Munich...

The next few posts will be a little different that the others. I'll try to keep them focused on photography but wanted to outline our recent trip to Germany and Switzerland. Each day of the trip will be a different blog post. We certainly did alot of photography along the way and learned a few things about how to get the whitebalance and exposure right shooting snow but you'll see that later.

First, on to Munich. Our flight over was uneventful. I managed to score us Economy plus seating on United which was really nice on the 8+ hour trip across the pond. I didn't manage to get any sleep on the flight so we were in for a very long day! With a quick stop over in Geneva and a near heart attack when our bags were not there to be loaded on the plane (apparently Lufthansa doesnt take much luggage from United and they have to go searching!) we arrived in Munich - bags and all!

Most all announcements and signs were in both German and English (and sometimes French, Japanese and Italian!) so we had no problem finding baggage claim and then transport. The Munich S-bahn is very easy to navigate - once you figure out the ticketing system. Fortuantley, we weren't the only lost ones, we watched two or three other groups as they tried to figure it out in front of us. The S8 train takes you right into Munich city center. We stopped off at the main rail station (haupbahnhof) to get our rail tickets validated and off we went into the city to see things.

Our first stop was the Marienplatz - the center of Munich where the Rathaus stands high above the square (picture above). Surrounding the Marienplatz were a number of historic buildings - churches and the like. All were open to the public to tour and take photos. We walked into a few and snapped off the one above. The architecture is amazing!

As we walked around we saw another church with a huge tower - the DOM! For 6 EUR each you could climb to the top of the DOM and look out over the city of Munich. The pic below was after our climb (with backpacks on!) to the top of the tower. We're looking over the Marienplatz.

After all the climbing we were hungry so we set off to find the famed Hofbrauhaus! It's off tucked away on the northern part of the city center but it was easy enough to find with a street map. It was a monday afternoon so the place was not crowed however it was loud and hot! Mark had a dark bier - a huge one and I stuck with Weiss (which was only .5L). He tried the Brokwurst and I had the Spatzel (i could find macaroni and cheeze anywhere!)

After our trip to the Hof we were full of food and beer and quite tired (last nights non sleep was catching up to me). We boarded the Sbahn and after a few wrong turns and a very long unnecessary walk, we found out hotel and crashed. We have every intention of just dropping the packs and heading back into the city for some night life but that never happened!

Tomorrow we're on the train for 7 hours to Zermatt! We made reservations at the train station when we got our tickets validated.

Lessons learned today:

Sleep on the way over!
You need to push the button on the train door to make it open, they don't just open on their own!
The S and U-bahn doesnt seem to check tickets, however fines are steep if they do and you're without one
Everything costs something here - walking to the top of the DOM etc...