Ole, Ole, Ole OLE!

Munich’s Football Culture

Munich’s star football team, FC Bayern,  is moving on up, winning games against Manchester United, Barcelona, FC Shalke, Leon, Hannover, and Real Madrid in the quest for the number 1 spot at the end of the day. And fans spare no expression of distaste to all other football leagues and are indeed very very proud of their team’s achievement. FC Bayern Fan Shops dot the Hauptbahnhof and other main streets, beckoning passerby to get in on the fun of the FC Bayern’s success. The beer songs and football chants, also known as Fangesänge, can be heard four hours before the game and four hours after – in the streets, on the U-Bahn, in the bars, and of course here in the Studentenstadt. You know there’ll be a game when cars are honking to pedestrians on the street….at 11am. You know there’ll be a game when you notice that, “Geez… a lot of people are wearing red…what holiday is this…?” Good thing that I already liked FC Bayern before coming to Munich and had not pledged my allegiance to any other team in the meantime, otherwise I just might not be alive right now….

The day before a big game against Manchester United, my friend Jessie and I met up with two gentlemen who’d we met near the Studentstadt to have a drink in the Englischer Garten under the Chinesischer Turm prior to the big game. After a Maß of tasty beer, we headed off to the city center to a large tent where the game would be showed. After stuffiing ourselves satisfactorily with overpriced curry wurst and screaming our lungs out in support of FC Bayern, our team came out in front and we took to the street to celebrate.

*chinesischer turm*fußballzelt*allianz arena bei nacht*biergarten bei englischen garten vorm spiel*

Augsburg

To make the most of the last weekend prior to the beginning of classes, we once again took advantage of Deutsche Bahn’s Bayern Ticket, which allows 5 people to travel all over Bayern and even cities like Salzburg for a total of 27 Euro, a fantastic deal. Hearing good things about Augsburg, a little under an hour away from Munich, we decided to check it out.

We arrived pretty early, around 8 or 9, and most everything was still closed. We wandered around on our own for a little while to get pictures before the city woke up, and then heading to the Tourist Center to pick up pamphlets and other tidbits about the city. We saw a variety of beautiful little buildings and cobbelstoned streets, as well as:

*the Rathaus, the main bell tower, and the Goldener Saal

*St. Peter’s Church, St. Josephs, and the thousand-year-old Ausburgsdom

*the exterior of a fantastic beautiful church, whose name has escaped me…

*a Greenpeace protest against coal energy

*Fuggerei, the oldest social housing development in the world

*Hofgarten

*Schloss Augsburg

Here is a slideshow documenting Munich’s football culture + each one of these sights

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

An interesting story about Augsburg: Two random acts of kindness saved us quite a bit of money. On the way there, we accidently boarded the wrong type of train, and would normally have to pay quite a bit of money for the correct ticket. The controller heard us out and charged us a mere fraction of what the overall cost should have been. As our day in Augsburg was coming to a close, we were in a bit of a rush to get back to Munich since one of our folks had a phone interview. We were debatting whether we wanted to spend money to see the castle if we wouldn’t be able to stay a long time. The ticket seller overheard us, sensed that we were students, and after asking us each what we studied, gave us free tickets – a 11 Euro value! It was an unprecendent act of kindness that I will never forget.