Munich, Germany Friday, August 10, 2012 

American Muscle Car

We have been overseas for three weeks as of yesterday. It has been great and today is one of those days we try to have where we slow down and just enjoy the moment. We meet a couple of fellow travelers at breakfast this morning. Rick and his nephew Ketch( at least that is what I heard) have been here for almost a month. Two weeks in Paris and they have just come from hiking in Switzerland. This was great as they overlapped a little of where we are going so we now have information that water should not be a problem, which will help lighten our loads somewhat. We spent close to an hour talking with them. Ketch is lucky to have an uncle who gave him this experience. Rick has been retired 5 years and is close to 55. He says he has no problem filling his days and no regrets for retiring young. Now there is a smart man!

Cute German Girl

We start out for the English gardens, a park on the northeast edge of central Munich. It is an easy walk, with no miscues on finding it. We stroll along it’s paths and find a spot where water is tumultuously coming through a bridge. There are many people surfing the permanent wave here. California in Munchen. We continue our walk along the river and then climb to a monument to King Ludwig which has views over part of the park and church towers in the city. From there we go to the Chinese Garden, which is a huge biergarten in the park. What is one to do at this point but sit and have a beer. 1 liter it is! We had brought some pretzels at the local bakery this morning and so we eat sandwiches, drink beer, and have a pretzel.

This is the Life

Now we have to walk it off, so we continue down the path to a lake in the park and walk around it to another biergarten. Do we stop? No, we do not like the atmosphere here as well as we did the other one so we walk on by. A stop on a park bench to watch the world walk by and the waterfowl play is in order. We are just enjoying each others company without having any specific destination in play. We walk back to the Chinese Garden and decide to eat an early dinner here. A big plate of spare ribs for something different and a side bowl of red cabbage. We must have Another liter of beer to wash it all down. Another pretzel tops things off and we are happy.

Fish on a Stick

There is plenty of atmosphere here. You have tourists, locals, the stecherfisch guy ( fish on a stick), German table cleaners, and people juggling big beers while carrying giant pretzels. I soon notice why all the workers are happy. They are all drinking beer on the job!
A family sits next to us and we hear them joking with one of the waiters in Italian and I can understand quite a bit of their conversation. I ask one of the sons sitting next to me if they speak English and it is very little. We do get that they are from Napoli (Naples) here on vacation and they like it.

Strolling Munich

We are done so we get up so the rest of their family can sit. A nice leisurely walk back to town and we meander down some streets we have not been on, in the general direction of home. We come a cross a very small grocery store and buy two ice cream pops for dessert while we walk. Not much longer we hit a square that I recognize the name of and are soon outside our front door. Early in means I can finally catch up on the blog as I have been several days behind for the last week. Hope you all appreciate the effort and if not, I am mostly having fun doing it anyway. Auf Wiedersehen.
CNC

Expenses
1.49E-4 pretzels for our biergarten experience
7E- beer
20.30E- Spare rib dinner and beer
.84E- 2 ice cream pops
80E – Pension

Miles Walked- 7.75 Miles