Hey...so I'm in Munich

MASCULINITY. If I had to define Germany in one word that's it. They love beer, meat and fast cars. What more could you ask for?

Munich was one of the first trips I planned and the trip was centered around one thing: seeing Dave Matthews Band in Europe. My roommates Andrew, Brian and I all wanted to see Dave this semester so we sat down and found a time and place which fit all of our schedules. Originally, one of Brian's friends from ND studying in Toledo, Spain was going to join us but due to exigent circumstances he had to back out at the last minute. So here we are with an extra ticket to DMB the Thursday before we leave the next day. So at our weekly flat dinner Thursday night, Andrew, Brian and I are discussing the probabilities of being able to sell the ticket in Munich and that's when spontaneity at its finest struck one of our other roommates Sean. Sean gets up quickly checks his computer and then says, "Guys I'm coming to Munich!" Yep it was that simple, we had an extra ticket, Sean wanted to see Dave.

So off we went Friday afternoon to Deutschland. Saturday morning rolls around and we get up and discuss what we want to do before Dave. It didn't take long before the unanimous consensus was let's go to Hofbrauhaus, Munich (and possibly the world's) most famous beer house. Ignore the fact that it was still 10 AM, we didn't want any Wheaties, we wanted a man's breakfast. We wanted an array of delicious German meats, pretzels, potatoes, and of course German beer.

After having our fill of food and beverages, we decided we wanted to continue our manly streak so we headed to the BMW Museum. Now I must say I am more of a Mercedes man myself but BMW is no slouch. The museum was awesome! Around every corner was a car worth more than most people's homes.

After several hours of drooling over cars, we walked around the Munich Olympic Park, now it's no Centennial Olympic Park but it was still quite nice nonetheless.

Now I'll discuss the highlight of the trip: DAVE! We arrived at the venue early and realized that it was general admission, which meant since we got there early we got extremely close to the stage. The concert was as to be expected...EXCELLENT! He played a fair amount of songs from his newest CD Big Whiskey but still did a great job of mixing in some classics. The highlight of the concert was definitely when Dave came out for his second encore and played one of my favorite songs All Along the Watchtower.

Sunday more we made our way to one of Munich's more famous Catholic Churches for mass, St. Peter's. The mass was entirely in German which made for a beautiful experience (sarcasm included, you'll know what I mean if you've ever heard German spoken). After mass we visited the Deutches Museum which is Germany's science and technology. I would liken it to the Smithsonian except for while the Smithsonian has an entire museum for Airplanes and etc. The Deutches Museum conmbines all these fields in one big museum. After seeing some cool planes and what not we made our way to another German beer house for our last meal and then we were off to the airport and back to London.