Munich

Hello from Munich!

We are staying in the Hilton Munich Park hotel, in a room for which we paid $80 on Priceline. You gotta love that Priceline.

We spent the evening in Hofbrauhaus, a gigantic beer hall which can seat 6,000 people. They serve gigantic vats of beer, large plates of sucking pig and goulash, and Bavarian pretzels the size of your head. Plus an Oompah Band-how can you not love it?!

Here is a photo of the goulash I had. The bread dumplings looked like brain meatballs, but tasted delightful.

We had a bit of an adventure today on our drive from Prague to Munich:

We had some Czech money left over, and at a certain point on the drive we decided to pull of at a rest stop/gas station to see if we could spend our last few Czech Crowns before we crossed into Germany.

As we pulled into the parking lot, we noticed a German car which had been pulled over by the police.

"Someone's in trouble", I brilliantly observed. As we drove by the police car, the officer gave me and our car a long look. When we got out of the car, the police officer approached us, and walked to the front of our car, looking with particular interest at the windshield. Turned out, we were in trouble, too.

He asked us something in Czech first before switching to English, and asking us where our Autobahn pass was. This was something we had had to buy in Switzerland at the border; it's a sticker that you buy if you are going to be driving on the interstate.

We explained that we had no idea we needed one in Czechoslovakia and that we were just driving through to Germany. He informed us that we could be looking at a fine of up to 5,000 Czech Crowns, but that he would only fine us 500. I showed him that I only had 300, and he said that was ok.

Of course, the first thing I thought was that that fine was actually the "Welcome to the Czech Republic, You Stupid American" fine otherwise known as the "Let me Relieve You of your Money" fine.

But he actually took the 300 Crowns and wrote us out an official receipt in case we got stopped again.

The kicker was that when we drove away we discovered that we were only one mile from the German border, and if we had only kept driving, we wouldn't have gotten stopped at all.

On the upside, it did accomplish our goal getting rid of our Czech money, and 300 Czech Crowns is only $15, so as fines go, it's not too bad.

Lake Como tomorrow.