We arrived in Munich around 5 o’clock on Thursday with nowhere to stay for the night. We immediately went across the street to a café with Wifi and shared a cappuccino so that we could try to find a bed. Luckily, couchsurfing finally came through for us, as a man named Michael replied to our request saying that we could stay at his place with directions as to how to get there. We hopped onto Munich’s impressively efficient subway system and made the journey to this apartment, unsure of what we would find.
Walking down a street in a residential area of the city I saw a man approaching who looked somewhat like the picture I’d seen of Michael on the couchsurfing website. Michael’s profile was quite unique, so we were unsure of what to expect. It appeared from his profile that he had hosted perhaps hundreds of travelers in his house, and he also had a list of rules which is too indecent to be spoken of on this blog, though he said the list was entirely necessary due to the absolutely filthy behavior of past surfers. He said Americans and Canadians were generally the worst offenders. The man we saw walking down the street actually was this unique character, and he immediately saw our backpacks and realized that we were going to his apartment. He brought us back in and we went out for a delicious Ethioipian meal with him and another surfer named Johnathan. We had a great time, Michael had a superbly juvenile sense of humor and we enjoyed the food and delicious honey wine. Michael was also extremely generous, and because we had to wait for a table at the Ethiopian restaurant he bought Allie an appetizer of two ice cream cones at a nearby shop. Michael lived by the time-tested mantra that one should live every day as if it is their last. After dinner, Michael took us to a hole in the wall bar for pints of Augustiner, one of Munich’s famous beers. Allie enjoyed a radler, a concoction consisting of half beer and half lemonade. We finished our drinks, went back to the apartment and collapsed into bed.
The next day we woke up and went with Johnathan to Dachau, a concentration camp outside of Munich. Not much remained of it, but it was certainly eerie and a good experience. We didn’t take a tour or anything like that, but walking around the grounds was enough to produce a visceral response to the place, it was produced a definite uneasiness. It is not the kind of thing that I can say one enjoys doing, but we think it was a valuable experience, it certainly brought a part of history which is sometimes somewhat distant for us a good deal closer.
Next we took a train back to Miriamplatz, the most impressive square of Munich, surrounded by really old and cool churches and old buildings. Some of it was destroyed during the war but it has since been restored. We went to the top of one of the several tall churches for an impressive panoramic view of the city. Unfortunately we were unable to see the Alps, which are visible on a clear day, due to some passing clouds. We walked from Miriamplatz to the Englischgarten, a huge public park in Munich where Muncheners like to enjoy a nice day with a Frisbee or a beer.It was different from other parks in that although a small portion of the park was well groomed and dotted with flowers, most of the park consisted of untamed grass and weeds where people hung out. We sat and chatted and had a beer there, people watching, which was especially interesting there, as in addition to all of the usual going-ons of a large city park, the englishgarten has several nudist areas where you can see in the distance people just walking around and getting in touch with nature, or something like that. A raging thunderstorm bullied us out of the park, and as we bolted through rain and wind to the nearest subway station, hail began to pound our heads—it was a close call.
We headed back to Michael’s apartment, where he was ready to hang out with us after a day of work. It wasn’t quite clear exactly what Michael does, but it seems that he was very successful, and that he was very unique. He claims that he is one of the three founders for two famous porn sites (one being Girls Gone Wild) and that he also works for BMW (we’re not sure if we believe him, but considering he has a house on every continent and has six sports cars, he very well could be telling the truth…well, that also might not be true…but who really knows with Michael. Allie believes him though.) He claimed to stay up for most of the night, only sleeping two or three hours a night. He also claimed to speak 30 languages. He said 10 of those he was only intermediate at, but he considered himself as intermediate in English and he probably communicated as well as many average Americans. He is a native speaker in chinese, though looking and sounding like a standard German, and the only language he knows how to write in is Chinese—all of the others he can only type. He certainly had an interesting background…
We got some meat for burgers and cooked them up with him with some mashed potatoes on the side. It was just like being at home. Afterwards he started pouring drinks for us, since we were going out that night. He poured me whiskey and made Allie some fruity concoctions. After a few drinks he took us on what is known as the “party bus.” This is essentially a city bus that has been converted into a full bar with a DJ and a dance floor, and can be used just to party or to get from place to place. We used it in an attempt to go to a bar on the other side of town, and it was a lot of fun, definitely a unique experience. We didn’t make it into the bar we’d hoped to get into as it was too crowded, but after an excruciatingly long day and night we went back home and slept.
Saturday we awoke late, and after dealing with some administrative matters took the train into Miriamplatz to do a 3 hour free walking tour. Almost every major city in Europe has these now, they are free, but people tip the tourguides at the end what they think they should get, who according to Michael ( who seemed to know everything) actually do pretty well, as they get a commission from cafes and restuarants they lead their groups into. I did one in Amsterdam and it was good, but unfortunately here our tour guide was a relatively annoying American guy who liked to talk a lot about the degrees he had and his expertise on German history, and not so much on German history. While he did talk about German history his bad jokes and awkward rhetorical questions made it difficult to pay attention. We held on as long as we could, and it was nice to just walk around Munich, a very pretty city, but after towards the end we dipped off and skipped the last part of the tour, deciding to walk around on our own. We went back to Miriamplatz and checked out a cool nearby market where I got a pretzel and Allie got some Ice Cream before heading back to Michael’s for burgers and potatoes yet again.
After dinner we packed up and Michael and the recently arrived couchsurfers took us down to the train station for our overnight train to Budapest. We said our goodbyes, and tried to get comfortable in pretty unforgiving seats. We loved Michael, and we realized we’d never stay somewhere as nice essentially until we return home. He had an amazing shower, plentiful food, about 30 different bottles of shampoo to meet the needs of his many couchsurfers (about 5 per night) and was great fun to be around. Munich was a very cool city, but we certainly had a unique stay thanks to our host.
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