Germany

In her last moments, she was swept away by the freezing, rapid current of the river – topless.

I’m sure that’s exactly what my best friend would have said in my eulogy. The group we were with went on the world renowned Mike’s Bike Tour in Munich. The tour is super fun and I highly recommend it (seriously). The tour guides are young Americans who decided to move to the beautiful city of Munich and are very cultured and informative of their new home. The tour was several hours and went through the whole city, famous landmarks and the English Garden. The English Garden is a giant park (bigger than Central Park) that has a river running through it. This river weaves through all of Munich and is sourced from the Swiss Alps. In the summer, everyone rides their bikes to the English Garden and sun bathes as they have the crisp river to dip into. Some parts of the river can be shallow and calm – as pictured in the header – while other parts are deep and powerful – as pictured above. Yes – the locals “river surf”. So, being a hot, summers day, our group stops to take a dip. I forgot to mention that the English Garden is also a nude park. Not everyone drops trou; but if you did, its acceptable. We park our bikes, take our clothes off, leave our undies on and step to the edge of the water. The part of the river we were at had a bit of a current – not as strong as the river surfing current, but strong enough to carry you away. As a group, our plan was to jump in and swim across the river (going against the current) where the river then forks into another. The river would then push you to towards a bridge where we were to reach up, grab hold of the bridge and pull ourselves out of the water. What actually happened?? We jump in, I immediately freeze as the water is from the Swiss Alps, I don’t make it to the other side and I get taken to the other river bank. I’m screaming bloody murder as my group hopelessly watched me get carried away. My whole life flashed before my eyes as I thought about the rocky, waterfalls this river contained and that if I went through this river long enough, I’d be taken through the whole city – in my underwear. Then, I saw someone from my group, who didn’t jump in (smart), ran to the edge of the river and threw in fallen tree bark as my life saver. Once I grabbed hold of this branch he pulled me up and out of the river as the ground was a few feet above the surface of the water. By this time, my bandeau bra had been pushed down to my hips and my whole group cheered from across the way as I made it out alive and they all got a free show. Needless to say, I was shaken up for at least another hour. Thankfully we headed straight to the beer garden Chinesischer Turm where I could laugh about how crazy this story was going to be back at home.

If you love to drink beer, eat pretzels and sing out loud as much as I do, then the Hofbrauhaus obviously is already on your list of things to do in Munich.

And have you had a German iced coffee?! It’s basically a latte with a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream dumped in. YUM. Don’t forget your piece of cake either as coffee and cake in the afternoon is a daily ritual.

Another daily ritual: beer. This was the cutest old man riding solo at the market’s beer garden at 11am.

Other German loves:

The BMW Museum in Munich
The cute little town of Dresdon. Eat at this awesome restaurant right on the river. It’s just outside of the city center
The Berliner Dom in Berlin
The art on the Berlin Wall
Sausage and bratwurst
The history. In Berlin, the buildings still have marks of war on their exterior. Visit the Dachau Concentration Camp and the Holocaust Memorial. And if you have time, check out Humboldt University of Berlin where Einstein went to school.
The outdoor market in Munich for beautiful souvenirs, fresh produce, delicious eats and of course, the beer garden