.

As spring turned winter, it seemed FC Bayern had a reasonable chance to go far in the tournament- they were playing well and received some luck with the matchup draws.  People started to dream about FC Bayern playing at home in the finals, but I don’t think many really expected it to happen.  Then by a stroke of luck, they beat out the favored Real Madrid in the semi-finals in a penalty kick shootout (an important detail). They made it to the finals, and would play in Munich!  Given the impossibility of buying tickets to the final (only 7,000 out of 62,500 tickets were even sold to the general public through a lottery that we did not win), we secured tickets for one of the main public viewings held on the Oktoberfest grounds.

On the day of the match the energy amongst the public was incredible.  Everyone, true Bayern fan or not, was outside walking around, engaging with each other, and wearing Bayern red.  It reminded me of the old Houston ‘clutch city’ days around ’94-95 where the whole city just came to life.  After fighting our way through crowds for a few hours, we decided to head back home and rest up for the big show.

The kick-off was at 8:45 so we arrived at the public viewing around 7:15 for good measure.  There we were with 29,998 other people streaming through one entrance to cheer on the home team (tickets were limited to 30,000 – and they even sold out the same day!).  

Can you find us???

This was one of the densest crowds I have ever been in.  It took about 30 minutes to get through the gate, climbing through mounds of empty beer bottles (drinking beer in public is legal), and then we were greeted with about a 15 minute wait for the toilets.  

People were so fired up for Bayern, it was unbelievable.  We fought through the crowd and eventually found a decent spot for viewing the 800 square foot screen from about 100 yards out.  Nonetheless, it was a constant struggle the whole night to see the screen because taller people, often drunk and clueless, would post up in front of us.  The energy of the crowd made it all well worth it though.

The match seemed like all FC Bayern.  Clearly, Chelsea’s strategy was to stick back playing defense and hopefully get lucky on a rare counter attack on offense.  Unfortunately Bayern could not get any one of their one thousand shots to score.  As the game rolled on the crowd became even more dramatic, shrieking louder with every passing chance.  It seemed like destiny that Bayern would eventually break through.  And then finally they scored with around 10 minutes left in the match- a miraculous header goal by Thomas Mueller.  The crowd went absolutely crazy (including Julie and I).  I mean this was one of those celebrations you only read about.  First the people were jumping, then the smoke fire flares were lit, people were hugging picking each other up (our neighbor picked both of us up), and then out of nowhere fireworks were exploding over our heads.  It all felt like a dream in that moment and it felt like finally we reached our destiny.  

Here is a movie of the celebration - you can see at the 8 second mark the guy that picks her up and spins her around

Unfortunately, I have a feeling the Bayern players felt the same because only a few minutes later Chelsea snuck in a header goal of corner kick (I hate you Drogba).  The life of the crowd disappeared instantaneously.  That was the first heartbreak of the night. 

The game moved into overtime and the crowd slowly regained their optimism.  Bayern reestablished their control and the crowd started to believe again.  And then Bayern earned a penalty kick, a chance to retake the lead and avoid the ever dreaded tie-breaking penalty shootout.  Nope, the shot was blocked- heartbreak number two.  This time, people were angrier though.  Water bottles were being thrown and I know there were many German swear words being shouted.  Understandably so – great teams and great players do not miss penalty shots period.  The ever optimistic crowd recouped and the mindset became ‘we made it the finals on a penalty shootout, we can win the finals in a penalty shootout- no problem’.  

I wore my Lederhosen like a good Bavarian

The penalty shootout started and Bayern took the early lead.  The crowd could sense the title within reach again, but their luck eventually ran out.  Chelsea eventually took the victory in the penalty shootout (now, I really hate Drogba).  This was the third, and thankfully final, heartbreak of the night.  But this one really, really stung the crowd.  I mean it was absolutely numbing at how silent and still everyone became.  It was like we were all robbed of our destiny- anybody who watched the game would clearly notice that Bayern was the better team.  However, just like all sports, it is not always the best team who wins, but the one who plays their cards right and finds some luck to carry them through.  This it what makes soccer worth watching.  Although it was a huge disappointment to lose, this game will be remembered as one of the most exciting and memorable sporting matches I have ever seen.  

While everyone stood there deathly quiet, Julie and I took the opportunity to dash out of there.  I have read too many stories about soccer riots and I was not about to end up in the middle of something dangerous (although nothing did happen there or anywhere else in the city- just stunned silence).  After 5 hours of standing and screaming at the match, after 3 heartbreaks, and after a silent commute, we finally made it home about 1:00 in the morning.  We slept off our woes the next day and now we are all looking forward to the European championships this summer where the national teams compete (e.g., Germany vs Portugal).  We love soccer (well at least Julie pretends to for my sake)!