Munich 1
Trip Start
Nov 14, 2008
1
48
102
Trip End
Feb 26, 2009
Munich,
Bavaria,
Germany
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
I'll be honest with you, this was the main reason I went to Salzburg. I'm a big fan of the movie, and the locations were so scenic that this tour was going to be a real highlight - Mich and her parents booked the same tour for next week. Our guide was an English lady who was totally obsessed with the film, talking about the smallest details of it as though they were important events in everyone's lives. I guess you need that enthusiasm to get everyone into it. In the middle of her bus talks, she'd suddenly be reminded of a song in the movie, and play it over the sound system for everyone to join in. eg. "When we stop for lunch, I recommend you try a crisp apple strudel and schnitzel with noodles - these are a few of my favourite things", before playing the song. Cheesy but fun. I did try a crisp apple strudel, with hot vanilla custard, and it was delicious.
We were taken to the castle used as the Von Trapp home on an icy lake, another castle where the gazebo sits, the wedding church in Mondsee where the Von Trapps married, and Mirabell Gardens where the children danced, amongst other sites. My favourite was the beautiful Lake Wolfgang, which was part of the scenery at the start of the movie. After this I headed to Munich to join Deutsch and Tow for New Year's Even (Mich left us for her parents after Budapest).
New Year's Eve in Munich
The three of us picked another Sandemans tour, this time a New Year's Even pub crawl for 40 Euro which had over 100 people. We went to 3 bars, where we received 2 drinks and a huge bottle of champagne each that nobody wanted, and 1 of the bars could only fit half the number of people in our group. We hung out with 4 South African guys, incl. 1 called Chris who's a radio host on Cape Town's most popular station KFM, where he sometimes hosts the afternoon drive shift. Cool guy, and he picked up this gorgeous South African who was friendly with most of the Springboks, as she had dated AJ Venter, and the brother of the biggest thug in rugby Butch James.
The pub crawl was really poorly organisd. They split us up into several groups, I was with the South Africans while Tow and Deutsch were in another group, and we were taken to see the fireworks at different times - so I ended up not seeing them with my friends. The fireworks were socialism in action, with random guys on the street lighting different types of fireworks about a metre away from crowds, rather than a professional show. I missed Sydney's NYE festivities a lot. Tow and Deutsch ended up going to the 4th place on the pub crawl which was a nightclub, til 5am, but I was too pissed off about not seeing the fireworks with them that I headed home after midnight.
