Day 3 – Munich and travel to Prague

by Kylie Sturgill and Sarah Roberts

This morning was designated as free time for the group to do whatever they wanted to do. With the nonstop go, go, go attitude, this morning was definitely spent by sleeping in for most. It was definitely an important time for all of us to catch up on sleep. After some much needed “z’s” we checked out of our hotel at 12 pm and headed off for lunch and some free time around the city. Most of the group stayed together and walked around the city together, but some opted to just hangout around the hotel at a sit-down restaurant. Kylie and I were part of the group who chose to walk around and found ourselves in the Marienplatz. For those who don’t know, the Marienplatz is basically a courtyard with a huge building with a clock tower that does a show at the hours of 11 am, 12 pm, and 5 pm with little figures. There’s also an option to take an elevator up to the top of the bell tower for a fee of 3 euros. Given that it was a beautiful day, we decided to see the landscape of Munich and pay the 3 euros.

In the background of this picture, you might be able to make out the Alps! This obviously was the best view of the Alps with the city of Munich in the foreground.

This picture was also taken from the tower of the Marienplatz where you can really see the colors and architecture of the city. The yellow building in this picture is the Theatine Church, which was partly destroyed in World War II, but reconstructed shortly after. Now, it stands as a Catholic Church that has mass every day, where locals and visitors can come together and worship. In the distance on the left third of the picture, you may be able to see a really tall tower. This tower is part of the 1972 Olympic Village, where we visited the day before. We find it crazy that the Olympic village was about 15-20 minutes from the heart of the city, but we were still able to spot it from the top of the Marienplatz tower.

(Pictured from left to right: Kylie Sturgill, Sarah Roberts, Erin Langermier, Mckayla Waterman, and Madison Fields)

This picture was taken in front of the Marienplatz. The five of us girls asked a local to take a picture of us for our memories. All five of us either played a sport in college or currently playing a sport in college, which I think is quite awesome. It’s crazy how we all knew of each other from the athletic community, but really didn’t have the chance to bond until we took an adventurous trip to Europe!

After we walked around Munich, the whole group got on the bus to head towards Allianz Arena. This was the highlight of the day for a lot of people in the group as there are a lot of soccer fans in the group. We met with our tour guide, Anna, who gave us a grand tour around the magnificent arena. We started by going inside the arena, where a senior soccer match was being played. We sat in the lower bowl of the stands and competed against another German tour group to see who could make the loudest echo. Obviously, we won. She gave us some insight into how much tickets cost and where the fans sat, for both visiting and home teams. What we found most surprising was how inexpensive normal tickets where compared to the sky box seats, which had to be purchased for five years and cost up to half a million dollars a year.

From there, we went downstairs into the press room, where the team managers were interviewed after the games. It’s important to note that the players are always interviewed in a separate room. Bayern Munich’s reach is so large, that they even had two rooms specifically for  the visiting teams’ translators.

Next, we went to the home team, Bayern’s, locker room. We were all surprised with the simplicity of the locker room. Anna told us that it’s purpose was to keep the players focused on the game. We then walked out to the player’s interview room where two Audi’s were parked to show the sponsorship Audi has with Bayern. All the walls in this room were covered with other sponsor’s names such as Lufthansa, Allianz, and Adidas. We took this opportunity to take a group picture in front of the Bayern locker room.

Lastly, Anna took us to the outside of the Arena where she explained the material of the outer dome. She even passed around a piece of material that made up the dome. She also explained that there are 300,000 LED lights that fill the outer ring of the Arena. It is always lit in red for Bayern or white for the German national team. We made a quick stop at the megafan store, where some people chose to buy some Bayern gear. Then, we got on the bus to start our four hour trip to Prague.Halfway to Prague, we stopped at Waidhaus, a small town close to the Czech border for dinner. Many of us chose to get pizza, which is definitely not like American pizza. There was definitely some language barriers away from the city that really made us appreciate hand signals and pointing. It was cool to get away from the city and see how beautiful a German town, not full of tourists was.
The rest of the two hour bus ride was spent either sleeping or having a heated discussion over current hot topics in college athletics with Dr. Graham. Time flew by, and soon enough we were in Prague! We checked into our hotel and are headed to bed for another action packed day tomorrow!