You Go Nate!

MUNICH: YEAR 2

It has been quite cold and snowy in Munich lately. I've been working a lot and there's not much to report.

However...

On February 7th I celebrated the anniversary of my first full day in Munich by going to the same restaurant I visited when I first arrived. It's an old Bavarian restaurant right next to the famous Frauenkirche (church). I ordered the same thing I ate a year ago, but this time I was able to order from the German menu.



That little potato ball is called a "knödel" -and let me tell you, knödels are SOOOO good. Next to the knödel is roast pork with a crispy pork rine on top, all cooked in a wonderful beer sauce.


After lunch, I decided to walk around the Bayerischer Hof Hotel to see if I could get a look at what was going on in town that weekend.

What was going on in town that weekend? It was the annual Munich Security Conference where world leaders from all over the world meet, having come from all over the world, to talk about international security and defense from all over the world.

This year some of the big names of people here in Munich attending the conference were: Vice President Joe Biden, head of US Central Command Gen. David Petraeus, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Nicholas Sarkozy, Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai, and other heads of state and defense ministers from a variety of other countries including Russia and Iran.

This conference was the first appearance by the Obama Administration on the European stage.

Needless to say, security was tight. There were police and security forces everywhere. A one-block radius around the hotel was barricaded off. Here you can see the hotel at the end of the street. There was no getting near it...




I went around to the main security checkpoint to see how close I could get. There were machine guns, guards with full body armor, walking patrols, the works....




Here you can see the Bayerischer Hof Hotel where the conference was taking place...




There were snipers on the roof....




And important-looking people coming in and out and walking all about...




Three blocks away on the Marienplatz the protestors were out en masse protesting anything they could think of. There were cops and security guards everywhere...




It was interesting to be so near to where a world event was taking place.

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