Munich, Bavaria, Germany

This weekend, the Germany game for the World Cup was in Munich, so a bunch of us from the program decided to go and see the town and to watch the game there!

Here's a view of the Marienplatz, over the mobs of people.

(The spiky builiding is the New Town Hall)

Here we are, ready to start the day!!

Munich is fabulous ... almost the first thing we saw was a troup of "folkloric dancers" complete with guys in Leirderhosen and girls with fake braids on their heads dancing to traditional music in the street. The guys actually jumped around and slapped themselves in time to the music ... it was so good I teared up.

This is right before these guys preformed a spoon-slapping-song,

Could I be making this stuff up?

Then we went for lunch at the Hofbrauhaus, an enormous Beer Hall infamous for its Nazi Rallies and now home to many happy singing Germans.

Here's me with my liter of Beer, before noon.

Believe me, we tried to get smaller glasses, and were informed by the waiter that:

"The Beer only comes in Liters"

Here's the main hall of the Hofbrauhaus,

The band was awesome, they played traditional songs and then World Cup songs, and everyone danced on the tables and sang.

In the afternoon we wisely decided to watch the game on a big screen from a shady spot in the Hofgarten instead of trying to get out to the stadium (the U-bahn was so packed with people they had police officers guarding the escalators ... doesn't really inspire one to use public transport).

Ah Deutschland fans ... so delightfully rowdy,

and this is before we won!

(unfortunately you can't see the small contingencey of Sweden fans in their Viking helmets and fake blonde pigtails ... they were hot)