rewind to munich

in my continuing series "rewind to all the cities we visited but i didn't post enough pictures of," we've reached city number 3: munich, germany.

i blogged briefly about the english gardens in munich, part of our bike tour of the city that ended in me and jenny trying (successfully) to bike after drinking two pints of beer.  a river runs through the gardens, and at one point, water rushes through this tunnel (note the sign saying it is "verboten" (forbidden) to surf here): 

and comes out in such a way that waves are generated which are apparently perfect for surfing on/in!  (our tour guide, a hawaiian guy, says he surfs every morning before coming to work to lead these mike tours.)  think of it as a treadmill for surfers - they can basically stay in place, riding wave after wave, until they wipe out.  you'll also note in this picture the line of surfers in the background waiting for their turn to jump in:



this all appears VERY dangerous, and it is - there an australian who died here when surfing last year, and they still haven't found the body.  um, too scary for me.

one night while we were in munich we went to the hofbrauhaus, a huge beer hall in town that seats hundreds of people and serves traditional german food and beer.  (photo credit: random spanish guy whom we shared a table with.)  we went just intending to have a beer and then go to dinner, but the place was PACKED and it was so fun that we ended up having several beers and having dinner there.  i had spatzle, a traditional dish - cheesy noodles with caramelized onions on top.  DELICIOUS.

when we were in munich we also took a bus out of town to the dachau concentration camp...if you're interested in seeing more photos, you can go to my picasa page (http://picasaweb.google.com/claire.logsdon), but i did want to post one photo from the gate that would have been the first view the inmates had of dachau.  if you're a student of history you will have seen this phrase before ("work will make you free"), and the most famous photo containing this phrase is from the gates at auschwitz.  (photo credit: jenny)