Ich habe nur meine lederhosen vergessen!

On the way to the station to catch our train to Munich we passed, for the last time, my favourite shop in Innsbruck: 'Feeling Fashion - Trendy clothes for Trendy people'. The shop contains my favourite t-shirt slogan of the entire trip...

Secret Service Days
55 Days
Eddie Tigger
Secret Service

...written in silver on a turquoise t-shirt. Had it not been €35 I would have bought one for everyone I know.

Seeing another nun on the way to the station brought the Innsbruck Nun Count to an abysmal 2. She did not board the train, and instead we were joined by a dozen German football fans. As they sat down we noticed one had an enormous gash in his head, one had underpants on his head and one had an incredibly rude (but I don't think he knew that) slogan on his t-shirt. They ate sausages from a jar during the two hour journey.

We pulled into Munich earlier than scheduled, dumped our bags at the hostel (fifth floor with no working lift, gah) and set off to explore. The first shop of note was called 'Wormland' so we knew we'd like it here. Further down the street we walked past a Muslim woman whose headscarf was interesting to say the least, there were four motifs printed repeatedly on the scarf fabric and these were: a pair of lips with a big cross through them, an envelope with the words 'love letter' on it with a big cross through it, the word 'love' with a big cross through it, and a telephone with a big cross through it. I was desperate to ask where she had got it, but was distracted when we walked past a chocolate shop with chocolate ladybirds in the window. We went in and it was incredible! We bought what looked like a dark chocolate Colorado beetle decorated with milk and white chocolate, the size of my palm. Thinking it would be hollow, imagine our delight when we bit his tail off and found two little individual chocolates nestled inside! One was a fudge and one was a pistachio/marzipan affair - both were delicious.

We sat eating him on some steps where we also saw a priest with a briefcase and a man with a hat, beard AND pipe! I don't know if anyone else is familiar with the game 'hat, beard, pipe' but basically one receives points for men with hats, beards or pipes, double points if they have two of the above and bonus points for three of the above. It is a rarity, and you can only imagine how hard it was for me to contain my excitement. We also saw a man with a motorised push-bike sailing up a hill while other people were pedalling furiously, a van with a picture of a "rapper" and the slogan 'Pimp Juice' and a poster advertising 'pheromone clubbing'.

We saw lots of pretty buildings, the Theater Kirche, Staatskanzlei, Haus der Kunst and various other things before deciding to cross the river and head towards the Maximilianeum. The hedges that lined the road across the river were swarming with pretty yellow ladybirds and while looking at them we noticed a tramp washing his feet in the river below us.

We walked back to town through the Englischer Garten and stopped off at a supermarket which had cool shopping-trolley-basket contraptions, where we noticed that the eggs come painted fun colours, they sell McDonalds brand ketchup and you can buy chocolate katzenzungens (kitten tongues!)

We watched the Croatia - Germany match in the bar below the hostel and as soon as it had finished there was an enormous thunderstorm. The other bar opened shortly after the match finished and we went there for a free beer tasting. The guy running it, Pete, is awesome. He has a degree in the history of beer, and man does he know his beer. He explained to us all about the Bavarian monks who were the ones who made the beer and how all the peasants were starving to death because the monks were using all the best barley and yeast for beer-making. During Lent the monks had to fast, but they invented a "fasting beer" and they were permitted to drink 3 litres of it a day, and one litre of water. We met an Australian girl called Elise (and her huge stuffed crocodile, Barry) at the bar and we sat and watched Austria - Poland and drank with them until bedtime.

After having the best nights sleep I have had this entire trip, we wandered into a very grey looking Munich. We passed a shop we hadn't noticed the day before called 'Christ'. I wondered what it would sell, but was disappointed to find it was only rubbishy jewellery and I'm not entirely sure the Son of God would put his name to that. We ate chocolate beetles for lunch and continued wandering around in the rain.

We had another fun time that night with Elise, Pete and more beer tasting. We met the old man who lives across the road and comes in for a drink every night without fail. We saw him briefly last night, but he was in high spirits tonight and wanted to join us. For some reason he singled me out of the group, and decided to show me pictures from his wallet of various "sexy" ladies, and some very old newspaper articles along the same theme.

After the beer tasting had finished and the old man had gone home, conversation naturally turned to unicorns, and we were able to show Elise the wonder that is Planet Unicorn. She came to the conclusion that we were insane and I had to remind her that she wouldn't have had as much fun in Munich had it not been for us. We drank and ate pizza into the night, and had a grand old time.