The Munich Superpost

Day One: Tuesday, June 16, 2009

So I’m here in Munich now, and unfortunately for all of you, my dear readers, the hotel we’re staying in now is a bit….lackluster. Let me put it this way: I feel that, as a human being and a Georgia Tech student, I only need two commodities (note: I count a Bed and Shower as the reason for a Hotel room existing, and therefore do not count them as commodities) from a Hotel to be satisfied. Air Conditioning and Internet Access. Unfortunately, the Hotel Europa here has neither of those. Well, let me be more precise. It has absolutely no air conditioning whatsoever, and has internet access at the price of 17 Euros per day. ….think I’ll pass on that one.

But let me rewind a bit and see if I can come up with any stories on the way. We got up nice and early to load the bus once again today, and by 09:30 we were rolling away from the Hotel Duo in Prague and on our way to Deutschland. Per usual, Sydney slept the whole way. The whole way. I passed the time by listening to music, reading the Bible some, and polishing off my Zelda notes (example: I’ll need to shave 10 minutes off my Water Temple time of 27 minutes in order to be on par with the world record). We also learned that our next drive, from Munich to Brussels, is going to take upwards of ten hours in driving time, which likely means it’ll take us fifteen hours to get from point A to point B. I’m not really looking forward to that…I might just finish a book or something, since my laptop battery will only last for 2 or 3 hours these days.

Oh, and come to think about it, there was one interesting story from the bus ride. When we pulled out of our Hotel in Prague, Sally (group leader) got on the bus microphone and asked everybody why James (not my roommate James, a different James) got left all by himself at a club the night before. Everyone chuckled for a moment, and when it became obvious that Sally was waiting for an answer, someone finally shouted “Because he couldn’t lock it in!” Everyone got a good laugh out of that, although apparently what happened was that James ended up going home with some random European girl he met at the club and took a bus back to the hotel at 6 AM. The college lifestyle in Europe?

Upon arriving in Munich, though, and unpacking my various items in my room (i.e. hanging up my suit), the five of us (Carol, Kate, Sydney, Lindsay and I, and if you don’t know who ‘the five of us’ refers to by now I must be awful at making those names memorable) went out to do laundry. Actually, the whole ordeal started off with Sydney in the hallway telling me to “hurry up” because I was “worse than Ryan Adams” and “making everybody late.” Well we weren’t in any rush, because we got lost, and stayed lost for about an hour before we eventually found a Laundromat. So we all did laundry, and thankfully I’m pretty sure it’ll last us the remainder of the travel portion of the program! (This is Sydney typing) We wouldn’t have gotten lost, if Peter had come out on time, because we could have followed the people who actually knew how to get to the laundry place. (This is Peter) I probably would have been able to get ready faster if Sydney wasn’t screaming in my ear the whole time like a freaking banshee. I practically went deaf listening to “PETER! *man voice* PETAH!!!! YOU’RE WORSE THAN RYAN ADAMS! WE’RE LEAVING WITHOUT YOU! Etc….etc….”

We also hit up a grocery store for dinner products. I just got break and some Salami, and a single beer to drink (Beer is literally the cheapest liquid you can purchase here in Germany) and Twix for desert. The whole thing came to less than 4 Euros, so the grocery store is definitely the best deal in town. Note to all of you though, American candies taste funny in Europe. Just an FYI.

So we made our way back to the Hotel and ate our food, and afterwards one of the guys in our group came by and told us they had found a Bowling Alley. So we went Bowling! I jumped over things on the way there and Sydney told me I was dumb, per usual. Bowling was kind of expensive, I think I paid almost 15 Euros for 2 games of Bowling and one more beer. Now I also know that two beers is more than enough for me to drink it a short span of time.

The first game of bowling was fantastic. I started off awful, and I’ll blame the alcohol and slippery floors for that, so my score was only 38 after 6 frames, and I was in last place. Over the next 4 frames, though, I got two strikes and a spare, and ended up tying for first place with 112 points. Awesome! The second game was just bad though. I didn’t really have my head in the game and so I think I bowled a 75 and came in second-to-last. Haha. Oh, and for the record, Sydney finally got herself a White Russian at the Bowling place’s bar. It cost her almost 7 Euros, but she drank it all, the alcoholic. The bartender seemed pretty new, she said, and gave her a lot of Vodka and Kailua, so you know it was strong stuff... Sydney seems to have a higher tolerance for liquor than I do, though, and she likes to remind me of that all the time. It’s annoying.

Okay, and I’m going to let Sydney herself type a story for you all now. Apparently, I was pretty funny on the way back to the Hotel from the Bowling Alley tonight and I figure its best for her to share the story so that you can get the funniest possible perspective. So here’s Sydney:

(Sydney) Hello everyone.. this is Sydney now. The best writer ever. And boy, do I have a story for you. Our dear friend Peter, sometimes known as PPOP decided that even though he seems to have a very low tolerance for alcohol, that he would drink two beers. TWO WHOLE BEERS. Shocking, right? So Peter’s quite tipsy. And we’re walking back to the hotel from this bowling alley, through Munich, and Peter’s running and jumping all over the place. Like a crazy person. He’s trying to clear these EXTREME fire hydrants and practically killing himself in the process. So Lindsay makes the mistake of telling him that he reminds her of a video game character, and boy, does this make the situation even more incredible. Peter gets even more riled up, swerving through the streets, jumping, flipping, and trying to clear any tall object he can find. Well I’m just standing there hoping I’m not gonna end up spending my time in Munich in an emergency room explaining how and why my friend managed to break every bone in his body jumping over a bush or something. So yeah… it was pretty hilarious.

(This is Peter again) Okay, so obviously Sydney was pretty excited about all that. Glad she could impart her excitement upon you. I personally don't see what's so exciting about it....I mean, I do it all the time anyway.

And I think that sums up today. Oh, I think James (roommate) has a girlfriend now…..so……crap.

I’m going to go to bed for the night, and hopefully find a way to keep my window open so we don’t fry, but also keep all the bugs from coming in (because the windows don’t have screens!). I hope everything is going well back at home.

12 days until Oxford!


Day Two: Wednesday, June 17, 2009

First of all, even though I said this in my miniature update on Wednesday, I want to extend another (this time belated) Happy Birthday to my little sister. Happy Birthday Jen! Hope your 16th was a good one.

So on to my day, I suppose. Well, per usual, it was an early morning. Breakfast was from 07:00 and 08:00, and then class ran from 08:00 to 11:15. Good stuff! As usual, Music lecture was interesting and I….oh wait, I got my laptop from my room and therefore did NOT fall asleep in Art.

Sydney and I had another argument during lecture (what else do we ever do?), and I want to share this one with you, because it baffled me. It was during the fifteen minute break between Music and Art lectures, and I was wasting the time by (and I know this is very lame, so you don’t need to remind me) writing the Zelda ocarina songs on a piece of note paper I had. Lindsay was sitting on one side of me, and she leaned over and asked what I was doing, and since it was such a lame thing to be doing, I told her I preferred not to tell. Sydney was on my other side, and she knew what I was doing, and she told me not to be so hissy pissy or whatever and to share what I was doing. So I told her to stop being so nosey. So here’s where the argument began. I tell her not to be nosey and she tells me that she isn’t. But then she goes on to say that if I read something she was typing on her laptop right next to me and asked her what it was, that would be nosey. Double standard?

After class we left the hotel to walk to our museum visit for the day, and for the life of me I can’t remember how to spell its name. Oh wait….here it is, the Alte Pinakothek. The long and short of the inside of the museum is that I didn’t like it much. The art inside just wasn’t very interesting, and none of it really struck a chord with me. However, the outside of the museum was beautiful. It was surrounded on all sides by a big grassy field with trees on all sides, so when we had an hour to eat lunch and none of us were hungry, the five of us plopped down on the grass and basked in the sun a bit. It was nice.

Oh, and I should mention that we ran into a student protest on the way to the museum. Not a little one, a legitimate protest. There were police and everything. But apparently the kids were mad about having to pay for college. Go figure. We all stood on the grass and watched them (probably over a thousand) march past.

After the museum we walked back to the hotel, I made myself a sandwich, and then we got on the bus for an optional day trip. Normally I don’t go on these optional day trips, but this one really sounded like it was worth it. We went to Dachau, the Nazi concentration camp responsible for upwards of 30,000 deaths. There was something very oppressing about the place. Well, that gives it a negative connotation, so how about I say it was definitely an eye opening experience. It was eerie, too, standing in the rooms where you know people were exterminated. You could almost feel the essence of those rooms, standing there in them. It was overwhelming, and very solemn. It’s probably one of the things I’ll remember most about this trip.

But that was the end of organized activities for the day. So once we got back to the Hotel a few of us (and by few I mean the usual group of 5 plus Ben, another guy in our group) decided to go to what everyone said was an especially good Beer Garden in the city. And we were not disappointed. The place looked like something out of….the Renaissance Festival or something, I don’t know. There were easily close to a thousand people there, just chilling out and talking. So we went and got some food (I got a Curry Bratwurst, a Beer Pretzel, and a liter of light beer. It all came to 18 Euros, which, sadly, is very expensive) and then picked a bench and took a seat. The food was great, as was the beer, and it was a great time.

I have a terribly low tolerance for alcohol. Terribly. I mean, I was perfectly capable of moving and all that, I even preformed a few field sobriety tests on myself just to make sure, but after drinking a bit I just get so talkative. Not in an obnoxious way…it’s more I just say whatever comes to mind. Also, my eyes get really heavy. I was going to put my head down on the table to rest for a second, and the surface definitely got to me much faster than I was expecting, haha. Pretty much smashed my forehead on the table, which everybody laughed at. It was all good though.

And here’s a nice little snippet of our time at dinner. You know those new Twix commercials? The ones with the motto “Need a moment? Chew it over with Twix.” Well, if you don’t, they basically go like this. Character A is put in a potentially dangerous situation (socially) by Character B, and so Character A quickly stuffs a whole Twix into their mouth in order to gain a “moment” to come up with a suitable answer. So we decided to recreate one of those commercials. I play Character A, and Carol plays Character B, She puts me in a precarious position by asking if her shirt makes her look fat. In this video a Beer Pretzel plays the part of the Twix. Keep in mind these are BIG pretzels.

NOTE: Lindsay hasn't given me the video yet, I hope to upload it into this post tomorrow.

Sydney and I and a few other people hit up an internet café after getting back to the Hotel, where we all caught up with our individual internet needs. I updated you guys with that mini blog post and called my house to wish Jen happy birthday, did a few emails and then finished up within an hour, all for the low, low price of one Euro. Much cheaper than our ripoff hotel rates.

Okay, and I believe that pretty much brings today to an end. I am going to bed and am pretty confident I will sleep long and hard, thanks to my new friend the Beer Garden.


Day 3: Thursday, June 18, 2009

I need to start off by sharing something will all of you. Carol wrote me an ode in class today, and it’s pretty freaking awesome. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

An ode to Peter, my “hot German friend.”
I’m glad you love traveling and the places we’ve been
You have quite a following of college-aged girls
As we gallivant around the European world
Leaping over ledges, cars, and more
You’re so above pillows, they’re such a bore!
…just kidding, good sir, but yes! Have a beer!
And then show off your dimples as you are of good cheer.
Please promise us all you won’t drink again
Good job not arguing with Sydney, though I don’t know when
You’ll stop making snide comments- my guess would be never
But no worries, Pipiopi, Sydney won’t talk to you---ever!
I’m glad you’re excited for Oxford very soon
So you can have your own single-sex room.
Here’s to you Peter, the anti-travel one
Despite emo moments we’re all think you’re fun!

First of all, hats off to Carol. That ode is just plain fantastic. Secondly, I suppose I’ll explain a few of the jokes in there, since you may not understand a lot of what’s going on.
In line 1, “hot German friend” refers to a comment Carol made yesterday about how all German men were attractive. I thanked her, seeing that I am German.
Lines 4 and 5 refer to Sydney’s story about jumping all over the place on my way home from the bowling alley on Tuesday. Pillows refers to the hurdles we make whenever I go to Pennsylvania.
Line 6 probably refers to the night when Lindsay ordered a beer for me in Vienna, because she decided I wanted one. She’s a force feeder/drinker.
Line 7: Apparently I have dimples when I smile real big, and apparently I smile real big after I drink.
Line 8: In Italy I made what everyone calls a faux-promise to Sydney that I wouldn’t drink on a particular night. Basically, Sydney never asked me not to drink, I just told her I wouldn’t, and when Lindsay started pushing wine on me that day I told her I couldn’t because I promised Sydney and everybody just thought that was hilarious.
Line 9: Refers to the bet I had going with everyone that Sydney and I could go two hours without arguing.
Line 11: Pipiopi (pronounced P-P-O-P) is a nickname everyone has given me. It comes from Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

So yeah, that should cover most of the inside jokes in the Ode. I hope you all find it as incredible as I did.

But beside that, I learned something about myself today. I learned that I would rather starve than follow Sydney around a city for an extra two hours. But, per usual, I’m going to leave you all in suspense and go back a bit.

After classes in the morning, which is when Carol gave me that glorious Ode, we got our books together and headed over to the Neue Pinakothek, a museum. I figured out what yesterday’s museum’s name meant, I think. I think it refers to the fact that the art in it was older, and therefore today’s first museum, the Neue Pinakothek, is the ‘new’ art museum, for more recent art. We walked through, and for the first time I actually took more time in a museum than Sydney, and afterwards we had an hour to burn for lunch from 13:00 to 14:00. Nobody really wanted to eat, and I didn’t want to spend more money, so we just laid out on the grass again. Then at 14:00 we set out for the next stop, the Pinakothek der Moderne (‘Museum of Modern Art’, I assume), and spent some time there. I don’t really get modern art….it’s all so abstract, almost pointless.

And now we get to the starvation story. After leaving the Modern Art Museum, my assumption was that we were heading back to the hotel for a little bit to get some r and r, then out for dinner. But the girls have all decided, unbeknownst to me, that they want to head into the middle of the city. I’m disappointed by this, but when they reveal that they plan on eating dinner in the city, I feel like I have no choice but to go along with them, since I don’t really want to eat alone or starve. So we start walking towards…wherever, and after about 100 yards Sydney has already spoken enough nonsense to get me to the point where I told them to have fun and I just walked back towards the Hotel.

Well on the way back I ran into a girl who was on our trip, and we both wanted to make stops at a grocery store, so we walked together. We got some supplies at the store (Bread, Yogurt, Sprite, Beer, and Cookies for me, and it only cost me 5 Euros!) and then started walking towards what we thought was the hotel. Well, apparently we thought wrong, because we got pretty lost. We wandered around for about 10-15 minutes when my walking buddy remembered she had a map on her, and thankfully we navigated our way back to the hotel, which is where I am now, just chilling out, doing some work, and writing to you, all my dear readers.

Sydney and the girls are somewhere out in the city right now. I’d be a little worried about them but 1) the break from Sydney is wonderful and 2) they have a guy from our group named Josh with them. I’m sure they’ll be okay.

And with that, I’ll leave you with this wall of text to filter through. Sorry about that. Tomorrow is our free day, and if I’m really productive I’ll get some work on my art paper done, but if not I’ll just work on my book. Haha. I think I might go back to that Beer Garden for dinner too, even if I go alone. It was really cool, and I liked it a lot. Plus I saved a good bit of money eating cheap today, so it evens out a bit.

Well I hope everything is going well. Wish me a speedy 15 hour trip to Brussels and that we’ll have internet in our hotel!