Vienna to Munich

The bus left at the usual painful time of 8am. We enjoyed the Hostel Breakfast, in the brightly coloured cafeteria, and boarded the bus with the masses. The bus was almost full for the first time, so we were forced to sit next to people. So far, all of the journeys i have taken, i have had a spare seat next to me. The trip into Salzberg was pretty short at just over 3 hours. Inger and Mary had a bit of a crisis when they realized how low they were running on funds, so they couldn’t afford the Sound of Music tour. I paid for both of them as their birthday presents, because in all honesty, Inger is the biggest musical buff i know, and I couldn’t allow her to go past the town where Sound of Music was filmed and not go on the tour. They were extremely grateful, and Inger cried. The Busabout guide, a girl from Sydney, shouted me a drink later that night, because she thought it was so sweet!

A majority of the bus got off in Salzburg, and I continued onto Munich. On the way we passed the biggest mass of water i have seen inland, and some amazing buildings. We arrived at yet another Wombats hostel, and checked in. I almost managed a room to myself, only sharing with one American girl. Her and I compared plans and i found out that she is joining Busabout to Paris with us in a few days time. I promised one of the girls on the bus, Erin, that i would accompany her on the pub crawl, and when 7:30 rolled around we were off around the corner, to meet up with a whole lot of the other Busabout people, and some randoms. We paid our money and commenced the ‘hour of power’ with un-emptyable cups, and Jagermeister shots. You can drink in the street here, because beer is brewed according to a purity law, hence it is not classed as alcohol, it is a food and beverage. So yeah dad, I’m not an alcoholic, i have an eating disorder! I tried a Weiss beer, which is made from rice not barley. It was very thick and the Germans here call it a meal in a cup. After everyone was suitably drunk, we got a refill and headed onto our next stop; the 2nd biggest beer garden in the world, able to hold over 9,000 beer drinkers. It was truly amazing! They served 1 Liter ‘Steins’, of a local brewed beer that is very famous and that you can only get in Munich. It was quite nice, and lacked bubbles so it got you very drunk, very fast because it was so easy to drink. I chatted with the two tour guides, one of which was English (Olli) and one Australian. The Australian was wearing a Hawks AFL jumper and I chatted to him about his travels. He has been away over 9 months and left Australia with only 3,000 dollars! It was quite a story.

We all learnt how to ‘Prost’ (toast) properly, which consisted of making sure you bang the glasses together so hard you spill some beer into the other person’s glass. This was so if you were trying to poison you, you could poison them back. You also needed to make sure that you placed your glass onto the table and wait until the King drank first. Another aspect was that you must look the other person into the eyes whilst prost-ing or it was seven years bad sex. Olli, our tour guide commented that the german say that 7 years bad sex is better than seven years of no sex. After an awesome demo, and a few tests, we moved onto our second destination for the night, yet another beer garden. I am shocking with names but it was also another very famous beer, and the garden was the location of the first attempted assignation of Hitler. Unfortunately he pulled out of speaking at the last minute and one of his top men was blown to pieces instead. The beer there was also very good and we learnt about the anti theft systems that have on their glasses. They give you a token when you get a beer and you have to bring your glass and your token back and they give you two euro back! High tech or what?

By this stage everyone was very messy drunk and so we headed back in the direction of our Hostel. When we got into the street, a majority of us took advantage of the local pizza place, on the corner. It may have been the drunkeness but this place had the most godly pizza i have tasted. We then moved down to the bar next door to our hostel, where we were greeted with yet another Jagermeister shot. By that stage i was well over it… Ie, i was so drunk i couldn’t walk, so i retired to bed. It was 1am… My room mate didn’t get in until 4am…

Needless to say, this city lives up to its name… Munich, the party capital of Europe!