Grafenwhoer and Munich

We spent Thursday at the base .. the base is made up of an old area which was once Hitler’s barracks and a newer area. The old area is eerie.. being very “German” in style and knowing that it is where Hitler had  a military base. Thank God it is now all AMERICAN!!!! But they do train with many different nations. It is huge.. The old barracks and buildings are all in the German style and there is even a tower that everyone calls “Hitler’s Tower”. So strange that there are cute painted shutters on the windows.. Very strange to me..

Anyway, Kelly and I spent the day there. We woke up at 4:45am to take Ezy to the base and we watched Revelry from the car (actually when they play Revelry everyone must stand at attention and that includes us)..  It was cold and dark even at 7am.

Around 7am.. Cold and dreary…

Revelry

Kelly showed me around the base including the PX which makes you feel like you are back home.. feels like a Super Walmart! With a big supermarket with almost everything you can think of..Pretty cool!

Here are the barracks and Hitler’s Tower, notice the shutters?

Street in Munich

Entrance to Old Town Munich

Do you see the icicles on the fountain?

The New Town Hall

Glockenspiel

The Old Town Hall rebuilt after WW2

The weekend showed up we decided to go to Munich a 3.5 hour train ride away.. It was really cold but this time we were prepared and bundled up and it was great!

We got to the train station with its food courts and modern facilities and headed to the old town. Old town is just within a block or two, so off we went.

Munich was basically destroyed by the Allies in 1945 so most of it was rebuilt but the “New Town Hall” has a glockenspiel which plays at 11am and noon.. It depicts a story of a 16 century wedding where the bride and groom (a Duke) watch while their families joust with each other. (His German, her’s French)

The Town Hall sits in a Plaza called the Marianplatz which means Mary’s place. There is a gold statue of the Virgin Mary that was made in 1638 and brought to this place and not destroyed.

Across the way is the Old town hall that was completely destroyed and rebuilt the way it was.

We walked and walked.. there are areas that are residential, commercial with designer stores, restaurants and beer houses.

Since Ezy and Kelly have been here a number of times they knew where they wanted to eat.. and the Hofbrauhouse was the place.. it is a very old and HUGE brewery and restaurant.. totally packed, jammed packed full of tourists and locals eating all kinds of German food.. from Bratwurst to dumplings and apple strudel. They even have 2 women who walk around selling pretzels.. German pretzels are suppose to be the best.. but I was not impressed.. I love PA soft pretzels way way better..

What is way cool is that they have a special room for locals to store their beer steins under lock and key. They have a copper sink where you wash your stein and then lock it up for next time.

Once we had enough food.. we stayed there over 3 hours!! The best part of the meal was the apple strudel. YUM!

We made our way (or rolled our way) out of the crowded restaurant and found a gorgeous store similar to Harrods with all the fantastic foods you can possibly think of.. beautiful cakes, breads, jams, wurst, coffees etc. Good thing we were stuffed to the gills otherwise we might have gone nuts in the shop and as you can tell from the price of the avocados.. it sure ain’t cheap.. but we just browsed and took pix and out into the cold we went.

The plaza was completely overrun with people by the time we finished lunch and since each of us were done by then, we headed back to the train station for the 3.5 hour trip back to Pressath..

I messed up loading the pictures in so the post is a little funky.. so please forgive.  I am also working on a slow computer and it takes way longer then it should.

I hope most of the pictures are self explanatory.

Next weekend we plan to go to Nuremberg so hopefully will have more pictures by then and more stories.