As many of you may know, this past Friday was my birthday, so naturally I had to make it a whole weekend event. It all started on Thursday night when I went to the weekly Toytown "meetups for 20 year olds," because I made a few friends at last week's meetup and planned to meet them again on Thursday. We went to a bar in Sendlinger Tor, which is a very young, hip area of Munich where there are lots of bars and lots of young people. It is also a very gay-friendly area of Munich, so there's always the fun guessing game of "gay or straight" that everyone plays in their head. I have found that it is always best to tell as many people as possible that it's your birthday, because then you are guaranteed at least an equal number of free drinks. It's a strategy that everyone should adopt. After spending some time in Sendlinger Tor, a few friends wanted to go to a club. I'm not too keen on going to clubs, but since it was my birthday I thought I should stay out.
Here I am going to interject a little tidbit about the public transportation system in Munich. It is incredibly convenient and amazing. HOWEVER, the S-bahn train schedule, which is what I have to follow to get to the suburb where I live, is not ideal for the "I don't have a real job and therefore would like to stay out until whenever I want and then have trains available for me to take at 10 to 20 minute intervals" type people. I may or may not be one of them. On weeknights, there are trains that go to and from the central train stations in Munich every 20 minutes until about midnight, then there is a train that comes at 1:25am. On weekends, there is one more train that leaves from the central station at 2:25. Most adults reading this will think that these options are more than adequate. Most of my friends reading this will understand that my spontaneity requires that I have more options! I digress. The next train after 1:25/2:25 leaves from the central train station at 5:30am. Yes, this means on several occasions I have actually stayed out until 5:30 am. And no, it is (almost) never worth it! I'll learn eventually. Thank goodness I don't work until 2pm every day. Also you may be wondering what Stef and Matthias, my host parents, think about this. Before I went out the other night, Matthias said, "Party as much as you can while you're young, because before you know it, everything changes!" So clearly I decided to take those words to heart.
Back to my birthday. So after getting on the 5:30am train, falling asleep and ending up 30 minutes past my stop, and getting back on a train in the other direction, I got back home around 7am. Round 2 was Friday night when I met up with a bunch of my friends who I have met here so far. We went to a great Irish pub called Kennedy's and listened to a live band who legitimately thought they were the actual reincarnation of U2. Nothing against U2, but sometimes I wonder if people here are aware that there is music out there that was created after 1995. After staying out until the crack of dawn, yet again, I woke up on Saturday and headed to the Hauptbahnhof (main train station) to catch a train to Salzburg. Round 3 of my birthday was spent with one of my best friends from school! She was studying abroad in Europe for the winter and came to meet me in Salzburg. We went to my favorite bar from when I studied abroad there, and stayed in a very cute little apartment room that was rented out by a very nice old lady who called me "Frau Mozart" because Mozart and I share a birthday. We also share a very rare incredible talent for musical composition, but I didn't tell her that. After what I can only describe as a crazy, amazing evening, we went back to Munich. We spent rounds 4 and 5 of my birthday at the Hofbräuhaus, which is one of the most famous beer halls in the world. I won't go into details with the hilarity that ensued on either of these nights because it would take up another 5 paragraphs, but I will say that you all must experience the Hofbräuhaus at some point in your lives.
It was an incredible, crazy, absurd, wonderful birthday weekend here in Munich. I'll leave you with a few funny anecdotes that I didn't know how to fit smoothly into the story, so I'll leave them as bullet points:
- I was sitting across from a man in his late 50s or early 60s on the train on the way to the airport with my friend, he seemed like a quiet, stern guy, then his phone rang blasting the Macarena as his ring tone. We LOST it.
- My friend and I were grabbing a bite to eat at Burger King before catching a train back to Munich, and all of a sudden a totally clueless woman tripped over someone's very large, obvious, not-hard-to-see-at-all luggage, and essentially swan dove onto the floor, sliding a full 3 or 4 feet. Again, we LOST it.
- Because of this weekend, I am now left with only 4 euros in my wallet, so I cannot do anything that involves spending money until payday! Hopefully that's soon... I need to start budgeting better/at all.
There are many more stories, but these are just a few that come to mind :)
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