I spent most of yesterday evening watching the Euro2008, although that isn’t singificantly different from what I’ve been doing the entire week. The first game, Germany-Croatia, was fairly boring. Germany played terribly & deserved to lose. The Austria-Poland game, on the other hand, was excellent. Poland scored an unearned goal in the first half on a missed offsides call, and Austria finally tied the game in the 92nd minute on a penalty kick. I’m glad Austria was able to tie Poland, because it leaves the bracket open & gives the Austria-Germany game on Monday even more meaning. In all reality, though, Austria outplayed Poland and should have won the game.
After lunch today I have to go pay my rent, which is probably the worst part of the month. Fortunately, I only have to pay this month & one more, and I’ll have a lot more financial freedom once my housing expenses are finally out of the way. I lucked out, too, because I pay 290 Euros a month including utilities, which for Munich is a fantastic deal.
Otherwise, things in Munich are quiet. The weather is terrible again, and I’m hoping that we’ll be able to keep our plans to travel to Nuremberg tomorrow. If not, I’ll probably end up reading or trying to find a good museum. I just finished Agatha Christie’s Mysterious Affair at Styles, and I’m starting in on Crime & Punishment. It’s not exactly the lightest reading to be doing on the subway, but it should be interesting.
Tag: football
Munich Street-life Festival
Munich has several festivals throughout the year, the best known of which is Oktoberfest. However, as John & Sarah are quick to point out, Oktoberfest never truly ends — it just is given different names. This past Sunday was the second day of Munich’s Street-life festival. We started the day by going to Munich’s Egyptian musuem, which is worth noting only for its small, but interesting, collection of artifacts.
The street-life festival itself was quite enjoyable. There are thousands of vendors & hundreds of thousands of people congregating in the Schwabing neighborhood of Munich. Musicians play on stages, vendors sell specialty foods, bars set up outside seating areas, and different companies show off their goods. It’s like a fair & trade show rolled into one event. They even had a beach volleyball pit & a skating park. We ended up wandering around for several hours before going to the Hauptbahnhof to buy a couple beers. Beer at the actual street-life festival was extraoridnarly expensive — 3.50 for a bottle with a 2 Euro deposit. By the time we got our beer, we were just in time to grab a seat for the first game of the evening. We ended up hanging out at the bar for the entire night watching both football games. Watching Germany beat Poland with the German fans at our side was especially fun.
The night itself was fairly uneventful. We played Asshole & some other drinking games and Sarah got pretty drunk. We also had to be fairly sneaky, since we were trying to drink our own beer, rather than pay ridiculous prices. This resulted in embarassing moments, such as when the waitress picked up the beer bottles we’d tried to kick underneat the table. The funniest moment of the night, though, came when John tapped the top of Doug’s beer bottle, causing beer to pour everywhere over the table. Both Doug & I ended up getting soaked.
Joseph Schaeffer 