Saturday, September 12, 2015

The Great Munich Tea Party

SATURDAY, 9/12:

I think I’ve turned my mother into a kleptomaniac.

More on that in a bit.  First, greetings from the Novotel right outside Franz Josef Strauss Airport in Munich, where will be getting up at 4:45 tomorrow morning (10:45 Saturday night Marquette time) to begin a journey home that ends when our flight lands (we hope) at Sawyer at around 9 tomorrow night.  Yup; for those of you counting at home, that’s almost 24 hours after we wake up.

It’ll be fun.  Really, it’ll be fun.

We spent our last day here just wandering through parts of Munich we haven’t yet visited, and also paid a visit to the burial place of our old friend King Ludwig II.  You couldn't take pictures in there; however, my phone may (cough cough) have been on while we were in there, and I may have (cough cough) accidentally brushed my finger across the camera button.  I'll have to e-mail whatever happened to myself soon and see if I did indeed get it.  We went back to Marienplatz, the place where I took yesterday picture of the seething mass of humanity, bright and early today, and you know what?

No seething mass of humanity.  In fact, all you saw were fruit vendors—





A store selling very expensive handbags, and bearing the name of my Irish ancestors, my dad’s grandfather’s family—





And a very long line of women dressed in dirndls, waiting for what we think was the opening of a store—





I’m not quite sure WHY they were wearing dirndls.  It’s either because the store was having a promotion—dress in a dirndl, and get half off—or because there was a very handsome guy standing at the door of the store, all dressed in lederhosen.  For all I know, he may have been a famous actor or something, and it was a chance to all the women waiting in line to get their picture taken with him in local garb.

But because we’re going home tomorrow, we may never know the answer to this story.  Unless, of course, someone wants to pay for us to stay over here and find out what was going on.  We’d be more than happy to do that...hint hint hint.

8-)

We also had lunch at the infamous Haufbrau Haus, one of Munich’s original beer gardens.  We wanted our parents to experience Munich at its most traditional, and this fit the bill, complete with a house Oompah band.





And people from different cities meeting each other and sharing their stories.  In fact, here’s my mom with her two new friends, college students from Augsburg





They were in town because their team was playing Bayern Munchen, the local powerhouse, in a soccer match this afternoon.  And as it turned out, the upstart Augsburg team played Munich, one of the best teams in Europe, to a 1-1 draw.

And that’s your German sports report for today.

As I mentioned at the beginning, aside from making new friends today, I kinda think I may have turned my mother into a bit of a kleptomaniac.  I didn’t mean to do it; I’m sure a court of law wouldn’t convict me (at least, I hope they wouldn’t).  But ever since my mom noticed that I take an extra bag of tea or two with me every morning when we leave one of those great European breakfasts, tea that I then drink when I get home, well, let’s just say she’s been getting into the spirit of the thing.

In fact, when we checked into the hotel today, she said, and I quote, “Here, I have a few things for you”, and then proceeded to give me this—





This is just from the past couple of days, too.  Who know what kind of damage she could’ve done if she had know about this from the start!

Well, I suppose I should wrap this up for now.  I have to make sure all the chocolate is safely secured in my carry-on, and that everything else in my suitcase is under the 50 pound weight limit.  I’ll write another one of these on the plane tomorrow and post it once I get to Chicago (assuming, of course, they let us back in), because there for many pictures and stories left to share.

So until then...


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