All Churched Out ;)

Saturday 21st - a full day of München :D

It was straight into tradition as soon as we were ready to go. Off to a beer garden around the block from Anthea's place (named by Anthea "the jungle garden" very fitting as it indeed felt like you were in a bit of a mish mash of jungle with an odd assortment of decorative sculptures and installments) to have some Weisswurst and Weissbier for breakfast - very Munich of us :D. Yup beer for breakfast! just after we'd brushed our teeth! The sausages for brekkie were yummy but the beer was a little hard to stomach - I don't think I'm cut out to be Bavarian :s - and the bread was delicious!!! freshly baked and still warm! plus I had my first very own Brezel. Yum! 

After brekkie we walked down to the river to have a look see, very nice, you wouldn't think you were in a city area :) loads of people chilling out river side, and cycling along, and then it was off to see the main drag in the city before we headed off to the lake for some swimming and sunning - finally!!! We'd told Anthea about our experience with the most garish church ever and she then said she would show us a church that she thought would beat it. So after we looked in a couple of shops, we met up with Simon just outside the church and then went in. She was right! it was absolutely amazingly over the top - I've never seen so much tackiness all in one place! It was pretty cool - there were golden skeletons and Golden babies vomiting golden sunbeams. One of the statues was holding golden chains to it's baby angel slaves who had golden collars - very odd decoration! and then again all the different colored marble you could imagine and the twirly columns. Wow.

Having taken all that in, we were all pretty ready for a break from the site seeing so off we went to catch the U-Bahn to the lake. One of the people we met last night, Jane, was also keen to come along and when we got off the train she'd been on the same one! So the five of us went up and got some ice cream while we waited for the bus to take us to the lake. Man it was hot! a high of 29 degrees that day! (I decided that the good weather had to have been mine and Ingo's doing, as they informed us that the summer in Munich so far had been pretty crappy up till that point)

The lake was awesome! like a beach with grass - although not as clean :s I skipped the first swim, happy was I to just be able to soak up some sun, and when I went in for the second excursion I almost got right back out again, man it was freezing!!! But with the threat of Ingo and Simon ready to splash anyone chicken enough not to go right in I quickly dipped down, didn't make it any warmer like they'd promised but at least the threat was gone :) Jane had also come super prepared with some chocolate biscuits of which I think I devoured most :/ Simon coming in a close second, apples and some crackers, and so we had ourselves a fun wee time down at the lake. I'm no browner thanks to the summer season being all but over, the sun wasn't that strong, and with the sun smart kiwi attitude I had some sunblock on so there wasn't really that much hope for me :s but oh well! I tried! After we finished up at the lake, we took the same path back and then we said goodbye to Jane. 

The rest of us went over to Simons place for a quick beer, on the way stopping at a supermarket for some supplies, where we saw a poster advertising a round the world trip stopping in; Fiji, LA, New Zealand and Auckland! haha they listed Auckland as separate ;) very funny) Ingo had a couple of friends he knew from his Uni studies; Sebastian and Eva, who he wanted to meet up with, so Simon told us about this place to eat near his place and we arranged to meet them there. They arrived and we ordered, I didn't really get the chance to talk to them during dinner, the table was long and narrow so it was kind of hard to talk to anyone but the people immediately opposite you, but we had a good time, and afterwards Sebastian and Eva came back to Simons with us for a drink which was cool :) They're really cool people and their english was awesome (with me, Anthea and Simon all with minimal German skills it made sense to stick with the English - although I think Simon and Anthea's aren't as bad as they say ;))  

Then back to home base for a relatively early night :)