The End Where I Begin

I’ve been putting off blogging about Munich because it was the last city of study abroad, which means that the end was near.
Sadly we only had one day/two nights in Munich. From what we saw and experienced, it was only the tip of the iceberg of what the city had to offer. Like all other cities I visited, I wish I had more time to explore and observe the culture.

By the time we arrived in Munich, it was already 7pm, so we were all starving. We tried our best to settle in as quickly as possible, but that ended up taking longer than I wanted it to. First, all of the Berliners had to get our large suitcases that had arrived from Berlin. As I mentioned before, we had packed our suitcases and left them in Berlin before we flew out to Italy. Unfortunately for all 50ish of us, there was only one small elevator and too many suitcases. Fortunately, we also had some muscular boys with us, so my 70+ pounds suitcase was carried by one of them.

Everybody decided to go to a beer garden for the night, so we spent the next hour trying to round people up, figure out which beer garden to go to, wait around for people to get ready, wait around some more for people to get dinner... needless to say, I was getting cranky and impatient. We arrived around 9:30pm at Munich's largest, most famous, most touristy beer garden and hall: Hofbräuhaus. So imagine this: group of 44 students, split into smaller groups, and split again, but still all trying to sit together. It was chaotic, and I was getting more and more aggravated by the minute. Finally I just picked a table and sat down and let everybody else argue and discuss how to get themselves situated.
Eventually everybody stopped bitching, and so we finally ordered liters of bier and brezen (pretzels) and varieties of wurst (sausage). Once I had some substance in my stomach, I was in a much better mood. We spent the rest of the night socializing and eating and enjoying the perfect weather. One of the other tables ended up playing a drinking game called Thumper, and because they were so loud, they attracted the attention of a couple of young German guys. They ended up joining in the game and played for the rest of the night.
I was feeling antisocial, so I left earlier than most people and hung out in the hotel room until I passed out for the night.

Saturday was an eventful day. We started off bright and early with breakfast at the hotel and then headed out on the U-Bahn to Olympiapark, designed by none other than Gunter Behnisch. The whole park is incredible. Frei Otto, the engineer of the project, was the master of tensile structures. When you see the complex, it's almost impossible to wrap your head around this massive project. It's so impressive. We were lucky enough to get a private tour of the park by two guides. We split into groups and toured around the different event halls and were given a history of the park itself. The area where the park now sits had gone through so many changes in the past century. The most amazing fact to me is that the hills in the park are covering all the debris of WWII. When we finished the tour, we sat/laid out on the grass and sunbathed by the man-made lake for a bit.

Our next stop was the Olympic tower. We got tickets to go up to the observation deck and see Munich from the top. The view was incredible. Unlike Berlin's TV Tower, we were able to go outdoors instead of taking pictures of awful reflections behind glass. Olympiapark is even more overwhelming when you can see it in its entirety. It couldn't have been a more perfect day. The sun was shining, the skies were blue, and I was with some of my best friends. I was so thankful that I had my friend Taylor with me. During the morning, I was in an off-mood because I kept thinking about Christmastime when Behnisch's Boston office got to fly out to Munich while the LA office stayed in LA... and it didn't help that Tyler kept talking about it (he interned this past fall in the Boston office), so you could say I was a bit jealous and annoyed. But after talking with Taylor, I was thankfully back to normal.

From the tower, we walked over to the BMW Welt (world) which was designed by Coop Himmelb(l)au. The architecture was pretty amazing, but I was more fascinated by the function of this building itself. It acts as a showroom, an exhibit space, a cafe (where we had our lunch break actually) and a store. People could test drive the cars or just drive off with a brand new BMW. Getting back to the architecture, I thought it was a nice space for what the program was. I was much more impressed with this building than their high school in LA.

Our final stop for the day was probably my favorite attraction of our Munich trip. We took the U-Bahn again and ended up at the Brandhorst Museum, designed by Sauerbruch Hutton. I have to say, after seeing two other buildings designed by this husband and wife team, I'm becoming rather fond of their work. If you look at the building in plan, it's rather simple, but if you look at the details in section and elevation, the building is amazing. The facade is made up of horizontal metal mesh strips that are slightly angled to create a zigzag effect. Mounted in front of the strips is a layer of colorful vertical rods. Aside from looking like a mass of pretty colors, the best is when the sun shines and creates shadows. It almost looks like the building is moving.
The interior of the museum is simple yet elegant. All the walls are white and the floors are wood, but on the top floor, the roof is covered in an opaque glass that diffuses the light and creates this beautiful quality of light in the gallery spaces.
As for the artwork, it was fantastic. I love contemporary art, so this was exactly my kind of museum. I was happy to discover an artist that I had never known about. Cy Twombly's paintings are actually part of the permanent exhibit. His work reminded me a lot of Jackson Pollock's paintings. It may seem random, but if you look closely, there's a method to his madness.

When we finished looking around, our professors all had a surprise for us. We gathered in the open green space near the museum where they brought out cakes and Prosecco (wine) and a bag of frisbees. You can't even imagine how happy all the boys were. It was like watching elementary school kids play with a ball; they threw their bags and cameras down, ran out onto the grass, and started throwing frisbees to each other. We called them back in for the snacks, where the professors made a toast and we all drank to the end of study abroad. Afterward, everybody hung around and played frisbee in a huge circle. Some of the professors even joined in!

As the day slowly turned into the evening, we walked back to our hotel and repacked all of our luggage. After being in Europe for three months, I accrued quite the amount of stuff. Everybody was trying to make sure their bags were underweight to avoid the overcharge, so everything was being shuffled around from bag to bag. I bought far too many travel books (I love my Frommer's) and architecture books that weighed my bag down. I also bought a lot of souvenirs from every city, and the most difficult to pack was all the alcohol I had bought. But have no fear; everything survived the flight.

After we finished packing, a smaller group of us (well, smaller than the night before) headed out to another beer garden: Augustiner. When we got there, it seemed that everybody else in our study abroad group was there as well. Regardless, our group found two tables outside and ordered bier and wurst and goulash (oh, how I miss the goulash). About half an hour in, we saw some familiar German boys walk into the garden. What a small world! We continued eating our food and drinking our liters of beers until we started playing some drinking games. First, we started off with "never have I ever..." Let me warn you; that is a dangerous game if you're not playing with a group of people you trust. After we ran out of ideas, we moved on to play Thumper, at which point we invited the Germans over to relive the night before. We ended up playing until they kicked us out. They turned off the lights, cleaned up the tables (including the table cloths) and then finally told us to leave.  Reluctantly, we all left the beer garden, but not before everybody grabbed a beer stein (except me; I had enough crap in my baggage).
The night continued back at the hotel where we enjoyed our last hours of Europe. I ended up caking one of the boys (who I won't name) who kept insisting that he wanted to have a cake thrown in his face, so that's what happened, haha. A handful of the boys went out afterwards, but I surrendered for the night and finally went to bed.

In the morning, we woke up with the harsh reality of the end. With every step, we dragged our feet, hoping to stay just a little bit longer. We started off the morning with breakfast at the hotel, savoring each bite and eating slower than usual just to enjoy the company and the food. With our free morning, we walked around the area for a while before a few people wanted to get their last meal in Germany... which ended up being doner (us Berliners grew quite fond of Turkish food since we lived in the Turkish area of Berlin). I refrained from eating doner in Munich because I didn't want to taint the perfect memory of the doner we had in Berlin.
After that, it was back to the hotel to check out and move all of our luggage on to the bus. This was quite the task. With a tiny elevator, everybody was trying to move all their stuff at the same time. I ended up jumping into the elevator and stacking everybody's luggage in the elevator with me, so I went from floor to floor, rolling large suitcases in, and then meeting people at the lobby to take it all out. Quite an operation we had going.
Getting everything to fit on/in/under the bus was like a puzzle. We took up every inch of free space there was and then had to fit the rest in the aisles with us.

The airport was a mess. It took forever for everybody to check in, and then there was an issue with carry-ons and personal items and checked baggage. People were afraid they were going to get charged extra for having a backpack and a carry-on (Nicole got the shit end of the stick; she was forced to pay an extra 40 Euros for having her backpack. Everybody felt so bad.). In the end, we all just took our backpacks off, left them in a pile, and checked in without them so they wouldn't see the backpack. After two hours of all that nonsense, it was time to say goodbye to Rolf and Joachim. They were awesome professors, and I couldn't have asked for a better experience in Berlin.

After going through security, everybody spent the remainder of the time in the gift shop, trying to spend the last of their Euros.
Finally we boarded our plane and spent the next eight hours flying backwards in time. I watched a movie, listened to music, napped here and there. Before you knew it, we were back in the states and back home.

Eight months later and I'm back in Boston.