The Swingset Goes International - Pt. 1

Two months ago - oh it hurts to say that - Kyle and I, along with my parents, took our first international trip. After months of planning and telling my Mom, "Yes, I did read the travel disclaimers and refund polices" (shh, don't tell her I didn't, muhaha), we finally took off on an 8 hour flight across the Atlantic. Our trip was 10 days and 900+ miles in the southern part of the country - Bavaria, the Black Forest, medieval cities missed during WWII and let us not forget Heidelberg, the city of small child thievery!

 Now, sit back and relax because Swingalingadingdong is proud to present:

PART ONE: HIS PANTS ARE DOWN IN MUNICH

Yup, I wasn't kidding... they're really down! Hofbrauhaus, ftw!

Okay, okay... that didn't actually happen on our first day. Our first day was more like exhaustion and overload but I thought I'd rope you in with that. Did it work?

After landing in Munich we rented our beautiful Volkswagen Caddy which was incredibly small by American standards but try parking that silver elephant in Europe. Do you have 20 minutes? Because it took Mom 20 minutes to park that sucker in the lot of our hotel. However, I digress because parking in Europe could be it's own post... so, we drove out of the airport to our first destination - LANDSHUT (Lands-hoot [phonetic pronunciation for you, Dad])!!

Don't be fooled by my size. I am a European minivan.

Landshut is a Bavarian town about 35 minutes from Munich and is home to a medieval castle called the Trausnitz Castle. It was founded in 1204 and is now home to.... nothing, haha. You can wander through the grounds, viewing the architecture and can also eat at the handy dandy restaurant they so nicely provided for the tourists in the middle of the courtyard.

The view of Landshut from the castle grounds

We didn't really spend a lot of time here in Landshut. Personally, I think we were all really tired from the overnight flight and ordering pizza in German can make people turn into a crankapotamus. So, after a couple of hours we headed back to Munich for a nice nap, a view of the town hall in the Marienplatz and our first biergarten of the trip.

The town hall of Marienplatz.

Um, yeah... this is the new town hall of Munich. Yup, new. Construction started in 1867, finishing in 1909 and it became and is now home to all government officials in the city. Personally, I think the building could use a serious power wash but some people might whine about the history of all that dirt. Yeah, because dirt has a history and the clean freak inside me is crying.

But I guess even I could get past a little bit of dirt if you sit me in a biergarten with a giant hefweizen, a German cheese plate and a pile bratwurst with saurkraut, and so... it begins...

Random and amusing side story of Munich: Our hotel was located in the Turkish section of the city. So, if you felt so inclined to smoke a hookah on the way to your beer guzzling, you can do it practically on every corner. However, no matter how much hookah you smoke, you cannot purchase a toothbrush in the Turkish supermarket. Don't even try! Kyle's teeth were diiiirty, eww.