While we missed Oktoberfest by a few weeks, we still found some nice stuff to do in Munich. It’s a nice city for walking around, and while the fest wasn’t happening, it’s still an amazing place to drink beer. There are a couple local brands that caught my attention in particular: Adechs and Augsutiner. We stopped at the Haufbrauhaus (a Munich landmark and, as it turns out, Hitler’s favorite beer hall) but weren’t as impressed with the quality, just the quantity.

I’m getting ahead of myself a little. Before going to the Haufbrauhaus, we spent a few hours walking around, made easy by the fact that Munich is very flat with a lot of old, beautiful buildings. Like most of the other cities in Europe, we’re kind of visiting them at the beginning of the off-season, so the weather can be hit-or-miss. Munich was having a bit of a ‘miss’ on the day we arrived. We actually got rained on during the walk from the U-Bahn stop to our apartment. Thankfully the apartment was warm and dry. It even came with a bottle of white wine and some coffee. We spent a day walking around the city and saw a lot of beautiful things.

The surfing in the park was pretty cool. It’s a standing wave on the Eisbach, a man-made river that flows through the Englischer Garten. The surfers line up along the side of the wave and wait for their turn. It was fun to watch, and other spectators were lined up along the bridge that overlooks the wave.It’s a decent size and the water moves pretty fast. The video on wikipedia (link in the caption) gives you a good sense of what it looks like. I took my own video but I’m having upload issues with youtube.

After Munich, we took a train (first-class!) to a small town called Garmisch-Partenkirchen, which sits in the shadow of a mountain called Zugspitze. We had an amazing time and some photos from there are already up on our facebook pages. But I don’t want to wear you out, so think I’ll save that post for tomorrow…