Munchen means Munich in German. Get your mind out of the gutter!
I had the pleasure of visiting Munich one week in late October, just after Oktoberfest technically ended. The fact that the famous German bier festival was “over” meant nothing for Lenovo. We managed to have a very authentic Lenovo-toberfest ourselves, complete with an official keg tapping, German drinking songs and bell ringing, and all the brats and pretzels you could eat. Did I mention the beer? We had a lot of beer… all week long.
I went to Munich for a week of meetings with Lenovo’s global leadership team. I arrived early on a Saturday morning and had the pleasure of walking around the city on a 70 degree sunny day with my coworker. We shopped a little bit- I got some gifts for family members at an authentic liederhosen store. They will be so ecstatic! The cool thing is Germans really do wear liederhosen on the reg. Like, hey honey we’re heading into the big city, better put on our Sunday best! But the Sunday best is really the bierhaus best.
This was our Oktoberfest host, he was THE MAN
Munich is very walkable, and has a ton of awesome stores in the district by the hotel where I stayed. There’s also an almost-silent trolley that runs through the city that probably kills hundreds of people a year… there are no signs, and it just zooms through the city without warning on the tracks that are everywhere! You know those crazy Germans. Efficient, but wild behind the wheel.
The cars there are also fantastic; BMW, Audi, Porsche were the 3 types I saw most often. On our last day in Munich we had the opportunity to go to the BMW Driving Experience school outside the city. Check out my sweet photo with an I8! These are apparently “sick rides” – I know that because I got a LOT of likes on my Instagram photo with this car.
I drove out to the BMW school with two Germans who were with the agency we hired for the event. They were a couple from Berlin who actually had a daughter that’s currently in high school in Newport News, VA in an exchange program. What a small world! They told me all about life in Germany- everyone skis, as much as possible, in the Alps. If you live in Munich you have an hour drive to some of the best skiing in the world. They were very respectful of American culture, and had both lived in the US at some point in their lives. They drove a BMW, and were quick to make jokes about how they’d purchased it for that specific event.
Lenovo is a global company, and the number of different countries that were represented in the week-long meeting was astounding. The multi-lingual, intelligent leaders were inspiring to listen to, and watching them bond together during our different evening activities was pretty hilarious. During our Oktoberfest night the Chinese leaders were really into the drinking competitions… but I will say it was very obvious they don’t have fraternities or similar college parties that Americans are used to attending. I LOLed a lot.
No matter what country each attendee came from, everyone was in awe of the gala dinner at the Residenz, which was a Summer home to the royal families of Germany. I can’t remember all of the history, but the place was a huge palace, and the room where we had our event was outstanding. There were also “hidden” swaztikas on the ceiling pattern so that was a little intense…. this gala dinner also happened to be the only meal where we were not served sausages! It was so amazing just to have fish and chicken. We then had some weird deconstructed crime brûlée for dessert which I sort of liked. Actually in thinking about it now I didn’t like it.
Overall, I really enjoyed my time in Munich. I think I’d like to go back and spend 2 or 3 more days there with friends so I could shop a lot more and go to some of the German Klubs (pronounced Kloobs) that I heard so much about. I did spend a lot of my first Sunday there at the Hofbrauhaus, the oldest German beer garden where Hitler used to party. That was a lot of fun, and the pretzels were larger than my body! I almost named this post the daily pretzel, but it just doesn’t have the same ring to it. The weisse beer was also delicious, and I felt very nourished by its contents.
So- thumbs up to Munich! Check out some of the photos I took while I was there. It was beautiful.
jetsettingjennie 