Deutschland Cup + Red Bull München Game

One weekend in November, the Olympia-Eisstadion hosted the Deutschland Cup, which apparently is an annual thing, but it's a three day tournament of semi-professional hockey teams from Slovakia, Switzerland, the U.S., and Germany. I was going to go to all three U.S. games but it was a bit expensive and I had other fun things to do with my Friday and Saturday afternoons :) so we just went Sunday afternoon for the U.S.-Germany game. "We" being me, another American friend from New York, and Hannah, who was cheering louder than either of us Americans, haha. 

The stadium is a little strange; the corners are actually right angles, as opposed to following the curve of the ice. They built it as a boxing stadium for the '72 Summer Olympics, then converted it after. There were some jolly drunk German men in front of us yelling at some other drunk U.S. fans across the corner, then they would turn around and fist bump us :)

This little guy is the hockey mascot they use for the Red Bull games, and he was at the Deutschland Cup game too. I'm not really sure why, seeing as he is neither a red bull or anything particularly German. Hannah and I decided he looked like a mouse/dinosaur, but he did a cartwheel on the ice so he got our approval.

It was weird (and cool) to hear all the announcing in German, and all the chanting and cheering, though there was more of that at the Red Bull game than the Deutschland Cup game. It was also interesting to hear the German national anthem and to hear a non-native speaker sing the U.S. national anthem. She was a pretty good singer and you could understand all the words she was saying, just a few times she used the wrong word, which caught us off guard. Some of them were entertaining, but I don't remember them anymore :/

Here's the stadium at the end of the game when they announced the results. We won the game and the tournament :) 'murica. 

Oh! One thing in this picture you can see, the face-off circles in the corners were filled in with ads, in addition to the middle one and all the other normal ones on the boards and such. At the Red Bull game that whole end section was filled with standing fans (including us) and what sounded like a full drumline. There might have only been two drummers, but they caused quite a ruckus and had a back-and-forth chant going for the majority of the third period.

I can't write a whole post and not mention food :) so here goes. At the U.S.-Germany game I had my first experience with Currywurst, which is delicious and VERY saucy. I'm surprised I didn't get any on me or spill it all over the place. I didn't take a picture, as my hands were a little full, but it basically just looks like a hot dog with spiced ketchup on it...which is exactly what it is.

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but Germany does this nifty thing where they charge you an extra deposit for the cup your drinks come in. That way you can use the same cup and get however many refills you want (are willing to pay for), then turn your cup in when you're done and get your money back. It would be like going to an amusement park and paying for one of those souvenir cups, then you could keep it forever or just give it back at the end of the day and get your money back. Magic.

Also off topic, but I'm doing my laundry so still related to life. It's a dark, scaryyy dungeon down there. The laundry machines are in the basement, which does have windows; HOWEVER daylight only lasts until about 4, so unless you get up at the ass-crack of dawn (which seems like kind of a popular time to do laundry a.k.a. it's impossible to get an open machine) chances are you will be in class or doing some other important thing during the non-terrifying hours of possible laundry doing time. Any other time you will have to brave the dark scary stone corridor where the lights are NEVER on (actually it might not even have lights) to make it to the laundry room with the automatic lights that are also NEVER on when you go down there, and only turn once you have practically run into the dryers.

Happy days!

General Update

Before I go into all the trips I haven't written about, I wanted to get a general thoughts and feelings update type of deal down on paper (figuratively). The posts show up newest first so this might not be in order anyways, but here you go :)

First for all of you Californians complaining about how cold it is there, you shut your mouths! hahaha. Someone on Facebook a few days ago posted a screen shot of the iPhone weather that said it was 39 degrees, and I almost felt bad for them UNTIL I saw that it was 9 IN THE AM. Not sorry, the high at 2 pm was still 57! Yes I went back and found the post to check, I also switched my phone to Fahrenheit so I can accurately tell you how cold it has been here. This week has been 45 degrees during the day (7 Celsius for my non-American friends) and yesterday I used the phrase "it's been warmer this week." I can actually walk around without zipping up my jacket! Last week it was 30 degrees. APPARENTLY in January and February it's know to be 0 degrees Fahrenheit on a regular basis, so that should be a fun time.

I'm actually really enjoying the cold right now, besides the fact that leaving my room is a full five minute ordeal. You can't just "run out of the house", you have to put on a million layers first. I LITERALLY factored in extra dressing time when setting my alarm clock for morning class on Tuesday. It's serious. Anyways, once I get all the extra layers on it's really great. I wear my high-er top TOMS with the fabric (almost spelled that with a k, thanks German) inside every day without my feet getting all hot and sweaty and gross. Sorry SLO, but you fail in that respect. Also in the whole "white Christmas" thing, although I guess it doesn't really snow on Christmas here, but it has snowed a few times so far and when it does it makes the Christmas markets all cute and magical.

Now sort of switching to school but still on the cold weather topic, I'm convinced that they have 15 minutes between each class because of the whole dressing-undressing ordeal, haha. It's like shedding every time you go into class, and each of the classrooms have a row of coat hangars next to the door, which about two people per room use. Everyone else just piles all their crap on their chair. Most restaurants have coat racks too, lined up on the wall and sometimes on the pillars next to tables, AND the long-distance trains have hooks next to the windows. Everyone dies of heat in the subway cuz there's always a billion people, and the heating in class is hit or miss. Either the professor likes it warm and it's stuffy, or they like fresh air and have flung all the windows open, making it freezing cold. German windows also have this nifty movement where you can crack them open a bit at the top, which makes the temperature of the room deceiving. You think it's fine until you're suddenly freezing again half-way through class.

So to speak about actual class, I have three engineering courses and three general studies courses, which make a whopping 14 hours of class a week. It's been a little like being on a 3 month vacation, since there are no homework assignments or projects or midterms or anything. We did have our first lab for my controls class on Monday, but when we got there the lab tech said that it wasn't mandatory and that we didn't have to stay. What. We did anyways, and I got to use electrical equipment that wasn't from the stone age! There were different colored lines on the display and everything, such a novelty.

There are lots of little things that are different about German classrooms (at least at my university, can't say anything about the others). First, the chalkboards are actually green, thank the Lord, not that awful orange-brown color that you can't see squat on. The chalkboards fold open, instead of those slidy ones they always show in movies about Ivy League schools or whatever, AND they move up and down, which I'm guessing is an ergonomic measure for the professors, since it really doesn't help out slow writers like yours-truly. Whenever they get to the bottom of the board and move it down to write up at the top again I have to stand up to see the notes.

They are also big fans of colored chalk/pens. Each classroom has a box with white, red, blue, yellow, and green chalk all neatly organized, and most students I've seen have a set of colored pens. Also, instead of the projector screens that you pull down and then roll back up when you're done, they have a solid square board that swings out to the angle you need. Certain professors are better at aligning it to the projector than others, haha. One of my professors is also really fond of using the pointer stick thing and the first time he used it it made such a solid scratching noise it kind of startled me, just one of those things that you're not used to. The students also do this thing where they knock on the desks at the end of lecture, it's just a respectful gesture to the teacher I think, like clapping. We've started to do it in classes where there's only international students, but it just doesn't sound the same with only 6 people, haha which is in two of my classes.

That's all my brain can remember at the moment, I'm sure other things will come up as I write about the various trips.

Oh! There is one thing. It may be because of the whole immersion thing, but I think the stereotype that German is an ugly language is silly. I find it to be rather pretty, call me crazy. It's grammar could be a little simpler, but it definitely doesn't sound as harsh as everyone seems to think/how it's portrayed in movies. At least for the Munich dialect, no guarantees about anywhere else!

St. Peter's Church

One day last week one of my classes got cancelled, but of course only half the people checked their email, so about five of us showed up and then figured it out and decided to go to Marienplatz and walk up the tower of St. Peter's Church, since I was the only one that had been up there so far. Marienplatz is the main city center so I've been there a million times, always it seems on a Saturday when giant crowds of tourists are about, but anyway this time there are pictures to show you :)

The day we went was relatively clear, so you can actually see the Alps! Hooray!

You can barely see the Alps, but that's also why the Munich skyline is so flat. There's some city ordinance that doesn't allow tall buildings in the south of the city for that very reason. In the bottom right of the picture you can see a little street market with tents and such, that's the Viktualienmarkt. They sell fruit and veggies and bread, and a friend got soup there one time haha, but it's nice to just walk around. There's also a Milka "World" nearby, which is why we were there in the first place :) haha.

Now my pictures are gonna go in a big circle from the first one, to the left. This is the old town hall, that steeple thing. Currently I think it's a toy museum, and from the display case outside it's rather creepy.

Here you can see the beginning of the Englischer Garten and the Theatinerkirche in the distance, and part of the Rathaus (the new town hall):

The Rathaus with Glockenspiel :)

and the Frauenkirche:

The main street in this picture has lots of shopping on it, there's an H&M and a new Forever 21, which has a U.S. section containing a lot of denim (gross), and other department stores/higher class shopping where I can't afford anything. I also bought my dirndl on this street :) 

In the very bottom left corner you can kind of see a balcony beneath a greyish/black roof. That's the Glockenspiel Cafe, you have to go through this little arched walkway in one of the buildings and take an elevator (there were also stairs, ha!) up to the cafe. We went up there while meandering about one day when it was nice outside. You can't really see anything except the inside courtyard of the other buildings, but you can see the sky and enjoy the fresh air and delicious hot chocolate :) They do have a fancier, inside part of the cafe thats looks down on Marienplatz and at the Rathaus, which is to the left of the picture. Some day we're gonna go back for some cake in this fancier part, they all looked glorious when we peaked in at them.

Weisswurst Fruehstueck and Deutsches Museum

I forgot something! In between the days we went to the Alps and the Englischer/Hofgarten, the International Club had a Bavarian Weisswurst Fruehstueck for us :) this is the English spelling, since my computer has neither umlauts (the two dots) nor the Beta "ss" character.

This breakfast is complete with weisswurst (white sausage), pretzels :)), radishes (kinda random? haha), sweet mustard, and weissbier. Here is a picture of the lovely combination:

My beer is covering all the radishes, haha but I ate some of those too. Traditionally the weisswurst skin is peeled off, but that's kind of a hassle so I was told you can also just eat it. However, old Bavarian men will look at you strangely and might comment on it. In my opinion, the weisswurst is really just a vessel with which you can eat sweet mustard, haha but they also had other kinds that were longer and thinner and flavored a little stronger, and I liked those better.

After the breakfast I went to the Deutsches Museum with some other Mechanical Engineering students and spent about three hours in there. I probably didn't even see an eighth of the whole museum, but I lost all the guys in the first ten minutes and went about all the exhibits in super nerdy fashion. I saw shipping, mining, oil and gas, machine tools, welding and soldering, and metal casting. I spent wayyy too long in the machine tools room looking at all the old mills and lathes and reading everything there was to read in English. There was a whole U-boat on display in the shipping section, and the mining exhibition was literally just an entire model underground mine that you could walk through. Sooo cool :)) I also got a free entrance ticket to the Mobility and Transport center of the Deutsches Museum, which is in a different building altogether, so definitely going to that soon!! 

Englischer Garten and Hofgarten :)

So if you haven't noticed yet, Englischer Garten is one of my favorite places ever :) but it's also massive, so I've only seen a small portion of it. It basically stretches from the city center to a little north of where I live, which takes ten minutes on the train, so I don't know how long it would take to run/walk, but plenty of people do!

Anywhooo, everyone was always talking about "the surfing place" on the Isar River, which winds through the Englischer Garten, so we went on a Sunday afternoon to check it out. I was picturing an actual establishment on the river, like one of those indoor wave pools or whatever, but that's not it at all.

Where the Englischer Garten starts there is a mainish road that the river flows under, and when it comes out of the tunnel under the road it makes a wave, which people then surf on. It's actually kind of frightening. Because the river is flowing so fast in that section and it's pretty narrow, I kept thinking the guys were going to hit their heads when they fell, but they were all pretty decent surfers and no one wiped out too hard. I'm not really sure how they learned to surf, it didn't seem all that beginner friendly, but it looked like fun. I took a few videos, but I'm having technical difficulties uploading them :( basically the surfers just took turns jumping off the levee onto the wave and surfed back and forth a few times, then let the next guy in line go.

There's also a Japanese tea garden that we tried to go to, but it was closed :( so we just meandered around and took in the beautiful autumn scenery.

After meandering around for a bit, we wandered down the street to the Hofgarten (mostly by accident).

The yellowish towers in the background of the last two photos are the Theatinerkirche, that really majestic all white church that we stumbled into before Oktoberfest. The garden ends at Odeonsplatz, where the church is, and there was a band complete with grand piano and cello playing a mini concert on the corner :)

Day Trip to the Alps

They have a day ticket in Bayern that's only 5 Euros each for a group of five and you can go anywhere you want on the trains and buses, so we rounded up some friends and took a trip to the Alps :))

It was a GORGEOUS sunny day where you could actually see the Alps in the distance, and we were all sitting in actual seats again (yay!) so it was a quite enjoyable train ride. Our train took us to a cute little town at the base of the Alps, where we caught a bus that took us to the other side of the mountain by way of a winding road beside a lake that was as smooth as glass and through trees that were starting to change color :) It dropped us off on the side of the road next to another calm lake, so smooth I wished I could water ski on it, but I'm sure it was freezing.

We then had a short gondola ride that took us up to this magical view:

There was a short trail that led from here to a mountainside restaurant, which we stopped at for some lunch. I had the same thing here as I did my first meal ever in Germany aaand I actually took a picture this time! It's essentially the best meal ever, called "Schweinebraten mit Kartoffelknodel", which (sort of) translates to "Roast Pork with Potato Dumpling." 

I can't even tell you how delicious it is. Most of the international students I know are not particularly fond of the potato dumpling, due to the very strange texture. It's kind of...gooey, haha but I love it so much! I'm attributing this to my German ancestry. 

Back to the hiking. We hiked passed the restaurant for about half an hour to the peak of the mountain, and in the shaded parts there was snow on the ground! but it was rather warm and sunny, by the time we got to the top I was just in my t-shirt. On the way up we saw the CUTEST Husky puppy of all time, and also this woman carrying a pug in a backpack, haha but I learned how to say "Your dog is adorable" in German: Ihr Hund ist niedlich. BOOM, so useful. Now I can pet puppies.

Snow :)

View towards Munich, with the cute little town on the lake we caught the bus from.

View towards the rest of the Alps.

We hiked back down to the restaurant and all shared a dessert of strips of pancake covered in powdered sugar with apple sauce on the side. It has a specific name that I've heard a few times now but can never remember. I'm sure I'll be having it again though! 

On the way back our bus driver was craaazyyy. The bus goes in a big loop so we didn't go back down the way we came, we continued along the road through some more very cute towns on VERY narrow country roads with cars going in both directions and through streets with buildings on both sides and no sidewalks and he just sped along around curves and corners like it was nobody's business. A BIT frightening. We did make it to our train on time though, so we were grateful. 

I was facing the back of the train and could see the Alps out the window almost half of the way home, before it got dark. I kept seeing this one section of mountain in between the buildings of the towns we passed through, and I felt really nerdy but it was cool to see the change in direction of the train the farther away we got :) ALSOOO on the way home my Cal Poly friend started singing Hakuna Matata in English, then a friend started singing it in French, then another friend sang it in Finnish. Definitely one of the greatest things to have EVER happened :))

Another day trip we took with the International Club was to Landsberg am Lech, which is a small town about an hour west of Munich. We also ended up sitting on the floor of this train, haha but at least people weren't constantly walking over us. We weren't sure what the draw to this town was, other than "cute" the I-club guides just said we would be hiking along a river and eating lunch, but since that is our favorite activity we were okay with it :)

The train station in Landsberg consisted of a grand total of one track and we walked almost the entire length of the main city in ten minutes, but it was indeed very cute.

 

There was a wall separating us from this section of the river; however, two of our fellow students thought it would be a good idea to jump off this wall onto the cement below. Yeahhh, it's not quite as dry as it looks. They slipped right onto their bums and walked around with dirty pants for the rest of the day.

  

I don't know if you can tell, but there's a tower in the middle of this photo sticking in between the trees that's a half circle. We were all really confused why they only had half a tower, but it seems like it was built that way.

This lovely river is the one that we "hiked", aka strolled, along for an hour to the restaurant where we had lunch. It was literally the only thing out there along the trail and was called "Teufelsküche", or Devil's Kitchen haha. Their food was amazing though! I had the Käsespätzle, which is basically German mac n cheese, meaning it has fried onions on it haha, but it actually came with salad! I think that's the last time I ate vegetables in a restaurant :) 

 

This was the view out by the restaurant and they're outside the frame of this photo but there was a giant flock of swans across the river from us. That's as close as I've gotten to the massive creatures so far, and I'm a little afraid for when I do. Apparently they're pretty fierce.

This was the view from the bottom of the half tower:

 

We tried to go up the tower stairs, since we saw people up there and the door was open, but apparently that was a special tour. We got half way up and then this lady started yelling at us to go back down, but yay for exercise!

My oh my. I am FINALLY going to wrap up Oktoberfest for you all, even though it ended two weeks ago, there are cute pictures and important details to be shared :))

First, the super cliche ones. The last Friday of Oktoberfest was a bit of a madhouse, but we braved it anyway in hopes of good times and bratwurst (but personally mostly bratwurst)((bratwurst = good times)). Before even making it to a tent, I had to stop and buy one of these guys:

 

These little heart cookies are EVERYWHERE, as I think I've mentioned before, and this was the smallest size you could buy. It says "Ich liebe dich", which means "I love you", and TECHNICALLY someone else is supposed to buy it for you, but I bought it for myself and pretended it was from someone else ;) happy days. According to anyone who is from Munich, you do not eat the "lebkuchen" from Oktoberfest, you just keep it as a memento and buy actual, decent-tasting lebkuchen from a bakery, of which there are no shortage in any part of the city. I however, am not a fan of letting cookies go stale just to throw them away eventually anyway (and part of the icing got crushed as we were stampeding into the Hofbrau tent) so I went for it! and instantly regretted my decision. Well maybe not regretted it, I would have never known right? but these things are definitely better appreciated as a keepsake than a sweet. It was AWFUL. Simply dreadful. In summary, I will never be eating one of those again, nor will I partake in this apparent "decent-tasting" lebkuchen. There's no improving that, haha.

*side note for Schaefers: The whole thing was eerily close to how our gingerbread houses would taste, if we were ever brave (or stupid) enough to eat them. The gingerbread was very similar, except actually chewable (heheee) and the icing was exactly the same! Super hard and gross.

 Now for the best part! Bratwurst:

SOOO GOOD. Like the best hot dog you've ever eaten, plus a little extra just for authenticity and real identifiable meat :) We never ended up all getting into a tent that Friday, but none of us really cared, we got our bratwurst and were happy.

The very last Sunday of Oktoberfest we started early, at noon :) We had no trouble getting into a tent or finding a table and sat down next to a Croatian man and two South African pilots. We were then joined by a newly married couple, who were not only from California but the guy graduated as a biomedical engineer from Cal Poly in 2008! Such a small world. We spent the majority of our day there, standing on the benches and singing along with the band :))

Ein Prosit der Gemuetlichkeit!

This feels like ages ago, but I'm finally going to tell you about my trip to Salzburg! We went on Oct. 3rd (yikes, like two weeks ago) because that is the Day of German Unity (national holiday) and EVERYTHING in the country was going to be closed, much like Sundays. So we just crossed on over the border to Austria! The train was so full that everyone got split up and I ended up sitting on the stairs that led up to 1st class with three other girls from the international program, one from England, one from Finland, and one from Spain, sooo awesome :)) Anyway, because we were sitting on the stairs that led to 1st class people kept insisting on walking up them and I had to keep moving out of the way. My friend Kate however, was lucky enough to keep sitting while the 1st classers did this, but unlucky in the fact that all their butts were right next to her face. This led to a new game of "rate people's butts as they go by", but then a bunch of older men wanted to go up and we axed it pretty quickly, hahaha.

So Salzburg, the first place we went was a garden I don't remember the name of in front of a "castle" that looked very un-castle like by Bavarian standards and was said to be for official "meetings" of the king, but was actually where his mistress lived. Classyyy. It had a lot of unicorns in it.

Or I guess that would be a Pegasus? and some very nice flower designs:

The actual castle is the distant building up on the hill, but on the way there we stopped in the "city center" area to get some foooood. And see this fountain:

Complete with even more unicorns/pegasi(?). They also showed us the smallest house in all of Austria:

Someone does actually live there, only in the top part :/ the bottom floor is a watch maker's shop. Oh speaking of bottom floors! Another observation about Germany, they start the numbering for their floors at zero, so the ground floor of every building is 0, not 1. For THE LONGEST time I was trying to find my window from the outside of the building and I was always thinking that I had accidentally left my window open, when in fact I was looking at the window of the room below me. While I'm on the subject of observations: 

1. Handkerchiefs are apparently still a thing

2. There's always a large cluster of people smoking outside every building, at school or otherwise

3. Trash cans are tiny. They're like the chihuahuas of dogs, or hairless cats.

The ones at Oktoberfest were especially bad, they're just not built to handle the trash of 7 million people haha. Anyway, on to my favorite part of the day! Lunch! Here it is in all it's glory:

That, my friends, is deliciousness served in its true form. Schnitzel :)) Also some sort of creamy onion soup, potatoes, and a hand full of vegetables probably added as an afterthought haha. After this hearty meal they made us walk uphill for an hour to the castle :/ but we got a lovely view out of it:

We didn't actually go in the castle cuz that requires money that we would all rather spend on food, haha. We also walked past Mozart's birthplace, this lovely yellow building:

He was born on the 2nd floor I think? A few of our fellow internationals went into the museum they have in there, but instead we went to get Starbucks and walk around the street, which was a little full.

Things we discovered: 

1. The Starbucks pastry section in Salzburg is full of wondrous things, like donuts.

2. Starbucks itself was fit into what was once probably a courtyard/basement, instead of a free standing building with a drive-thru.

3. McDonald's sells hamburgers on baguette rolls with waffle fries. Whaaat.

4. The city of Salzburg puts Mozart's face and/or name on ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING: chocolate, coffee shops, flower stands, rubber duckies, puppets, ice cream flavors, pretzels, need I go on?

Speaking of Mozart pretzels, I didn't get one, but I did get a close imitation. Directly next to the Mozart pretzel was this chocolate covered woven pastry thing, which ended up having cinnamon sugar inside it! Magic. That is all for Salzburg, I don't think I ate anything else worth mentioning :) haha.

Oh Schloss Neuschwanstein.

I would say my favorite part was the lovely view of the valley below and Alps in the distance, but it was so foggy we couldn't see anything! From the little town the bus drops you off in you're supposed to be able to see two castles. This one:

Castle Hohenschwangau, build by King Ludwig's father, where Ludwig grew up/took the throne. And Neuschwanstein, but it is much grander and on a much higher peak and was covered by mist. We walked about halfway up the road and it finally appeared:

Here's the view from the little tourist shop:

The inside of the castle tour didn't allow pictures, but I got this one before she informed us of that :)

The castle is actually unfinished so we only saw two-ish floors of it, but that is probably for the best, as I find the inside of castles overstimulating and generally unnerving. Just imagine the above picture as the blandest thing you've ever seen, then add five different types of gaudy wall paper in each of the open beige areas, trimmed with gold, enclosing a scene from a Wagner opera. Add some dark stain woodwork just as busy as the wall patterns, a giant chandelier shaped like a crown, take away half the natural lighting (since small arch windows in 5 foot thick stone walls don't tend to let in much light) and viola! You're standing in the Original "Fairy Tale" castle! Personally I like the version at Disneyland much better, but it was quite amazing to see and I will probably be touring some more completely finished castles, so pray for my sanity :))

After the tour we walked out to Marienbrucke (Mary's Bridge) for the best, most famous view of the castle:

hahaha. But I thoroughly enjoyed the view of the waterfall:

and this gentleman's lovely musical talent:

of which I listened to for probably half an hour. All in all a most excellent day :)

Friday was a bit of a food adventure day for me. I went with another girl from Cal Poly that also lives in the Studentenstadt to get lunch at one of the many Bavarian restaurants near Marienplatz. We got lost trying to find a restaurant that ended up being closed and found this lovely little street:

Then picked a new restaurant on the other side of Marienplatz on this street:

Yes, all of the buildings here are 5 stories tall and no, in certain areas of "downtown" I'm still not sure what distinguishes sidewalk from street. It all looks the same and both people and cars travel on it, haha.

For lunch I went with the simple weiner wurstl, which looks like your average hot dog but tastes more like polska kielbasa, a.k.a. delicious, and comes with potato salad (kartoffelsalat).

I also tried the "water with gas", described to me as simple fizzy water, but experienced more as straight awfulness. It's also the same price for water as it is for soda, so I think I'll be sticking to spetzi :) For dinner the girl across the hall and I ventured three train stops down from where we live to a random food stand recommended to her by our German flatmate. The stand only sells doner kebabs, and they're DELICIOUS. Very similar to gyros, except also infused with love and magic. My immediate love for them might have something to do with the withdrawals I am having due to the distinct lack of Mexican food, or anything-wrapped-in-a-tortilla food, but we decided to get them again for lunch tomorrow so we will see if the love saga continues. Redeeming side note: I am totally addicted to giant pretzels :)

I almost forgot the best part! After lunch we ventured in this giant 8 floor store similar to Sears and found the BEST Lego section in any store ever. Here's why:

No wonder Germans are so smart! They have fully functioning Lego engines to play with in department stores! There were moving pistons and everything. Immediately next to this was a two foot Batman statue :))

BMW BMW BMW!

So cool. On Thursday we had a tour of the BMW Welt (World) and production plant :)) I have never seen another car manufacturing plant, so I have nothing to compare it to, but BMW's is crazy awesome. We started the tour where they stamp out the doors, then they took us through the welding of the frame (5,990 spot welds on the 3 series), painting of the frame, building of the engines, attachment of the frame to the chassis, running of electrical wiring (there's a ton of it, like 3 km in each car or something crazy like that), and final assembly with seats and windows. I apologize to my technical writing teacher for that awful list, but hopefully you all made it through without too much of an issue. Pictures weren't allowed during the tour, but I got some sweet pictures inside the Welt :) Also none of us are sure why, but in the walkway leading to the painting "booth" there was a distinct fish smell. If anyone can explain some magical paint/solvent mixture that results in a fishy smell I'll buy you German chocolate :) There's also a museum out there that is separate from the factory tour, so I'll definitely be going to that at some point!

The "Four Cylinders" building, a.k.a. BMW headquarters:

Main entrance to the Welt:

The road inside where people can drive away in their brand new BMWs from the plant:

And me with my weird liking for hatchbacks: