Day 9 -- Munich, Germany

We had originally planned to make a pilgrimage out to a place called the "Andrechs Monastery," which was on the outskirts of Munich…and was well-known for being a Monastery, and making beer. It was one of the first breweries in Munich (if not the first), and has some…apparently…pretty darn good beer.

Unfortunately Erika and I were pretty beer'd out. Personally, I like a nice cool Mike's Hard Lemonade, or a Zima – something manly. I've never enjoyed the bitter swill of the hops…but I thought that, if I came to Munich, I'd find the magical elixir that would change my world forever…and every time I was forced to swill a Miller Light, I'd think back fondly to the time, in Munich, that I sipped the perfect beer.

I have yet to find that beer…and I'm not sure if I ever will. It's something that I've never been able to train my mouth to enjoy…like cucumber…or raw potatoes…or monkey. Regrettable, but I don't think I can force it any more.

So instead we decided to do what we do best – walk our little asses off. As great as the public transportation system is in Europe, I feel that Erika have I have decided not to use the busses, trains, and taxis…and instead walk like Egyptians…minus the awesome arm movements…or the awesome song…

We walked up north and saw some big museum-looking-buildings that were (I believe) actually museums. And some more sculptures of naked people.

Now, forgive me, but I'm going to reveal a little bit of a secret here. There's a lot of nudity in Europe…from the primetime network TV…to the statues…to the naked section of the Englisher Garden (I'll get to that in a second). And Erika and I have a tendency to be…occasionally…a little juvenile. I don't want to spoil it or anything…but we've taken some pretty memorable pictures…and…hmm…well, I'll just let you all wait until I start the massive upload. See if you can spot the immaturity somewhere.

After the museums and the naked sculptures, we headed to the Englisher Garden proper. Very pretty. Bigger than central park (we walked half of it, and it took us most of the day), and it's the best of Greenlake (for you Seattlers), the Sehome Arboretum (for you Bellinghamers), and…well…any park in Los Angeles (for you poor sad-sack Angeliners out there). The only thing missing is the ocean…which I'm surprised these inventive suckers didn't find a way to create (though they did manage an artificial surfing wave on the south side…on the river running through the park).

We spent several hours wandering through this place…we stopped at the Chinese Pagoda, and had a very traditional German meal of meat, potatoes, bread, gravy, and big-ass beer steins (I guess we weren't so beer'd out after all). We went up north to see one of the prettiest little urban lakes I've ever seen, then south to see some of the nakedest people in the month of October that I've ever seen (a little jarring, to be honest with you…to have about 100 people arrayed on a big lawn, wearing their birthday suits).

On our way back we got tickets for a production of Tod eines Handlugsreisenden. Though, I'm sure most of us English-speaking folk would call it "Death of a Salesman," but Arthur Miller. This was to satisfy the requirement that this entire trip be "tax deductible," since we're both actors.

I'm kidding…but only partially. If we can deduct any of this trip, that'd be awesome…but that's not the reason we went. We like theater, and the opportunity to see a great production of an excellent play was one we couldn't pass up.

So we got snazzed up, had a quick dinner, and headed to the show.

The show. Now, I'd read Death of a Salesman before, so…even though it was translated into German, I was able to follow the story with my knowledge of the plot, and my rudimentary understanding of the German language. The show was fabulous…though it was interesting seeing the "German Twist" on a (traditionally) very realistic play.

First off, the Germans seem to be in love with spectacle – so the set was a giant revolve filled with the various set pieces to be used throughout the show…and the rest of the theater was bare (from the back wall to the fly rail way above the stage). Now…although Death of a Salesman is typically done completely realistic and straight in America, the German production set it in the modern day, added some surrealistic moments with unusual stage conventions (overlapping scenes with occasional interaction, video projections, a few random moments of singing, and the occasional unexpected, undefined flashbacks).

Having said that, the show worked – it has to be something akin to what the English experience when they see a "re-imagined" version of a Shakespeare play – but it was quite enjoyable none-the-less. The gentleman playing Willy Lohman was superb, and we was surrounded by fantastic actors (who I was able to understand completely, in spite of the language barrier), and an inventive bit of direction. Seriously, there were moments when I was moved to tears, even though I didn't quite know exactly what was being said on stage. I'm very glad I got to see that production…and even more glad, since we paid for the 16 euro seats, but got moved to the 60 euro seats (because, if we hadn't, we'd have been the only suckers in the balcony).

After the show ended, we retired to our fabulous hotel and had some amazing German chocolates (that we'd purchased earlier in the day), watched a dubbed version of Star Wars, drank a Coke Zero, worked on a crossword puzzle for a bit, and eventually fell asleep. Tomorrow, we head to the portion of the trip that we're both dreading and anticipating – Dachau concentration camp. Ought to be interesting. Until then…