i heart munchen

A huge part of the appeal of this move was to allow us the opportunity to travel and experience a world bigger than the 503 (that’s Portland, for all of the non-Oregonians). I’ve always had a sense of wanderlust – devouring issues of Travel & Leisure and daydreaming of all the places I would see ‘someday.’ And at the risk of sounding super cheesy and trite, this opportunity felt like it was saying ‘life’s too short’ and ‘seize the day’ and a number of other cliches which are all too true. So Wen & I committed that we are going to GO and SEE and DO as much as we can while we’re here. We truly have no idea how long this adventure in Germany will last – 2 years? 3? 5? But when we do go back home,  we want to leave with no regrets, without lists filled with places we wish we would have visited.

We also don’t want the ages of our girls to stand in the way of great adventure – they were certainly a key factor in deciding to come here. I want to open their eyes to this big, amazing world and allow them to see and experience beauty and history for themselves. Of course, it’s hard to say how much they’ll really absorb and remember – but just the journey itself will hopefully fill their minds and hearts with an understading that the world is big and can be filled with newness and adventure if they just open the door and go for it.

As such, this weekend marked the first of our Maxey Family Adventures – we kept it relatively tame and manageable and simply hopped in the car, drove 2 hours, and spent 3 amazing days in Munich (aka ‘Emily’s New Favorite City’).

I’ll spare you all a moment-by-moment recap of our weekend in Munich and will simply let the pictures do most of the talking. But a few quick highlights:

• Running through Munich is a huge, beautiful park called the ‘English Gardens’- it (sort of) reminded me of Central Park, which is also one of my favorite places in the world. There’s just something magical about being in the middle of a big, bustling city and experiencing the calm & quiet of a green, lush park.  Lots of runners, an intense boot camp class taking place on one of the many grassy lawns (Andrea – perhaps you should take your business international!), a sweet playground for the girls. The EG is huge, so we only saw one portion of it, but it definitely made an impression. So beautiful.
• At the southern end of the English Garden is a little waterfall thing (hard to describe) in the river, where you’ll find surfers riding the ‘waves’ that the waterfall creates. We had heard about it from a number of people, but it wasn’t necessarily in our Top 5 Things to See in Munich list. However, we were driving down the road on Saturday afternoon, and happened to see a crowd of people looking over a bride on the side of the road – so I made Wen quickly pull over, and I jumped out of the car and sure enough, there it was! We took turns standing w the crowd and watching the surfers – it’s the most random thing, but pretty fantastic. Piper LOVED it, and has decided that I am going to teach her to surf when she’s big, like 6 years old. Oy.
• Hands down, favorite thing is just wandering the city center. My dad loves to ‘meander’ through cities – I will always associate that word with him and his love of just walking and looking and wandering. I think both Wen & I inherited the ‘meander’ gene, as we both love it as well. We’re not huge planners or researchers (the downside of which is that we probably pass a lot of famous or interesting things and don’t even know it! We’ll need to get a bit better about that). But regardless, we love to just meander and take it all in. This city is breathtaking.

Ok, my committment to not bore you with too many details has clearly gone out the window. So with that, I’ll just say I Heart Munchin!

Auf wiedersehen, sweet friends. Love from Nuremberg.

little miss european

oh, beautiful munich.

the crazy surf thing - so cool, so random.

stella janey at the english gardens. she looks rather sad and thoughtful, but she really did enjoy it!

wendell maxey has rediscovered fanta (found everywhere here)

our hip hotel

lovely!