MUNICH all day

Well, today was an interesting day. We met a man named Michael at Marienplatz at 10 am. Michael's relation to us first needs to be explained. Mike (the man we stayed with in Rottendorf) has been in the military for a while and has been in Germany for almost 20 years so he has some connections. He told us he had a friend in Munich who owed him a favor and called him up to see if he could give us a tour of the governmental buildings and of the city itself. His friend said yes but then had to go out of town so he had some one else fill his spot. This is where Micheal comes in. He is wrapped up in politics in Munich somehow and he had access to a lot of the governmental buildings in the city. He was an English and politics teacher in Munich, but is originally from Warzburg. We met him in the morning and he walked us around the city. He was very knowledgable and told us a lot about Munich. We went to the Viktualienmarkt, which is a large food market with a lot of different shops and stands selling all kinds of food. We saw the new synogogue, the opera house, and the national theater. He also showed us the Residenz and told us all about the politics of the city. We then walked through the Hofgarten which is the royal garden. At the end of the garden is the former military museum. It has now been added onto and converted into the Bayerische Staatskanzlei, the main government building which was designed to represent the new democracy of the country. He showed us the offices of all the important political people in Germany. It was incredible to walk though that building and learn so much about the government. I still feel like I know nothing about German politics but Michael tried to explain it to us as best he could. We also stopped at Marienplatz again to watch the famous Glockenspiel. When the bells chimed for the new hour, the plaza was filled with people watching. There were 32 figures of almost life sized people that moved around and danced a little bit for us (some even jousted), giving us a five minute or so show. It was awesome to see and I videotaped it with my camera (but something is wrong with the sound recorder on my camera and it isnt picking up sound for some reason). We then went out to lunch with Michael to a Bavarian restaurant that served very traditional Bavarian food. It was delicious. I enjoyed everything I ate in Germany. Twas tastiness. We paid for his lunch as a thank you for giving us such a wonderful tour.

After lunch, we headed back to the apartment, but Rachel was still at work so we took naps in the car. When Rachel came back from work, we hung out in her apartment for a while and then got some pizza for dinner. We went over to her co-workers apartment and met her friends in Germany. They all work for Kraft (she is a packaging major at Michigan State interning at Kraft). They were interesting people and it was fun to hear all these people speaking to each other in so many langauages.