Day 2 Rewind

So, I was able to accomplish all my goals for yesterday. My old cellular provider T-D1 no longer exists as its on entity and sometime in the past 3 years since I was last in Germany, got scooped back under the T-Mobile brand. So the counter rep told me there was nothing she could do but sell me a new T-Mobile SIM (really, sell me something new?), which was only 19€ and I got 10€ credit with the deal, so I really didn't press the issue about being randomly removed from the network.

I also stopped by the Hauptbahnhof (main train station) to buy my rail card for reduced train fairs. If you're planning to come over for just the world cup, the Weltmeister BahnCard 25 might be your best bet. It's 19€ (normally 25€) and is valid for the duration of the World Cup and gets extended a couple of weeks depending on how far the German team makes it.

While I was in the area, I decided to walk by my old apartment building and take a snapshot:

While I was out, I remebered that I had always wanted to take a tour of the Löwenbräu brewery which was only two blocks behind my old apartment. The brewery didn't have an obvious entry that clueless tourists would recognize so I poked around a bit, entered through the deliveries entry, asked a worker if tours were given and where I could sign up, he looked at me like I was on crack (homeskillet wasn't from Germany) and pointed me over to the right where an open door leading to the silos were. Makes sense to me. Since after 5 floors of stair climbing nothing looked officially welcoming, I decided to go back down, passed a worker about my age, asked again and he said I'd have to go over to the Spaten brewery and sign up. So I learned Spaten and Löwenbräu is shared by the same owners. I moseyed over to the Spaten brewery, which was connected to the Löwenbräu brewery via a breezeway, found again no obvious entry and decided younger homeskillet was having a good laugh right about now. So all I came away with was this lousy pic:

Other than that, I went jogging for a little under an hour in the Englisher Garten and Thomas and I hit up one of my favorite cafes, News Bar, later on in the Schwabing district for a couple of, funny enough, Spatens. Here's me laughing about it all at News Bar if you've forgotten what I look like, Stace :) ... and yes, I need a haircut:

For today, not much going on. The real fun starts Friday when Germany kicks off the World Cup in Munich with Germany versus Costa Rica. I'm thinking I might go ahead and hit up the Allianz Arena and pick up the rest of my tickets. And if Charlton's over his jetlag from his NYC trip, maybe I can finally catch up with the man.