My oldest friend in the world is Martin. We have been friends for something like 23 years now. We met in elementary school and my first memories of him are biking to school, big adventures going across the the local bridge (called the hump) and discovering new streets and parks on the way to class.

He now lives in Germany, where he was born. We had a couple days off and decided to go visit him in Munich. I had been to Munich before, six years prior, but all my memories of it are lost in a blurry haze of Oktoberfest.. We had a really enjoyable train ride from Hannover to Munich. It was kind of sunny, for the first time in a while, and we saw rolling hills for the first time since being in the flat lands of the north, with cute hamlets tucked in each little valley. Martin picked us up in his work VW at the Hauptbanhof. He was in the middle of a business call when we got in the car, but soon after gave us a happy greeting and his full attention.

No sooner had we dropped our packs off, then we were off to pick up pizza ingredients and an entire crate of beer (20 half-liter bottles of quality beer for only 16 euros/ 20 bucks!). We almost finished the crate between ourselves, Martin, his girlfriend, Evi, and his friend, Basti. We had a great time catching up, making and eating pizza, and giving our three friends a private concert. After a nice sleep-in the next morning, it was nice to have a day off (we had previously played 9 shows in 10 days). We took the bus downtown to enjoy some of Munich's beautiful sights, and wove our way through tourists and shoppers and made our way to the Church of Our Lady. We were hoping to hike to the top of one of its famous onion-shaped domes. We began the climb through the narrow spiraling stone staircase, which unceremoniously dumped us on a landing in front of a stainless steel elevator door.. We had wanted the exercise, but instead were zipped up to the top. We were then greeted by some spectacular views of the red rooftops, twisted streets, church steeples reaching into the sky, and the shadows of the alps quite close off the horizon. We lunched at the famous Hofbrauhaus, and were even treated to some traditional live music- two trumpets, accordion, and tuba, leiderhosen and all. We strolled through the sunny, humid streets in a very happy mood, listened to a violinist play Meditation from Massenet's Thais, and then found a music store (one of many) where got ourselves some goodies.

We took the bus back to Martin's place, he got home from work a little early, but we still practiced some new songs before heading out again. It was the first day of summer, the longest day of the year (almost ski season). We went to get some picnic supplies (pretzels and cheeses) and walked our way through parks and over the glacial Isar river to a very local and friendly beer garden in the woods. In this secluded spot, about a hundred people enjoyed picnics and masses of beer (one liter mugs). I was pretty impressed that Aliza downed two masses like a true Munich local (I had my own two as well). We had a great time and it was quite dark, on this shortest night of the year, by the time we strolled home in the humid night which was just condensing into rain when we got home. We had meant to drink more beer when we got home but had forgotten to pick up more, so we busted open the whiskey, which was fun, but which also gave me my first hang-over of the tour :) They requested a concert, but unfortunately they got a bit of a tired and sloppy one, but they were too drunk to notice and it was fun anyway.. Good times in Munich. Happy summer everyone!