Munich Loves You! This is the slogan of the city of Munich birthed with the 2006 Soccer World Cup, slightly changed to Munich Likes You due to the too much “full” significance of the Love word used in German. However this is absolutely full in English to describe and recap what has been the #EuroMeetup2023.
The expectations were really high, the EuroMeetup has been postponed for three long years due to the pandemic situation in 2020 and after such long time the reality was even more than what expected: put 30 Local Guides from all around Europe, and beyond, together for three intense days and this is the very well brewed magic recipe created by @TorM and @JanVanHaver .
The meetup starts with a iconic welcome dinner at the Hofbrauhaus, Local Guides walked all for the appointment at 19:00 in front of the entrance of the most famous pub of Munich, and hugs hugs and hugs (well some kisses too), people who do see each other after months, years and people who do meet for the first time: no difference! A special mention for the first time ever presence of our amazing Google Moderators, participating on themselves as private persons and Local Guides, @DeniGu , @InaS and @Ivi_Ge . A special dinner, a special table to experience the best of this pub with all the local Bavarian culture, food and of course beer, plus a special tour by a special guest-of-the-house Torben managed to pull 
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), appointment at 10:00 at the Shloss Nymphenburg to learn a bit of local royal history, this palace with its huge French garden was the summer residence of the King of Bavaria. We visited the palace and its rooms, fantastic decorations, lot of gold, lot of mirrors and lot of beds 
! Yes beds, we were wondering how many people would sleep in but we found out that they were mainly for prestige reasons and not all really used. Afterwards we visited the beautiful park with its garden, walked around, and of course time for some fun typical Local Guides recording 
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Direction city center, quick local lunch on our way to reach the next destination of the Munich Residenz, the residence of the King in the heart of the city. It is a huge palace, again with an amount of rooms which goes above our mind, all seriously beautiful decorated as we would expect from a royal palace but with some special sections which are just breathless such as the Royal Ballet room, the Antiquarium, the Herzkabinett and the Cuvillies theatre. One thing for sure, this place has so many comfortable seats, be sure that we had a super talented group of Local Guides who tested them all and they can detail review them, isn’t it Ina 
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After such royal long day, time off for a quick rest in the hotel, then appointment for dinner in the second most famous pub of the city, the Augustiner-Keller, a pub divided in two different sections: one for eating (and drinking), tables well decorated, good service. The other one for drinking (and eating), simple tables, people in and out without any special commitment, fast and gentle service, loud talking. Well you may have understood the difference and which part we chose, the more social one where the country gifts exchange, as usual of Local Guides international events, took place… besides some other “liquid” local experience 
! Friday night last a bit log for a part of the group, but as we say … what happens in Munich, stays in Munich 
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The third day started a bit later, guess the reason, with the appointment at 11:00 at the NS-Dokumentationszentrum. An amazing location to learn more about Adolf Hitler, his regime and all his activities from the founding of the regime up to the Second World Wide War. A touching experience, which we all know very well but we should never forget and never replicate anymore anywhere to anyone! We needed to speed up a bit the visit because it would have been lasting very long due to the amount of information exposed here, direction back to the city center for another quick lunch this time in the central Market to prepare ourselves and visit and join the Munich Pride… a such beautiful and fun moment to share with everyone, celebrating love, ourself and everyone’s identity, we are Local Guides, we are friends and that’s all what matters 
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After lot of dancing and so much colorful parade we held to the Munich Ludwig Maximilian University to join the live stream of the Go Loco Podcast channel of @AdrianLunsong and at the same time the virtual meetup organized by my Italian friend @ErmesT which allowed us to connect with all of you guys virtually and share, live, our experiences, our feelings, our EuroMeetup2023. A special mention about this special location chose by Torben with always an eye on our history and the local culture, this is the place where Sophie Scholl got arrested, and then killed, with her brother, for anti-Nazism propaganda she took leading of with her fellow students by her White Rose movement 
. The main hall shows a commemorative statue with a white rose in honor of this courageous girl.
The last dinner couldn’t have been with less expectations of the previous one so Torben organized a super Beach BBQ! Well a beach in Munich? Yes on the Isar river where a lot of people are meeting each other to eat, drink and stay together at the sunset and later. Couldn’t we miss to be fun Local Guides? Of course not, here we recorded our TikTok dance video 
!!! Yeah a TikTok dance … which we practiced along all day. You should know that a group of Local Guides all together might be quite dangerous, especially because everyone’s idea would be for sure always (ok, almost ) very well accepted. I’ll let you guess who was this idea from, the dance has been selected and studied during the previous night (oh well, actually what was left of), and steps prepared to be teached everyone … a hint, look at the last three gestures and you might guess the nationality 
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After the beautiful dinner some more local liquids just to re-hydratate us, dancing took quite some energy, then heads to the hotels for the biggest and longest hugs ever to say goodbye to the people who were leaving in the morning for travelling and logistic reasons like myself, I started driving in the morning from Munich to be back in Lucca in the early afternoon, lucky didn’t encounter traffic on my 700km route to join this fantastic and memorable meetup.
Every meetup is always a mix of culture, friendship and fun but this was a blast! Everyone came back home with a little piece of its heart in Munich, just because Munich loved our hearts 
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. Thank you very much for your kind comment.