From Car Heaven to Mozart

June 29, 2011 – hot and sunny

Last day for seeing Munich, and we have decided on the BMW plant and the 1972 Olympiapark. We left the hotel about eleven, after we had eaten a very similar breakfast to yesterdays and stashed our stuff in the “safe” room that the hotel provides till we leave later on in the day after we checkout by twelve. The safe room wasn’t especially safe since the receptionist just handed us the key and a bunch of people’s stuff was stacked in there.

With directions in hand from the receptionist, we followed the now familiar path to Mariamsplatz where we got on a similar subway system as in Vienna, taking the U3 to Olympiazentrum where we exited and immediately saw a sign pointing us up the subway stairs to the BMW plant. When we walked back into the sunshine, we saw some awesome architecture and of course Dad and Kyle’s eyes lit up at the site of the BMW sign. We walked towards the building and there on the front patio was a BMW car. Perfect senior picture location for Kyle; too bad he wouldn’t take a normal picture… We were able to walk through the showroom fee free and even were able to sit in a couple. Dad and Kyle were taking bets on prices when there was no salesman/informant around for Dad to talk to. The most exciting thing we saw while we were there was a motorcycle guy racing up and nosing down the stairways. He would hop a few stairs on the way he was moving so quickly and on the way down he slowed down and only bounced down on the front tire. Pretty amazing.

We walked over to the “Double Cone” afterwards, where Dad and Kyle were able to sit in a 6 series – pretty awesome I guess… haha and then over to the Museum. We were not able to go down very far but from the top we were able to see some true oldies which were fun. This was also our lunch stop; Mom and I split a ham and feta cheese Panini, which was surprisingly very good, really I could have eaten the whole thing.

By now the temperature was cooking and just walking over to the Olympiapark caused pit stains. We were scurrying across the pathway to anywhere that had the least bit of shade as we briefly looked around at all the structures that looked unoccupied. Every building besides the pool, which earned income from summer memberships, were closed, which was a huge bummer. What amazed me were the large cables that I think actually hold up the small Plexiglas squares that are all cabled together to form the stretched out looking roof.

On our way back into the underground, I saw a girl about my age and what looked like her Mom; I said to my parents that must be Erica and her Mom and low and behold it was. They had done Salzburg first, Munich and then heading out the next day for Switzerland. I introduced the family and we chatted until the subway arrived where we departed.

By the time we got back and grabbed our “lunch”, mine being a chocolate muffin (delicious!) we grabbed all our luggage from the hotel safe room, which luckily was all still there, and dashed to the train station for our 4:37 train. Upon arriving, we discovered that our 4:37 was actually a 4:27 and luckily we had gotten there early or we would have missed it. We settled ourselves into a four person pod clustered around a card table in first class for the ride back, again hoping not to be sent back to second class. Our train got off to a nine minute late start – guess we would have made the train even if we had arrived for the 4:27, which in Europe is quite odd.

We got to Salzburg around six and walked to our hotel, probably about a half mile away. We walked inside Stiegl Brau, the name of our hotel, which on our walk over freaked me out into thinking it was going to be like a hooters hotel since Stiegl is a famous beer and Brau usually has to do with a bar or restaurant. Little should I have fret since the hotel is run by Best Western and was wonderful. We got two rooms, which both had two twin beds; the hotel was air conditioned, Mom got her hair dryer, and best of all, INTERNET! Mom and I got room 59 and the boys got 50 to give Kyle and me some space.

We had dinner at the connecting restaurant downstairs where I split the pork with Dad, Kyle got a pasta dish and Mom went Austrian and tried goulash. After dinner, I told Kyle we were going to take a walk to Mirabell gardens if he would like to join, where we were going to see some pretty funny dwarf statues. This caused a smile and he met us at the elevator to go on the evening walk.

All we had to do was walk down the street and we almost ran headlong into the gardens. We saw the beautiful gardens with flowers cut into intricate patterns across the grounds, the funny garden gnomes (better word than dwarfs I had used with Kyle), the maze and puppet show theater and then came out of the maze to a small orchestra playing classical music. After a few songs, we continued on our true mission: finding a chocolate dessert. We passed “The Original Sachertorte” restaurant but no one wanted to try their famous dessert after my bad reviews so we continued into Old Town where we stopped at a small restaurant right outside of Mozart’s birth house. We got a chocolate mousse and a chocolate lava cake to split. Both were very good, but for the price we really could have gotten a whole cake at Meijer. I had the family look for the world’s smallest golden arches, which Kyle found immediately and took the parents another five minutes with pointing. Haha.