Germany - Munich

I arrived in Munich with nowhere to stay, having for the first time failed to book any accommodation ahead. This was because I had a friend in the city, but was unable to get in contact with him in time, and so wandered out of the station to find a hostel. Luckily, I stumbled across one of the best hostels I've been to yet, which had just one bed left. Result!

The governmental building is still covered in bullet holes from WWII

The hostel, unusually, provided a free walking tour of the city which I of course took advantage of. Led by quite a character indeed, it ended up taking over 4 hours, leading us all over the city. He gave a great deal of background to the history of the place and pointed out some of the stranger things, such as a statue built to celebrate a victory over Napoleon that never happened as, strangely, Napoleon was their ally at the time. How does that work!?

The beer halls even have lockers to keep your own beer steins

Most exciting of all the sights were the famous beer halls, which are a bit like pubs except enormously bigger, sometimes with seating for thousands. We stopped in a few on the tour, for the requisite, ridiculously-sized 1 litre beer, which is a bit like weight-lifting to drink thanks to the forearm strength required to raise the glass to your lips.

Monumental 1930s architecture

The beer hall I found most interesting is the one where the first meeting of the Nazi party arguably took place. Munich is (in)famously considered the birth place of Nazism, although you'd be hard-pressed to know it by walking around. There are no plaques, tourist information or even memorials noting this, although perhaps this is for the best. The city seems to be torn between wanting to forget its evil past, and trying to remember so that it is never repeated. While almost all the war damage has been carefully cleaned up and erased from view, bullet holes are still left on some government buildings and the university gates, as a reminder to future generations of what began here.

It's hard to gauge the scale in this pic, but that glass is bigger than my head

Eventually my friend, Marcus, called me and we met up. He had only just moved to Munich, which was quite a surprise to me as the last time I heard from him, he was living in north-western Germany. We went to one of the beer halls and had more deliciously oversized beers. Munich really is the beer capital - it has the most breweries of anywhere in the world, and the highest consumption - 1.5 litres a day! That's 0.5l for each meal, and yes, they really do drink beer with breakfast!

Surfers in the English Garden

I really liked Munich, it's a very vibrant city full of young people with lots going on. In just one day I was able to see a festival of European cultures spread all down the main street, some of the best free musical performances I've seen, and even watch people surfing in the main city park! Definitely a place to return to, perhaps in Oktober time, as I heard there's some kind of...Fest....held here I might be slightly interested in.