Today was a good day. Munich is a really nice town with a cool vibe.

Neither Alison or I got a lot of sleep last night unfortunately. The vent in our room lets in all the noise from the bar area, and weirdly it is quieter in the halls than in our room. We also had some noisy roommates and the heat was bumpin. I know I have mentioned roommates a lot, but they really do have an effect on your day especially if said day starts with only four solid hours of sleep. Oof.

ANYWAYS. Happier times were ahead. We grabbed breakfast at the hostel, and headed to Marienplatz. We toured the tower of the New Town Hall and caught the morning Glockenspiel. Honestly I don’t get the appeal. It’s a bunch of statues that turn and move. But the kids around us were super into it which was cute.

We also visited Asamkirche which is this tiny church literally between two shops. What it lacks in space it makes up for in opulence. Wowza. It packs a major gold punch.

Next stop was about a half a mile down the road. The science museum was okay. It had some unusual exhibits on photography, fabrics, and a lot of airplanes. It didn’t really have a clear focus on any of the exhibits and it kind of felt like a hodgepodge of antiques. It wasn’t the best thing we have spent money on, but it was a nice change of pace.

Oh wait! I had read online that the museum is in the process of upgrading some exhibits as they are a little outdated (this review said a plaque said a space probe was set to land in 1995). One of the exhibits today was on new technology and it included being able to send email. I’m not sure if it was there as irony or what. We even used a touchscreen to send it! Very confusing but provided some good laughs.

We walked back the other direction to the New Pinakothek museum. So far Alison has been able to get a student discount for the tickets which has saved us some money already! The museum was really neat, although both Al and I would say there wasn’t nearly enough Impressionist art. They had Van Gogh’s Sunflowers which I learned he painted from actual flowers he had bought to decorate the guest rooms of the house he rented in Arles. He had hoped his friend and fellow artist Gauguin would join him. Unfortunately for Van Gogh he did not and the two would later have a falling out. On the bright side, society got some pretty fantastic art out of his misery (isn’t that always the case?).

The picture of the man with an umbrella over him is called The Poor Poet by Carl Spitzwig. It is one of Germany’s most famous paintings even though when it came out there was people thought the artist was mocking poetry and disliked him for it. The painting of the four men sitting in a bench are all prisoners in a debtors prison. The artist didn’t have enough money for models so he used the men from the prison near his studio for multiple studies.

We ended the day at another Augustiner restaurant. Alison had a schnitzel the size of a small dog, and I had turkey steak with a baked potato. It was probably the best thing I have eaten so far on the trip. Also here is a picture of my beer next to the ketchup bottle on the table.

Tomorrow we are going on a tour of Dachau. It is the first concentration camp created. I am hoping to learn more about the history and its role in the War. Afterwards we are going to try to fit a tour of the Royal residences.