Weinershintzels and Biergartens

Oh Munich...

Actually, there is so much to say, who knows if I will even be able to write it all out now!

Train stations in Italy with parents is just funny, in Italy the most time you need to get to a train station before your departure is fifteen minutes. We got there ONE HOUR early. Oh boy. I taught my mom to use her phone and well, long story short even with that much time we nearly missed our train. Talk about an easy way to stress your dad out!

As far as languages...German is extra foreign, I am not even going to try. But after a full day of adjusting to being around parents again (which kind of means surrendering independence) I am enjoying myself...it is not often you get the full opportunity to watch your family through a foreign country! We really should have cameras. Prime time TV quality over here.

Today was the first full day in Munich, and while most people would think being the only "young" person in a group of six "old" people (your parents) would be incredibly boring or something of the sort, I have found that once you accept the fact that you are going to be embarrassed and start laughing with and or at them, it is actually a very fun and cheap way to entertain yourself.

We walked through some part of Munich to biergarten number 1 (largest in Germany?) where we had a very delicious lunch and lots of beer. I actually LIKE beer! Well, the lemon kind...I drank the whole thing! A first for me...woohoo! My family is in short...loud and crazy. My mom questioned him on just about every item on the menu and my aunt made a relatively complicated special order. I am sure he was thinking "dumb Americans!" My dad played a practical joke and my aunt tried to hook me up (oh boy). I have a feeling this will not be the first time.

So sober or not, we walked/rode the tram to the Englishergarten and ANOTHER biergarten...no beer for me this time. At this point the off color humor started to come out and it took all my self control to not roll my eyes. I think I failed. Either way, I started laughing at them...if you think I can be ridiculous...well, now I know where it comes from. The best part of the day was trying to exit the park. See, this is the largest city park in the world...bigger than City Park in New York. My mom has no sense of direction and my uncle likes to follow the maps. Well, when there is a map on every corner and intersection...we ended up stopping A LOT. I actually laughed every time as my mom became conducter of the maps with her long old style umbrella. I laughed even harder when small drizzles became the cause of needing to fluff out the umbrella. Parents.

After finally getting out of the never ending garten (which was BEAUTIFUL), we headed to Old Town Munich. I stopped for ice cream with Jim, a crucial part of my diet and in that short five minutes, the rest of my family left us!! So we fended for ourselves as we braved the foreign streets of Munich. Using our stupendous landmark mapping skills we successfully took ourselves AROUND the ENTIRE hotel, reaching it from the completely opposite direction. I would say that with the three mile detour we burned off that ice cream. However on the way we found pubs, a market, the T Mobile tower, some Subway sandwich shops and the like. Even a McDonalds...gross. The best part of this excursion was when Jim took a detour to his room and I came up without him. I successfully led the group to believe that he was lost somewhere in Munich. Hmm...at least we all got a good laugh. The joke will be over at the reading of this blog.

Tomorrow we are going to Hopbraughouse...the most famous biergarten...I can not lie I am a little scared. My family is loud and crazy and a complete mission to embarrass me as endearingly as possible. Most young people experience Europe with friends, I am thrilled to be experiencing another side of Europe..the side that reveals the non parental part of your parents...and at this point, if you cant beat em, join em. If I am not loud enough, maybe this trip will help me relax a little and learn to have fun with my parents. After all...when things go wrong great stories arise.

So with that, I hope I somewhat did justice to these last few days, especially as I only had a short time.

Lessons:
Rain is good
Ice cream = detours
Lemon beer is great
Crazy parents = free entertainment
Jokes on parents even more fun!