Munich for Bayern Munich

We can safely say that we've seen a good bit of Germany now...that is after driven 6 hours each way this week to Munich for the Bayern Munich soccer game.

Driving always seems like the prudent thing to do on paper. Plus it's always so difficult for me not to get caught up in John's romantic musings about packing up the car on whim and taking a road trip. The picture painted is always one of rich scenery, highways perfectly scrubbed of traffic, the opportunity to drive 120 mph on the Autobahn, deep discussions we'll share about the meaning of life, and the chance to see parts of Europe that you can only appreciate by car.

Instead, we usually get on the road two hours late in the height of rush hour, drive through what we imagine to be really amazing scenery (we wouldn't know because it's in the middle of night), a white knuckled passenger who's too afraid to open her eyes for fear of seeing if we're going as fast as it feels (we're not, we're going faster), a sleepy driver who claims he's not (the weaving is by design, you see), and the most deafening 6 hours of silence which is only interrupted by questions about the degree to which the driver is sleepy (very) and the passenger hungry (famished).

This trip was much closer to the latter version but we've increased our portfolio of stories to tell about our adventures in Deutschland.

The game itself was a ball. The score ended up being tied 0-0 so there was plenty of nail-biting action and the opportunity to compare Europe's love for soccer with America's obsession with football. In sum total, there are many similarities and the experience was well worth the drive.










To top it all off, we even received a little surprise when we got back to our room thanks to our dear dog, Josie who we had brought along to add to the romance of car travel. Explosive diarrhea thoughtfully left in a heaping pile at the foot of the doorway in all of it's rank, pancake-like glory. The hotel was really nice about it actually and brought a steam cleaner right away. I guess if you allow dogs into your establishment you must be prepared for this sort of thing but I doubt the hotel will be erecting any statues in our honor. The stench never did quite come out.


So, we had a pretty memorable weekend. Like they say, it's not a romantic getaway in Bavaria until someone has the squirts.