Time to backtrack to about two weeks ago (was its really that far back!) and I had just arrived in Munich with some classmates for some downtime at the end of the semester. As nice as it was to see my brother & his significant other again since I hadn’t seen them in a year (they live nearby), I spent most of my time in Munich AWOL sightseeing! Seeing as half of my family is from Bavaria, every year the Irish Greenes would troop over to visit our relatives, so I remember spending quite some time in Munich but most of it doing some shopping or cake-eating in the center. This time my (typically) organised German classmate had planned a whole itinerary which turned out really well. A long day of furiously pedaling our bikes around the city center – highlights had to be the Olympic park and the view from the hill, sneaking into the stadium, the graffiti-ed student homes right beside it, the old University building with the memorial to the Weisse Rose group, the little monk perched on top of the church, the devils footprint in the church (which was funnily enough the same size as my classmates…), the gaudy church hidden away beside A&F. As fun as it was to cycle in a jam-packed city (oh truck drivers how I haven’t missed you), the best part came at the end of the day when we hopped into the “eisbach” aka. ice-stream, floated downstream in the current under bridges and over rapids avoiding the surfers before hopping sopping wet and freezing onto the tram and back to our towels.

That might have been the second best part. They have one or two Biergarten in Giessen, but they pale in comparison to those in Bavaria. Traditionally you’re able to bring your own food, so having stocked up on radishes, bread, pretzels, frischkase, leberwurst, gelbwurst and tomatoes we snagged a bench under the trees in the Hirschgarten with a nice jug of radler (beer/lemonade) for a few hours. A trip to Bavaria isn’t complete without visiting a beer garden!