After spending my first night in the hostel bar, not really moving from the pool table, I woke up wanting to get out and see the city. The hostel I'm staying at offers a free walking tour of the city, and although I usually tend to avoid that sort of thing I'm really glad I went on it. I got a lot of historical and cultural information about Munich, and our guide also took us to a great food market, where I got an amazing roast pork roll, a frothy beer and some authentic German gummi bears.
When the tour came to an end I teamed up with Neil, a Scottish guy, and Mandy, an American girl, and we went to the Hofbrauhaus - the most famous of Munich's many beer halls. I couldn't believe that I had been in Italy only one day before, because the Hofbrauhaus is probably the most German place in the world. Three litre-sized glasses of beer (called a maß) were plonked down on our table, we ordered a massive, doughy pretzel, and then after a heartfelt 'prost' we got down to some drinking as an oompah band played on in the background.
Munich is in Bavaria - the most 'German' area of Germany in terms of cultural stereotypes like laderhosen, beer drinking, big moustaches and so on. It seems to me that these Bavarians have really got things sussed out; the most important things in the world are beer and a wide array of tasty pork products to tuck into whilst drinking your beer. By law you can drink a litre of beer during your working day. You can bring your dog to work, and it's perfectly legal to wander the streets with a bottle of beer in your hand (which we did ourselves). I need to come back here for Oktoberfest. Or maybe to live...
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