My original flight itinerary had me spending two full days in Munich, with a morning 9 a.m. arrival giving me most of the sunlit hours on my first day. However, a cascading de-icing delay in Boston meant that I didn’t actually arrive at Munich airport until nearly 2 p.m., meaning that it was nearly 3:30 by the time I’d gotten into the city and settled at my hostel. I quickly took stock of my options, and focused on finding anything that would be open for another couple of hours. I ended up settling on the city’s Deutsches museum, which featured lots of exhibits on science and industry. Much of it focused on the development of ships throughout the last couple centuries, starting from wooden ships with massive sails to coal powered ocean liners and the expansiveness of travel that they introduced until aircraft took to the skies. It was pretty interesting to compare staterooms then to the seemingly cramped staterooms of modern cruise ships, to see that we really have a lot more room now than we used to. (But dropping the soap hasn’t gone away as a major problem for passengers!)

The museum closed at 5 p.m., but the daylight hadn’t faded just yet. So I wandered next into Munich’s preserved old town, and eventually ended up in the central square of Marienplatz. Even though it had snowed a few inches that morning, all the snow had already been cleared into piles and the streets of old town were dry. The most impressive building there is the old town hall, which is built in the old Gothic style and definitely shows its age with the soot stains on its columns. There was a clock tower off to the side of the square that looked like it was much more recently built (or refurbished). Perhaps the newer looking buildings were less lucky in the WWII bombing raids than the older ones. Some further wandering took me north to the opera house, which was lit up nicely against the dusk. As the sky darkened, I headed back to my hostel to set up dinner plans with a college friend I had studying in Munich. 

For dinner, my friend picked a convenient restaurant in the old town where he liked the food. Being in Munich, I felt compelled to order a beer and ended up with a Schneider Weisse. Having studied abroad in Hungary two years ago, I also couldn’t resist ordering the goulash as a starter. My breakfast on Lufthansa had been nearly 9 hours ago and I was starving. Enough so that I felt like I could finish both that, and a plate of pork belly with sauerkraut and fried bread. The goulash was warm and thick, and it was gone within minutes. I paced myself a little better pairing my wheat beer with the pork belly, and really enjoyed the both of them together. The dipping sauce for the pork belly was rich and slightly sour, and drew out the juices in the pork belly even more. From prior visits to Central Europe I’ve learned that I get tired of the cuisine after a week or so, but it’s really wonderful in small doses like this! Mostly, it’s the lack of vegetables that eventually gets me.

We still felt like talking after that, so we headed to the Hofbrauhaus, one of Munich’s largest indoor beer halls. Too late we noticed the traditional Bavarian band playing, and chose a table in the corner of the hall so we could actually hear each other speak. I dug myself a slightly deeper hole by ordering an entire liter of the Hofbrauhaus’s dark Dunkel beer, especially after my previous half liter. At least it meant more time to catch up with my friend before we parted!

My second dinner was after returning from Neuschwanstein, after 8 p.m. and after nearly a day of eating only a couple cold sandwiches. Once again, I compensated for that with quite the hefty meal. I opted for another traditional Bavarian restaurant, and decided to go with a Paulaner wheat beer this time. I decided to get the goulash again, since I had no idea when I might be back to Europe. And I picked a dish of meatballs and potato mash for my main this time. Seeing as I had a few extra euros, I also threw in a glass of riesling to wash it all down. Drinking beer and wine together can be a bit of a faux pas, but what was I supposed to do with only the one meal left?

So, it goes without saying that I didn’t have much time in Munich overall, certainly less than I would have liked. Still, a lot of special moments can happen even on a short trip like this. The exhibits on the development of ships to ocean liners in the Deutsche museum was fascinating to me, and the Munich old town packs a lot of eye popping architecture into an easily walkable space. I got to experience absolute solitude on a winter morning in Englisher gardens, which I wrote about separately. Most importantly, I got a rare chance to catch up with my friend who’s pursuing graduate studies here and share a couple lovely meals. There’s no replacement for being able to see someone meaningful in the flesh, and after months of video calls I think we can mostly agree that they’re a far cry from the real thing. When borders reopen, we’ll embrace moments like this again and appreciate them for being the remarkable circumstances that they are.