Back home on the fourth of July.

I spent the afternoon with some of my family and Emily's friend Lauren at Letchworth. The pool is free now with entry. It was human soup but even soup felt good on the 85 degree day. Plus the diving pool is always emptier.


oma Mid wrapped in his blankets

We cooked out - I had some Lebanese food and veggie snausage.



When I got back I sped over to the fireworks at the outer harbor. I shouldn't have rushed because they were 40 minutes delayed.





They also caused a fire.

And everyone to run away from imaginary gunshots at Canalside - wtf

The train ride from Munich to Venice is a long one (7+ hours, trains are slow in the alps) but has insane scenery. The train pops underneath mountains in tunnels, and comes out in the middle of the mountain range. I wish there was time to get out and go climb one somehow.

Post treasure museum we were super hungry. We also were in the most touristy part of Munich. So what did we do? We went to the Hofbrauhaus. It's the German stereotype on steroids (its actually a chain that might even come to Buffalo soon). It's a beer hall with pretzels and blond ladies and 1 liter jugs of beer. Despite it being tourist central the prices weren't as obscene as I thought.

I think it was 8 euro for a liter of beer. (e:paul) got a pig's knuckle, (e:terry) and I ate a mushroom dumpling. (e:paul) scratched my last name in the table for my dad. At one point after we all had 1 liter of beer, the waitress came back and interpreted our request for one more liter to share, as one more liter for each of us. Drink up.













Leave the brewery after it rained, we came across this Bavarian king statue turned Micheal Jackson monument. There were all these pictures of Micheal Jackson - along with a 10 page document in English and German defending him against the pedophilia charges. They claim it was a conspiracy.

Try to tell me these kings weren't gay


This is another pic dump only because there was more than one person could ever take in and read about. Basically the royalty of Bavaria had so much treasure they bought and gifted to them by other royalty they could open a museum about it. Once again the concept is disgusting, but the art and craftsmanship that went into these is insane. A lot of it was made it Italy which says a lot about how over the top these things were.

The trop of a pointy, jewel encrusted crown is real though.




This is for drinking water.

St. George slaying the dragon





Sexy plates



I appreciate the dogs here

(e:terry) is royalty! Who's the fairest of them all?

The golden penis

Napolean's wife's toiletry kit. The amount of drawers on drawers on drawers is impressive

A night of debauchery in München. I bet money for the first time (casinos and gambling were everywhere in Germany). We put 1 euro in the slot machine, and won 24 cents back. Terrible deal, would not do this again.


(e:paul) ate fried food

I don't even know where we were that there were poles but there you go.


(e:xandra)'s gift we spotted at the Halloween store.