As I sat downstairs at the kitchen benches drinking coffee and munching on a yogurt, an apple, and a nectarine, I enjoyed the morning radio program that was blasting throughout the downstairs. It was a real throwback to my college days when people still listened to terrestrial radio and there were stations dedicated to hard rock. Between (I guess) newer tracks and classics, the radio hosts gave weather reports and constantly mentioned a Metallica concert that was scheduled for Friday night in Munich. What a coincidence, my itinerary has me going to Munich on Friday. Of course, about fifteen minutes of looking around on the internet were enough to bum me out. Even the scalpers were sold out.
I had a very “lazy” (i.e. study intensive) morning so that I could be around at 11am when a free walking tour was to take place. Given that the front desk mentioned it a million times on the previous day as each person checked in, the idea was fully incepted into my mind, so I figured it was a good excuse to walk around town. There were a handful of hostel guests joining the tour and I tagged along. It was good, though I wasn’t expecting it to last three hours and I got a bit more information than I would have from just wandering around on my own. The most useful bit of information was the cheapest place to get Nuremburger bratwurst, where a significant chunk of the 20+ members of the tour group followed the tour guide after the conclusion of the tour.
While plotting out my remaining plans for the city, I noticed that the national museum was open until 9pm. Since it supposedly was quite large (requiring 6+ hours to view in depth) that would be an ideal candidate. However, upon further reflection, I realized that the extended hours might actually indicate free admission as that seems to be the way museums work. I swung by the museum (which happens to be adjacent to the hostel) to check and confirming that I could save 8 euros by showing up at 6pm, I spent the rest of the afternoon in the hostel continuing to study.
At about 10 to 6, I popped over to the Aldi to grab a pretzel just to make sure I didn’t starve to death during the 3 hour museum session. Parts of the museum are unavailable during the evening hours, but there was still a lot. In fact, it may be the most impressive museum since the Victoria and Albert in London. It had a bit of everything: religious shit, medieval artifacts, modern art, weapons, garden culture, baroque paintings, scientific instruments, archaeological stuff, etc. After seeing just about everything available by feeling my way through the museum on instinct, I found myself a map to double check that fact and glance over the highlighted artifacts to see if I even noticed them. Not really, except for the “pre-Columbian” globe from 1490. There were also three special exhibits taking place, one with sketch books from some guy and a lot of references to the “Blue Rider” that I later looked up to learn it was some art magazine operated in Munich, one analyzing the Christ story through the lens of the Hero’s journey, and one on the behind the scenes work of museum research.
I did not spend a full three hours in the museum, but it was quite taxing nonetheless. I returned to the hostel and not seeing any social activity in the common areas, retreated to my 8 bed dorm which I had all to myself by some beautiful quirk of chance.
| Drei in Wexel mit Kraut | 2.2 |
| Pretzels | 0.78 |
| Total: | 2.98 EUR (23.2 RMB) (USD 3.28) |
Running Total: 28076.3 RMB (USD 3962.97)
Daily Average: 364.6 RMB (USD 51.47)