Its hard not to smile when you are in Munchen! Almost instantly it has become one of our favourite cities. We were in a nice hostel (called Wombats), with free beer on arrival. Walking through the streets you see a combination of drunk tourists, girls wearing the traditional (now touristy) drindle and old German men in lederhosen. The city itself is a nice small size, completely rebuilt after the war and looks stunning.
After dropping our bags at the hostel we headed out to dinner, opting for a plain option with Christine still being conservative with what she ate, we had some average Chinese. After dinner we headed to the one and only, Hofbrauhaus. This is the most famous of the beer halls, and the place where Hitler first found his political voice. We enjoyed some steins and the oompah bands music until the beer hall closed around midnight.
We were up early the next morning for a big day trip to Neuschwanstein Castle. To save a few euros each we took public transport rather than a tour bus, which was a long journey. When we arrived we walked up to the castle for a guided tour of the interior. The castle was built by King Ludwig II on a rock in the mountains. It looks like a castle from a fairytale, and is supposedly the castle that Walt Disney based his castle on. It is surrounded by a gorge, waterfall and three lakes. The tour was crowded and rushed however the inside was amazing. Only 16 of the 100 something rooms were completed, it is completely decadent with mosaic floors paintings on the walls and roof, brass statues, gold leaf lining, massive chandeliers’, even a man made cave and winter garden with views. It was never completed asLudwig was declared insane and removed from the throne, and subsequently ‘drowned’, bit of a cover up, as the bullet holes in his back were never investigated. 
After the journey back to Munchen we ventured down the road to the Augustiner Keller and ate dinner in the beer garden. Traditional German food and beer in an outdoor beer garden on a warm evening, does it get any better than this! 
Thursday was T-day, (Tent day), as we had been putting this off every day since we met Mel, and tonight we were camping! The lovely staff at the hostel gave us a list of stores that might have a tent for us. This turned out to be a pretty easy task and we were able to combine the shopping with a bit of a scenic city walk which included seeing the Marienplatz which is the gothic style town hall with the world famous Glockenspiel which plays music for 15 minutes, has moving figurines and a cuckoo at the end. We found a tent, had some lunch, the girls on an impulse bought traditional dirndl dresses and then explored the market stalls near the main square. As much as we wanted to stay in Munchen, by 4 pm we really had to get moving. We had to head to the festival campsite, we thought this would take 4 hours, however at this time of day it was more indirect and with delays for connecting trains the journey ended up taking about 7 hours. After taking 4 trains and a shuttle bus we arrived at the campsite, found some space to set up our tent and went for it. After a few ‘practices’ we managed to get it up, had a drink to celebrate and then hit the sack. 
The sun was out the next morning and our tent got hot quickly. After bread rolls and scrambled eggs for breakfast we had a walk around the campsite and tried to buy some gum boots from the store (sold out), as bad weather was forecast. There were more deliveries later in the afternoon so we did manage to get some on the way to the music. The rest of the day was spent relaxing in the warm sun, the first bands didn’t start until 4pm. The girls bought festival t-shirts but Damien missed out, the first store didn’t have his size and then the girls didn’t want to wait while we checked the other stalls, bummer!
The first bad we wanted to see was Flogging Molly, an Irish band that combine rock with traditional Irish music. Despite being on at about 6pm there was a big crowd and they really impressed. Bloody Irish, bought the weather with them, almost as soon as they started the rain began and didn’t stop for the rest of the night. Already cold and wet Damien seeked the shelter of the white stage (a big tent), which happened to have a circus performing, random but interesting. The girls headed in the opposite direction into the rain. Damien eventually found someone handing out poncho’s, so grabbed a handful and set off in search of the girls, but the big crowds and everyone looked the same, wet and wearing ponchos meant we never caught up. The rest of the evening saw bands such as The Hives, The Wombats and Arctic Monkeys who I was looking forward to seeing. The highlight of the night, and the festival was definitely the Foo Fighters who closed the first night. They played an amazing 2 hour set that covered everything from some of their very first songs (Monkey Wrench, My Hero, Stacked Actors and Everlong) through to the material on their new album. Being there early I had a good spot in the middle of the stage but behind a barrier so probably 20m back. The rain didn’t stop, in fact it got worse, torrential! But the band kept playing and the crowd kept partying and sounded amazing when everyone was singing along to some of the more popular songs. I’ve seen the Foo Fighters a few times now, and they always seem to blow you away, but I guess that is what makes them one of the best bands in the world!
The walk back to the tent was fun, slushy mud everywhere and the weather had flipped a lot of the tents and campsites. A little worried about our cheap tent, but when we got back everything was fine. 
We had an enforced sleep in the next morning, as it was still raining and we had nowhere else to go. Also we didn’t want to head out and get wet too early. Other than to get coffee and visit the Toi Toi, we stayed in the tent until about 4pm. This didn’t worry us too much, everyone is pretty tired and there weren’t any bands we wanted to see playing during the day. Even once we did head to the stages we just watched a few small bands and had some dinner. Two of the stages are in big tents so we were able to stay dry while watching these. As the night went on we saw Elbow, The Kills, GlasVegas and Jimmy Eat World. The highlight was definitely Portishead who were really good and sounded amazing. The evening finished with Arcade Fire who had about 9 people on stage and all rotated instruments (violins, keyboards etc.) and the Chemical Brothers. 
The final day of the festival also had a really good line up, too good in fact, as several bands we wanted to see were on at the same times. We were up early to see Cloud Control at 11am, an Aussie band we think. Unfortunately, we went to the wrong stage and missed all but their last song. We saw The Vaccines and Sick Puppies and got some lunch before returning to the tent. Part of the ticket price included a 5 euro rubbish deposit, so to collect this we filled up a garbage bag of rubbish and took it to the collection point. This was very easy, as the wind was gale force and it looked like another storm was coming, so many people were giving up and heading home. One of the bags we filled with a tent that someone had left behind! Damien tied down our tent with some more ropes as it was flapping around in the wind. We set up a lounge room outside our tent with things other people had left behind, we now have carpet and four chairs! We enjoyed a few drinks in our lounge before heading back to the stages. 
We saw Two Door Cinema Club who are from Netherlands they are fairly new band but we enjoyed their music, everyone at the festival has been really good! We then headed into the ‘D barrier’, which means you can get right to the front, a few meters from the stage. The last two bands of the festival were My Chemical Romance and another of our favorites’, Incubus! We have seen Incubus before but had seats at the back of the stands, so to be 2 meters from the stage was incredible. This was also a really good set with them only playing a few new songs and quite a lot of older stuff. Sadly this was the last band and tonight we had missed Gogol Bordello (German), Kasabian, Kaiser Chiefs, Parkway Drive, Sick of it all and Sum 41. That’s the nature of a festival I suppose, you can’t see everyone! 
Monday morning and the festival was over. It’s now been 5 days since we showered (Thursday morning), and we have been in the rain and mud having a great time! We packed up our tent, said good bye to our lounge room and headed to the shuttle bus, which we had to wait about an hour in line for. Sadly we had to say goodbye to Mel at the train station as she was heading to Stuttgart for her flight to London. Thanks for travelling with us Mel and especially thanks for organizing everything! We were returning to Munchen which we hoped would be quicker than last time, at least it was only 2 trains this time. However due to delays and missed connections it was still 8pm before we got to Munchen. Wanting something different to eat we went to a Thai restaurant that the hostel recommended and it was brilliant, hot red curry and a Vietnamese beef salad, one of the best Asian feeds we have had since China.
The next two days we spent back in Munchen. Part of this time was spent cleaning (ourselves and our possessions) and part of this time was spent thinking about what we were going to do for the next 10 days. The first day we did the New Europe walking tour with Kurt our excellent guide. He had his son along with him with his foot in a cast as he has just broken his foot. Unlike some scripted tours this was a lot of his own research and focused a lot on the history of events and specifically the people involved. Being a walking tour we obviously saw all the sites, but the commentary was far more interesting than just hearing the name of a building or how old it is.
We have done a handful of these tours in different cities and most of them have been brilliant (Paris excluded). After the tour the group had lunch in a restaurant and a couple of beers, Christine also arranged to meet a few people at the Hofbrauhaus later that night. We went for a bit more of
a walk in the city and then through the big park in the city. This had a really cool wave in the river where surfers could basically surf on the spot, after watching this for a while we continued through the park to the Chinese Tower bier garten, for a beer. We planned on walking back to the Hofbrauhaus, but went the wrong way, so ended up catching the train and arriving a bit late. We still had a couple of hours before it closed. We had a great night drinking in the beer hall with a few Brazilians’, Americans, Germans and the token Aussie (can’t get away from them!). 
Our next day in Munchen, we again had a slow start to organize ourselves a bit, and then headed to the main squa
re to join the New Europe Dachau tour. Having given a big rap the day before, naturally something would go wrong, the guide was ‘sick’ so the tour wouldn’t run today! Luckily we found a similar tour that left slightly later. This trip was only an hour from Munchen and having a guide was very helpful. Dachau is a concentration camp that was open for 12 years from 1933. It was a labour camp, predominantly used as a prison for political opponents. It was the first concentration camp, opened only 2 months after the Nazi’s took power and was used as the model for many of the other camps later set up. Having a guide was excellent as he knew where to take us and was able to explain what the different buildings were and how it used to look. The site has a museum and video, guard towers, a recreated barrack (bunk room), crematorium and gas chamber (although never used). It’s a bit sad, but it was quite an interesting afternoon. 
Back in town we sorted out a few more things, including where our next destination might be, had a few beers at the hostel happy hour and then headed out for dinner, in the heavy rain. We headed to the Augustiner Braustuben (brewery). We had hoped to come here with Mel the other night but ended up in the Augustiner beer garden instead. This place is a short walk out of town, was full of locals, and some tourists and had cheap meals. Our waitress was friendly, which most of the staff haven’t been in the beer halls. She helped us order on the German menu, and also gave us the English menu. Damien had the mixed pan, roast pork, pork knuckle and roasted duck with potato and cabbage. Christine had a pork fillet with a creamy sauce and potato pasta that is a Bavarian specialty. The place was packed but we managed a couple of seats next to some Germans. We also spotted Kurt the tour guide from yesterday, so after we had some apfel strudel we joined them for a beer. A fitting way to end our Munchen experience, in a beer hall with a semi-local (originally from America) and a kiwi couple drinking dunkle bier (dark beer). 
After dropping our bags at the hostel we headed out to dinner, opting for a plain option with Christine still being conservative with what she ate, we had some average Chinese. After dinner we headed to the one and only, Hofbrauhaus. This is the most famous of the beer halls, and the place where Hitler first found his political voice. We enjoyed some steins and the oompah bands music until the beer hall closed around midnight.
We were up early the next morning for a big day trip to Neuschwanstein Castle. To save a few euros each we took public transport rather than a tour bus, which was a long journey. When we arrived we walked up to the castle for a guided tour of the interior. The castle was built by King Ludwig II on a rock in the mountains. It looks like a castle from a fairytale, and is supposedly the castle that Walt Disney based his castle on. It is surrounded by a gorge, waterfall and three lakes. The tour was crowded and rushed however the inside was amazing. Only 16 of the 100 something rooms were completed, it is completely decadent with mosaic floors paintings on the walls and roof, brass statues, gold leaf lining, massive chandeliers’, even a man made cave and winter garden with views. It was never completed asLudwig was declared insane and removed from the throne, and subsequently ‘drowned’, bit of a cover up, as the bullet holes in his back were never investigated. After the journey back to Munchen we ventured down the road to the Augustiner Keller and ate dinner in the beer garden. Traditional German food and beer in an outdoor beer garden on a warm evening, does it get any better than this! Thursday was T-day, (Tent day), as we had been putting this off every day since we met Mel, and tonight we were camping! The lovely staff at the hostel gave us a list of stores that might have a tent for us. This turned out to be a pretty easy task and we were able to combine the shopping with a bit of a scenic city walk which included seeing the Marienplatz which is the gothic style town hall with the world famous Glockenspiel which plays music for 15 minutes, has moving figurines and a cuckoo at the end. We found a tent, had some lunch, the girls on an impulse bought traditional dirndl dresses and then explored the market stalls near the main square. As much as we wanted to stay in Munchen, by 4 pm we really had to get moving. We had to head to the festival campsite, we thought this would take 4 hours, however at this time of day it was more indirect and with delays for connecting trains the journey ended up taking about 7 hours. After taking 4 trains and a shuttle bus we arrived at the campsite, found some space to set up our tent and went for it. After a few ‘practices’ we managed to get it up, had a drink to celebrate and then hit the sack. The sun was out the next morning and our tent got hot quickly. After bread rolls and scrambled eggs for breakfast we had a walk around the campsite and tried to buy some gum boots from the store (sold out), as bad weather was forecast. There were more deliveries later in the afternoon so we did manage to get some on the way to the music. The rest of the day was spent relaxing in the warm sun, the first bands didn’t start until 4pm. The girls bought festival t-shirts but Damien missed out, the first store didn’t have his size and then the girls didn’t want to wait while we checked the other stalls, bummer!The first bad we wanted to see was Flogging Molly, an Irish band that combine rock with traditional Irish music. Despite being on at about 6pm there was a big crowd and they really impressed. Bloody Irish, bought the weather with them, almost as soon as they started the rain began and didn’t stop for the rest of the night. Already cold and wet Damien seeked the shelter of the white stage (a big tent), which happened to have a circus performing, random but interesting. The girls headed in the opposite direction into the rain. Damien eventually found someone handing out poncho’s, so grabbed a handful and set off in search of the girls, but the big crowds and everyone looked the same, wet and wearing ponchos meant we never caught up. The rest of the evening saw bands such as The Hives, The Wombats and Arctic Monkeys who I was looking forward to seeing. The highlight of the night, and the festival was definitely the Foo Fighters who closed the first night. They played an amazing 2 hour set that covered everything from some of their very first songs (Monkey Wrench, My Hero, Stacked Actors and Everlong) through to the material on their new album. Being there early I had a good spot in the middle of the stage but behind a barrier so probably 20m back. The rain didn’t stop, in fact it got worse, torrential! But the band kept playing and the crowd kept partying and sounded amazing when everyone was singing along to some of the more popular songs. I’ve seen the Foo Fighters a few times now, and they always seem to blow you away, but I guess that is what makes them one of the best bands in the world!
The walk back to the tent was fun, slushy mud everywhere and the weather had flipped a lot of the tents and campsites. A little worried about our cheap tent, but when we got back everything was fine. We had an enforced sleep in the next morning, as it was still raining and we had nowhere else to go. Also we didn’t want to head out and get wet too early. Other than to get coffee and visit the Toi Toi, we stayed in the tent until about 4pm. This didn’t worry us too much, everyone is pretty tired and there weren’t any bands we wanted to see playing during the day. Even once we did head to the stages we just watched a few small bands and had some dinner. Two of the stages are in big tents so we were able to stay dry while watching these. As the night went on we saw Elbow, The Kills, GlasVegas and Jimmy Eat World. The highlight was definitely Portishead who were really good and sounded amazing. The evening finished with Arcade Fire who had about 9 people on stage and all rotated instruments (violins, keyboards etc.) and the Chemical Brothers. The final day of the festival also had a really good line up, too good in fact, as several bands we wanted to see were on at the same times. We were up early to see Cloud Control at 11am, an Aussie band we think. Unfortunately, we went to the wrong stage and missed all but their last song. We saw The Vaccines and Sick Puppies and got some lunch before returning to the tent. Part of the ticket price included a 5 euro rubbish deposit, so to collect this we filled up a garbage bag of rubbish and took it to the collection point. This was very easy, as the wind was gale force and it looked like another storm was coming, so many people were giving up and heading home. One of the bags we filled with a tent that someone had left behind! Damien tied down our tent with some more ropes as it was flapping around in the wind. We set up a lounge room outside our tent with things other people had left behind, we now have carpet and four chairs! We enjoyed a few drinks in our lounge before heading back to the stages. We saw Two Door Cinema Club who are from Netherlands they are fairly new band but we enjoyed their music, everyone at the festival has been really good! We then headed into the ‘D barrier’, which means you can get right to the front, a few meters from the stage. The last two bands of the festival were My Chemical Romance and another of our favorites’, Incubus! We have seen Incubus before but had seats at the back of the stands, so to be 2 meters from the stage was incredible. This was also a really good set with them only playing a few new songs and quite a lot of older stuff. Sadly this was the last band and tonight we had missed Gogol Bordello (German), Kasabian, Kaiser Chiefs, Parkway Drive, Sick of it all and Sum 41. That’s the nature of a festival I suppose, you can’t see everyone! Monday morning and the festival was over. It’s now been 5 days since we showered (Thursday morning), and we have been in the rain and mud having a great time! We packed up our tent, said good bye to our lounge room and headed to the shuttle bus, which we had to wait about an hour in line for. Sadly we had to say goodbye to Mel at the train station as she was heading to Stuttgart for her flight to London. Thanks for travelling with us Mel and especially thanks for organizing everything! We were returning to Munchen which we hoped would be quicker than last time, at least it was only 2 trains this time. However due to delays and missed connections it was still 8pm before we got to Munchen. Wanting something different to eat we went to a Thai restaurant that the hostel recommended and it was brilliant, hot red curry and a Vietnamese beef salad, one of the best Asian feeds we have had since China.The next two days we spent back in Munchen. Part of this time was spent cleaning (ourselves and our possessions) and part of this time was spent thinking about what we were going to do for the next 10 days. The first day we did the New Europe walking tour with Kurt our excellent guide. He had his son along with him with his foot in a cast as he has just broken his foot. Unlike some scripted tours this was a lot of his own research and focused a lot on the history of events and specifically the people involved. Being a walking tour we obviously saw all the sites, but the commentary was far more interesting than just hearing the name of a building or how old it is.
We have done a handful of these tours in different cities and most of them have been brilliant (Paris excluded). After the tour the group had lunch in a restaurant and a couple of beers, Christine also arranged to meet a few people at the Hofbrauhaus later that night. We went for a bit more of
a walk in the city and then through the big park in the city. This had a really cool wave in the river where surfers could basically surf on the spot, after watching this for a while we continued through the park to the Chinese Tower bier garten, for a beer. We planned on walking back to the Hofbrauhaus, but went the wrong way, so ended up catching the train and arriving a bit late. We still had a couple of hours before it closed. We had a great night drinking in the beer hall with a few Brazilians’, Americans, Germans and the token Aussie (can’t get away from them!). Our next day in Munchen, we again had a slow start to organize ourselves a bit, and then headed to the main squa
re to join the New Europe Dachau tour. Having given a big rap the day before, naturally something would go wrong, the guide was ‘sick’ so the tour wouldn’t run today! Luckily we found a similar tour that left slightly later. This trip was only an hour from Munchen and having a guide was very helpful. Dachau is a concentration camp that was open for 12 years from 1933. It was a labour camp, predominantly used as a prison for political opponents. It was the first concentration camp, opened only 2 months after the Nazi’s took power and was used as the model for many of the other camps later set up. Having a guide was excellent as he knew where to take us and was able to explain what the different buildings were and how it used to look. The site has a museum and video, guard towers, a recreated barrack (bunk room), crematorium and gas chamber (although never used). It’s a bit sad, but it was quite an interesting afternoon. Back in town we sorted out a few more things, including where our next destination might be, had a few beers at the hostel happy hour and then headed out for dinner, in the heavy rain. We headed to the Augustiner Braustuben (brewery). We had hoped to come here with Mel the other night but ended up in the Augustiner beer garden instead. This place is a short walk out of town, was full of locals, and some tourists and had cheap meals. Our waitress was friendly, which most of the staff haven’t been in the beer halls. She helped us order on the German menu, and also gave us the English menu. Damien had the mixed pan, roast pork, pork knuckle and roasted duck with potato and cabbage. Christine had a pork fillet with a creamy sauce and potato pasta that is a Bavarian specialty. The place was packed but we managed a couple of seats next to some Germans. We also spotted Kurt the tour guide from yesterday, so after we had some apfel strudel we joined them for a beer. A fitting way to end our Munchen experience, in a beer hall with a semi-local (originally from America) and a kiwi couple drinking dunkle bier (dark beer). 
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