Wandering in Munich

One of the worst parts about traveling to a far-off country is, for me, that sense of being an obvious foreigner. As shown by my earlier example, I can in no way speak German well enough to fit in at all, so I'm forced to do the "Do you speak English?" thing with every person I speak to.

While this can be expected as part of international travel, probably the most disappointing part of it for me is that it means you have almost no chance of happening across any great food or shops by chance, since you pretty much stick to the obvious tourist joints just to be safe. Yesterday, we decided to wander around Munich, mainly with the goal of checking out all the incredible Catholic churches scattered throughout the city. In the central district, we came across 3 amazing examples, with pictures here:

Frauenkirche ("The Church of our Lady", one of the largest in Munich)

It's kind of a big deal.

Heild Geist ("Holy Ghost")

Tasteful, but I think it could use more gold.

St. Michael's (..."St. Michael's")

THERE WE GO.

After Frauenkirche, but before Heild Geist, we decided to check out a place recommended by a friend of my grandparents, called the Cafe Frifchhut (wtf?), which supposedly has the "best donuts in the world". After about 20 minutes of navigating the Munich streets, we found it, only to discover that it was closed, and it was suddenly time for rain. 

Pre-rain picture of grandparents.

Seeking shelter from the sudden torrential downpour, we wandered into a German pub across the street, which didn't really look like much due to the heavy restoration work taking place on its exterior. This was apparently an outlet of a local German brewery called Der Pschorr, and would likely have been a pretty hoppin' joint in better weather. We decided to get lunch here, and hoo, boy, was that a good idea!

Advertising money please?

The beer was absolutely incredible: I got a "Sturnweisse", which was a darker wheat beer, and honestly one of the best I've ever had. My dad and grandpa each had a half-liter of the Pschorr flagship lager, which was poured out of a small, wooden cask just like you would have seen hundreds of years ago. For my meal, I had this:

Now, you may be asking yourself, "what kind of delicious steak is that?"

Well, I'll lead into this wi-IT'S GODDAMN HEART!!!!!

Gah, sorry, just couldn't hold that in any longer! It's freakin' beef heart(!!!) served with roasted potatoes, green beans & bacon, and some extraodinary rosemary butter. All the "Bizarre Foods" I've been watching made me way to curious to pass this up, which was a special for the week, plus our very nice (and fortunately English-speaking) waitress recommended it as one of the better dishes. The verdict? AWESOME. It had a similar consistency to lean steak, though it was not at all tough, as I would have expected. My mom and grandma both said it had a weird taste, but I would describe it more as "unique" than "weird". Combined with the amazing butter, this was without a doubt one of the best meals I've had in Europe so far!  Then, to finish it off, we had some ridiculously good apple streusel, shown here:

Also, for some reason there were a bunch of Irish dancers in the middle of Munich, dancing to what I'm pretty sure is the new greatest song ever (basically the Irish "Cottoneye Joe")..

Huh?

There was also a bunch of Guinness...what country am I in again?

So, yeah...that was cool.  Next time: Prague!