Beer and Bikes! And Boys!

Leaving my tracks in Munich, Germany.

My visit to Munich, Germany would have to be the highlight of my entire trip.  It was a definite change of scenery from Paris, where everything was hectic and stressful and the people were rude and furious.  Munich was very tourist-friendly and had a mix of big city life with small-town quaintness.  It was easy to maneuver around the city and many people spoke English. In fact, there were quite a lot of young backpackers and travelers just like us all over the place.  

Any place would have been an improvement over the last hell hole but our hostel, Easy Palace, was a surprisingly nice place.  It was truly a youth hostel, with teens infiltrating the lobby and bar and dorm-styled rooms complete with bunk beds.  

I indulged in some simple things here.  Drinking beer and biking around town.  The first night, we visited a huge tourist attraction: Hofbrauhaus.  This is a huge beer hall, with picnic seats set up to look like a huge dining room.  People eat and drink with strangers and there's a loud polka band that plays jolly tunes for drunk dancers.  We, being the sissy Americans by far, loved the Radler, which is a beer mixed with lemonade drink that supposedly only "sissies" down.  I personally see nothing wrong with being a lightweight! 

Sheila and I loved the Radler so much we were fighting for it!

The next day, we embarked on a bike tour where we were led by only the best tour guide ever, Lenny!  Lenny's Bike Tour is a free tour around the city of Munich where the bikes are provided for you and all you give them is tip at the end.  I hadn't ridden a bike for a couple of, oh, years so I was a tad nervous to get on it again. But within minutes, I was riding around, carefree and reminiscent of my elementary school days.  

The bike tour led us all around Munich, showing us some of the hotspots of the city.  History fills the place. As you may recall, Munich was one of the infamous places which Hitler occupied during his reign of terror.  It was incredible to learn about all the landmarks, places and people which have been affected just by one man and his thirst for power.  We were warned that people are still very emotional over this subject and just by even discussing it in a tour group, random people may come up to us and spit on us or cuss us out.  

Some other fun places we stopped by was a HUUGE nudist park.  It was a chilly day so there were only a few nudists sunbathing but even seeing the few opened my eyes up a bit!  We ended up at the largest beer garden for lunch where we engaged in a beer chugging contest.  At first, my team was leading but towards the end of the line, the other team had these guys from Sweden that, no joke, downed the beer in about 30 seconds each!  It was ridiculous watching them.

There was also this one other lady that we met on our tour.  She was like 80 years old but still a complete wild child! She was able to out-bike, out-beer chug most of us and was such a saucy old thing.  I can only hope to be as spirited and lively as she when I get to her age. Heck, I was I was as spirited and lively as she is right now!

Biking around has made me in love with the sport.  I am truly hoping to come back from Hong Kong and invest in a nice bike.  It helps the environment, keeps me healthy and is totally fun.  If anyone out there is also enthusiastic about bikes, totally hit me up and we'll bike around together!

But as for the beer, I think I can do without. I love beer in that it's easy to drink and good to get a buzz from but oh man, that beer belly!  I'll stick to water and champagne, thank you very much.

OOh... and just so you know, the boys around Germany were soooo cute!! All of them were super eye candies.  YUM YUM YUM. They were almost as delicious as this Girly (that's really its name!) ice cream bar I had on the train ride to see the Neuschwanstein castle, the one Disneyland's castle is based upon!