Exploring Munich: our first full day here

When you arrive in a new city, you want to explore. Maybe not right away, because jet lag is real, and the bag monster speaks loudly. So if you want to fight the jet lag beast, you rouse yourself and go find out about your new surroundings. Ugh. Do I have to?

It helped that we had a commitment to meet our relocation expert, the lovely and helpful Irene, at 10:30 to get our city registration done. We're staying in a small hamlet called Haar just outside Munich to the east. Irene told us that, if you have to register in Munich, you can expect to spend 2-4 hours in line. In Haar we spent about 15 minutes. Not bad!

Here's a look at the permanent maypole in the town center. As is Bavarian tradition, it's decorated with German folk images. Pretty cool.

There's a clear process flow for doing all the things that must be done for immigration: you get an offer letter, which is used to get an apartment. The landlord signs the form that we've blogged about earlier. That form is taken to the city, where you register to verify your address. The city registration form is taken to the Big Important Immigration Meeting, which will allow us to get the blue residence cards. There's a German version and an EU version. We qualify for the EU version, which is nice in case we decide we'd like to move somewhere outside Germany.

Our city appointment took a little longer than usual; it seems that one of the city people was being trained by another. We were grateful to have Irene with us: their English is far better than our German, but it still would have taken a lot longer without a translator.

After our appointment, we bid auf wiedersehen to Irene and walked around a bit more. We found the nearest train station, a fruit stand that we'll be visiting again soon, a grocery store where we reminded ourselves not to shop while hungry, a pizzeria / geletaria, a bakery, a meat shop, and two nearby pharmacies. 

We brought home some groceries and had a simple lunch of ciabatta bread spread with butter and topped with cold cuts (roast beef and chicken) and cheese.

This reminded us that we've left behind lots of things we generally have around the house, like baggies and containers for leftovers. Oops! 

After lunch, we took the train into Munich to do some exploring. We wandered for a while through the city center, seeing the Rathaus (city hall; more on this later), the Frauenkirche cathedral, and the shopping district. We visited a memorial spot for Michael Jackson near the hotel where he liked to stay when he was in town. It's situated around a statue of someone else. One wonders what that guy might think if he knew his memorial was used to memorialize some pop star that lived centuries after him.

I wanted some ice cream after all the walking. It was in the mid-80s, which doesn't sound that warm, but it was pretty toasty in the sun. We found a place with great reviews that was a 15-minute walk away. We walked by a few other gelato places to get to the one we chose, but we were rewarded by some delicious gelato (chocolate and banana for Robert in a cup, and pistachio and peach/passion fruit for me in a cone) and a brief afternoon thunderstorm, which cooled things off.

We proceeded back to the city center and found a crowd assembling in front of the Rathaus. There is a Glockenspiel there that tells two tales from German history. There are plenty of videos that show it, so I won't post one here.

After the Glockenspiel show in the crowded Marienplatz, it was time for a Bier and Abendessen (beer and dinner). Lots of people have heard of the Hoffbrauhaus in central Munich. We went there a few years ago and enjoyed the beer, but found the food wasn't great. We were told that the Augustiner was better in terms of both beer and food, so we headed there. It's right across the street from Hoffbrauhaus.

My sister, who lived in Munich for two years, told me the Helles bier here is her favorite, so I got that, while Robert choose the hefeweizen. Both were delicious, and each of us liked our own bier better than the other one. Correctly ordered!

As we were eating and people watching, a guy walked by with an interesting shirt. We got into a conversation with him and bought him a couple of biers (he got the Dunkel Bier, which was also delicious). He was an American musician named Sharif who travels and plays extensively in Europe. We traded stories and photos and really enjoyed the conversation.

It turned out to be quite a musical day! We found a couple of different street musicians who both played the hammered dulcimer -- unusual but very cool.

We decided it'd be fun to see Sharif play, so we headed to the Irish pub where he was to perform. We got there a little early and watched the end of the World Cup game between Croatia and Argentina (Croatia won 3-0). Turns out that dozens of drunken football fans make a lot of noise! Half of them left at the end of the game, and our server required us to cash out (drunks walk checks? no way...). We were happy that we hung out to see Sharif play. Given the venue, he did a lot of covers. We talked about the music with him during his break, and he told us that he records loops live for each song. We'd wondered how one guy with a guitar had such a full sound (complete with vocal harmonies). 

He's a great musician and a super intelligent guy. How many musicians have an MBA to fall back on if the music thing doesn't pan out? He keeps spreadsheets of his earnings in each country to do his taxes. We also talked about how his song selection varies widely based on the venue and the country. He's learned through his twenty years on the road which countries like to sing along with what songs, how sick he is of some stuff, how he keeps a list of oft-requested songs to learn, how he won't learn a song he hates, and how some songs are much harder if not impossible to do loops for -- but those songs generally aren't sing-along songs either; songs people love to sing tend to be pretty repetitive. 

I shot several short video clips; this is one that doesn't have as much drunken singing along as the others, but you can hear his vocal harmonies, which is fun. 

That ended the evening for us. We were exhausted and jet-lagged. And we learned that it's harder to get a train home late on a weeknight, a valuable lesson.

After getting 20,000 steps yesterday, today is far more low-key. Yay for a rest day!

Now to open it up to questions: what would you like to know about while we're here? What we're seeing and doing? Things that are different about life here? Any other topics that interest you? Leave a comment, and we'll post what you want to know about!