Sunday, October 30, 2005
The Münster Adventure
Münster was by far the greatest trip so far.
Yesterday Alec, Brittany, and I traveled there on the train. We arrived just before 12 and walked around the Innenstadt to find some food and things to do. (Naturally, we didn't plan any schedule for the day) The Innenstadt reminds me of Osnabrück's füßgangerzone except much larger. We visited a church and then the city's main cathedral. I am kind of tired of going to these cathedrals. All they do is make me think of the institutions that allowed the Nazi's to rise to power. And they all look the same- dead Jesuses hanging everywhere with a few of Jesus's grouppies. Yawn.
Alec and I wanted to go to the Allwetter Zoo on the outskirts of the city, but Brittany decided to stay behind and check out the fest (market) that was going on outside the Dom. The distance to the Zoo on the map didn't seem all that long. We ended up walking for about 50 minutes. We even left Münster by about 500 meters. (Picture proof coming soon) But it was worth it, the zoo was cool. I always enjoy watching monkeys... be monkeys. During the time we were at the Zoo Brittany got bored and went back to Osnabrück. (bad decision)
This is where the trip truely takes a turn for the best:
We decided to take the bus back into Münster since we were pretty tired from all the walking. On the bus we had the luck of sitting next to a few people who were talking in English. I asked them why they were talking in English (All of them had accents) and found out that 2 were from Uni. Münster (Kai and Beate) and 1 was from Moscow State University (Nina), so english was their common language. We talked with them for a while and they invited us to have a traditional Westfalian dinner with them at a nice restaurant. This was perfect as we had been hoping to find some local food to eat.
A trip to Starbucks and a little ice cream later we were at the restaurant. (Desert has to come first for us- dinner starts at about 8) The food we got was truely unique, here is a list of the foods we tried:
My dish:
Salty, prosciutto-like ham over a buttered piece of bread. A fried egg was thrown on top along with a pickle and there was potatoe salad on the side.
Alec/Nina's dish:
Various types of wurst (sausages)- one was a "blood sausage." The thing was charred to hell because apparently its a very bloody sausage. It tasted great, though.
Kai's dish:
Tötchen. This dish was definitely the weirdest thing I have eaten in Germany, but it tasted great. I was somewhat nervous about it in the first place since the direct translation is something like "Little death." The dish had various parts of a cow's face along with some intestines in a kind of beef-stew broth. It's apparently a Münster specialty. I was very apprehensive about trying it, but man was it good. I would even order it next time despite the weirdness of eating unusual parts of a cow.
Beate's dish: Zweiblefleisch. This translates to onion meat. Now, I hate onions, but this dish was amazing. I didn't taste the onions even though I know I had quite a few. The meat was actually a lot like a corned beef.
We also had some great Münster brewed bear (Pinkus). I usually hate beer, but this was just a really nice lager.
Dinner took so long that we finished around 11:20 or so. Alec and I thought the last train out of Münster was at 12:04. Well, it turned out the last train out of Münster was at 11:04. Oops. Luckily Kai offered us a place to stay at his appartment so we had no problem being stuck in Münster. We hung out at Kai's place for a while and then went bar hopping through Münster with two of Kai and Beate's friends. Finally returning at about 4am we got to turn the clocks back to 3am for daylight savings- which was absolutely awesome. An extra hour of sleep!
This morning we woke up, had a good old German breakfast, talked to Kai about all of his trips around Europe and the world and took the 13:04 train back to Osnabrück.
Yesterday Alec, Brittany, and I traveled there on the train. We arrived just before 12 and walked around the Innenstadt to find some food and things to do. (Naturally, we didn't plan any schedule for the day) The Innenstadt reminds me of Osnabrück's füßgangerzone except much larger. We visited a church and then the city's main cathedral. I am kind of tired of going to these cathedrals. All they do is make me think of the institutions that allowed the Nazi's to rise to power. And they all look the same- dead Jesuses hanging everywhere with a few of Jesus's grouppies. Yawn.
Alec and I wanted to go to the Allwetter Zoo on the outskirts of the city, but Brittany decided to stay behind and check out the fest (market) that was going on outside the Dom. The distance to the Zoo on the map didn't seem all that long. We ended up walking for about 50 minutes. We even left Münster by about 500 meters. (Picture proof coming soon) But it was worth it, the zoo was cool. I always enjoy watching monkeys... be monkeys. During the time we were at the Zoo Brittany got bored and went back to Osnabrück. (bad decision)
This is where the trip truely takes a turn for the best:
We decided to take the bus back into Münster since we were pretty tired from all the walking. On the bus we had the luck of sitting next to a few people who were talking in English. I asked them why they were talking in English (All of them had accents) and found out that 2 were from Uni. Münster (Kai and Beate) and 1 was from Moscow State University (Nina), so english was their common language. We talked with them for a while and they invited us to have a traditional Westfalian dinner with them at a nice restaurant. This was perfect as we had been hoping to find some local food to eat.
A trip to Starbucks and a little ice cream later we were at the restaurant. (Desert has to come first for us- dinner starts at about 8) The food we got was truely unique, here is a list of the foods we tried:
My dish:
Salty, prosciutto-like ham over a buttered piece of bread. A fried egg was thrown on top along with a pickle and there was potatoe salad on the side.
Alec/Nina's dish:
Various types of wurst (sausages)- one was a "blood sausage." The thing was charred to hell because apparently its a very bloody sausage. It tasted great, though.
Kai's dish:
Tötchen. This dish was definitely the weirdest thing I have eaten in Germany, but it tasted great. I was somewhat nervous about it in the first place since the direct translation is something like "Little death." The dish had various parts of a cow's face along with some intestines in a kind of beef-stew broth. It's apparently a Münster specialty. I was very apprehensive about trying it, but man was it good. I would even order it next time despite the weirdness of eating unusual parts of a cow.
Beate's dish: Zweiblefleisch. This translates to onion meat. Now, I hate onions, but this dish was amazing. I didn't taste the onions even though I know I had quite a few. The meat was actually a lot like a corned beef.
We also had some great Münster brewed bear (Pinkus). I usually hate beer, but this was just a really nice lager.
Dinner took so long that we finished around 11:20 or so. Alec and I thought the last train out of Münster was at 12:04. Well, it turned out the last train out of Münster was at 11:04. Oops. Luckily Kai offered us a place to stay at his appartment so we had no problem being stuck in Münster. We hung out at Kai's place for a while and then went bar hopping through Münster with two of Kai and Beate's friends. Finally returning at about 4am we got to turn the clocks back to 3am for daylight savings- which was absolutely awesome. An extra hour of sleep!
This morning we woke up, had a good old German breakfast, talked to Kai about all of his trips around Europe and the world and took the 13:04 train back to Osnabrück.
