Munich 2024, Day 1: Frühlingsfest, Auer Dult, and Hofbräuhaus
After our first night of sleep, all of us were still quite jet lagged, but were able to get a decent amount of sleep at the hotel room. However, the train to Munich wasn’t going to wait for us to get over our jet lag, so we hustled over toFrankfurt station. Inside, we were surprised at the amount of food options available to us, which made it easy to grab some coffee and breakfast before getting on the train. Once we boarded and found our seats, we relaxed on the 3.5 hour train ride to Munich.
When we arrived, and found the correct exit from Munich Central Station, I was shocked that our hotel, Aloft Munich, was literally across the street. When I booked it, I knew that it was near the train station, but didn’t realize that it was so close to it. This is super convenient because we will be using the trains here quite a bit, so a two minute walk is great!
After checking into our rooms, we decided to head out to the Frühlingsfest, or the Spring Festival. It’s held in the same place as the annual Oktoberfest, so it’s sort of like Oktoberfest in April? Anyway, once we arrived, we were greeted with a multitude of various booths with midway games and food, as well as some carnival rides and, of course, the beer halls. In a way, it reminded us of the various county or state fairs in the US, but in Germany. I wanted to find a Skeeball booth, but none were to be found. However, we walked down a small side path and found an amazing archery booth. We had no clue how scoring worked, or what you needed to get a prize, but it was 10€ for 9 arrows. Nick, Tiffany and I would do our best collectively to win a prize! Nick started with his three arrows and hit the outer targets on two of his shots. I was next and missed on my first two shots, but hit the bullseye on my third. Tiffany finished the last three arrows by hitting an outer ring on her last shot. Our collective efforts apparently scored us enough points to win this:
We’ll take it! We weren’t sure if we had options to choose from, but the guys before us hit a few rings of the target and got a lighter, which would be mostly useless to us.
We then walked around the entire festival, taking in the sights of the various booths and beer halls:
As I mentioned earlier, it really did feel like being in a state or county fair in the US, except that many of the visitors were wearing traditional lederhosen and dirndls. It was a very festive and fun start to our Munich trip!
Next, we took the U-bahn to another fair, the Auer Dult, a more traditional fair with crafts and a market hall. Since there were four of us, it was more cost effective to buy one group train ticket, which is valid for groups of 2-5 people, than for each of us to buy individual tickets. Google maps makes it easy to know which train to take, so we had no problems finding the correct train to the location of Auer Dult. We only needed to go two stops, but after one stop, the train doors right in front of us broke, and a station attendant immediately stuck “sorry, defective door” stickers on the door. This meant that we had to navigate our way to another door through the crowded train to get out at the next stop….we didn’t need additional anxiety on our first train ride.
But we made it out before the doors shut, and started heading over to the fair, except that Tiffany and I saw a juice shop across the street and immediately made a detour there (giving Nick and Mike very little warning). We walked into Wagners Juicery and quickly browsed their menu:
Once we got to the register to order, the woman told us that they stopped making juice for the day. It turns out that we got there just as they closed, but the other woman making the drinks made an exception for us, which we were extremely grateful for. With juice in hand, we continued our walk to Auer Dult where we walked across this lovely bridge over a river. There, we saw many people enjoying the scenery on the river bank, and some of them were actually swimming in it:
From there, we walked a few more minutes and were greeted with many booths of arts and crafts:
This fair is known for the many ceramics booths, and they weren’t kidding:
There were many cute ceramic items, and Nick had to convince me not to buy any given the risk of them shattering during our travels. So instead, we found a cute jewelry booth where I bought a keychain with a silver pretzel attached to it.
The entire fair was much larger than we expected, and offered many different items from the aforementioned ceramics to foods and even an entire row of antique items. We can see why this annual fair is so popular, and we were lucky to be here during it.
By this time, we needed to rest before our dinner, so we took a break at the hotel. Soon afterwards, we were back on the train to go to the famous Hofbräuhaus. Since we were a group of four, we were able to use their reservation system to book a table. When we arrived, we walked into the ground floor dining room and into a chaotic mess of diners eating and tourists taking photos. We saw no host stand and were confused, so Nick went to ask someone outside the main doors and they instructed us to go upstairs. When we entered the second floor dining area, it was like a completely different restaurant. The host asked if we wanted to be seated inside or outside, and we opted for inside because it was getting quite chilly, and she told us that we could sit anywhere. As we walked further inside, we noticed that it was like 10% occupied, so our choices of seating were abundant:
We opted to sit at a table by the windows in the area with people already seated. It took a few minutes for the server to notice that we needed English menus, but they have an English menu online here.
After a few minutes of discussion, we decided to go with a meat platter, the famous Weißwurst, Käsespätzle, Rahmschwammerl, and some pretzels:
Nick also ordered a beer:
The stein was ginormous, and Nick’s arm was getting quite tired from holding it while posing for photos. We enjoyed the food there; my favorite was the Weißwurst. For dessert, we had to have their apple streudel:
It was warm, and made for a delicious end to our first day in Munich. We headed back to the hotel to get some more sleep to combat the jet lag in order to have the energy to spend a lot of time walking tomorrow!