Freitag the 13th

Happy Friday the 13^th from München! Today was pretty much a free day so we had breakfast

and my roommates and I decided to wander around the city. We stopped at a bakery for a snack and wandered until we found what they call the “Versailles of Germany”—Schloss Nymphenburg. I’ve never been to Versailles but what we saw was so extravagant! The most interesting part was the “Gallery of Beauties” that King Ludwig I had commissioned—paintings of 36 beautiful women ranging from a shoemaker’s daughter to a king’s daughter. These paintings showed what/who was considered beautiful by the king’s preferences—which was all that mattered because beauty was considered a sign of morality.

In the evening we had Michael and Lindsay’s presentations. Lindsay presented on the differences between beer from Northern Germany and from Southern Germany and we tasted a few of each. Beers from the North were much hoppier and more bitter whereas the Southern beers were maltier and sweeter. Michael’s presentation was on the Reinheitsgabot which we’ve heard a lot about—the main parts is that the law dictates what is allowed to be put in beer and what is not. After the presentations we had a prepaid dinner at Augustiner Brauhaus, a popular batch of brewpubs in Munich. I’m sure it’s supposed to be appealing because it has a very traditional Brew House feel—like what you would expect to find with wooden tables and the women in the Bavarian dresses and giant mugs—but I wasn’t a fan. First off the place was so crowded to the point that people were sitting at our reserved table because there was nowhere else to sit. Also, it was crowded and so loud with drunk people and it was nearly impossible to move through the crowd—I honestly thought I was having a panic attack. The preordered food was some sort of pork loin with cheese speatzle but the pork wasn’t very good and the cheese speatzle was bland. The food overall seems to be a lot more traditional German than in Berlin, where there were a lot of restaurants that featured food from all over the world.

A few of us are planning to see what Munich has to offer in ways of nightlife, so if I live, this blog will get posted tomorrow.