Europe Trip: Day 7, May 27th

Sorry in advance for the long post, but what can I say it was a long day...

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At around 6am I noticed that our train had turned into a regional train, picking people up at neighboring cities. Unfortunately that meant that two more people came into the cabin, so I had to wake up.

A little after 7am the train arrived at Muenchen Hbf (Munich central station). I picked up some bakery goods at the train station, but they were only mediocre -- it would have been better to have picked up a few extra croissants and stuff in Paris, that bakery was much, much better. So take the advice from me and don't hesitate to pick up some stuff from a decent bakery if you stop in Paris. I wish I had done it earlier and more often! Admittedly the bread I ate for a couple days straight wasn't that great, but it was basic and the point was its cheapness not its goodness.

Anyway, I made my way to my new host's place using first the U-bahn (underground/metro) and then taking a bus. That got me to his street, and I only had to walk a few blocks to get there. He buzzed me in and we talked for a couple hours about various things, namely some ideas on what I could do for the day.

My Munich host's name is Robert. His place reflected his culture, as it was much more organized than my Parisian host's place, as well as more modern looking -- both of which are things I associate with Germans. The flat was also a bit bigger than the ones I stayed at in Paris, probably because it is a little further out and Munich is a smaller city.

After talking for a couple hours, finally he couldn't put it off any later and had to head to work. I unpacked a bit, getting my daypack out and getting ready for the day. I got out of his place by about noon.

I reached downtown (Marienplatz) without too much trouble, and immediately looked for the spot that I had agreed to meet my host at 7pm, so that I wouldn't have any problems finding it when I needed to be there later. True to his word, it was as easy of a place to find as I could ask for.

At first I wanted to find St. Peter's church, because I had heard if you climb to the top you get a great view of Munich. But the church that I thought was St. Peter's said it was closed for cleaning, now that I think back it might have been the wrong church (more on that later).

So I wandered a bit and found this cute little marketplace where they sell all sorts of fruits and different things, Robert had mentioned it as a good place to check out. After circling it once, I stopped at a place called "Fleisch und Wurst" and got a Brautwurst for 2 Euros, I also got a 0.5L beer at the beer garden.

With my hunger satiated, I just picked a direction and started walking. My end goal was to find the English gardens, but I thought I would just get a feel for the city and go to some of the places that tourists never go. It was a more business area, with office buildings and that sort of stuff. It was immediately noticeable that the streets were much larger and an attempt at making parking easier had been done, unlike Paris where there are very small streets and parking is a nightmare. Not to be cliche, but the Germans probably were being more organized and efficient with their planning.

An interesting thing that I have talked with my CouchSurfing hosts about, is how people treat crosswalks. In Paris, the red 'do not walk' sign is entirely ignored. If the street is clear, you can walk. From what my hosts tell me the cops don't hand out tickets, and even if they did it is for like a couple euros. In Munich (and the rest of Germany) people take them a lot more seriously, and it is frowned upon to cross when the crosswalk. The cops definitely will give you a ticket. Nonetheless, I find it a bit irritating now to wait at the crosswalk when I know I could easily make it.

Enough of a tangent, though, from the business area I found my way to some landmarks -- a giant obelisk, a museum that looks like a Roman building, and a park. Outside the museum there were some high school age kids playing sports, the first of which was badminton (the one with the fly and the rackets). The second game was almost like volleyball, in fact they use the same type of ball, but instead of using your hands you use everything else. The rules seemed to be it can touch the ground once, and after that you have to keep it in the air and hit it over the net. The rules for how you can hit the ball are the same as soccer, so feet, knees, chest, head, everything except hands and arms.

I worked my way to the English gardens, but I ended up way at the bottom and had to walk all the way up (1.5km or so) to make it to the Chinese Tower. I had a drink there and took a rest from all my walking. Then I made my way out of the park/garden and found the nearest U-bahn, which I took back to Marienplatz. I was an hour early, though, so I decided to go on a quest to find St. Peter's and climb to the top. About 35 minutes and 5 churches later, I realized I had no idea where St. Peter's was and I also had no idea where I was at that time.

Lost again, such is the way of the lone traveler, I tried to find where I was on the map that my host had given me to use, but had no luck at all. Finally I stumbled upon a U-bahn and S-bahn station, Karlsplatz. I mistakenly thought that I needed to take the U-bahn, which was all I had been using, so I rushed down 3+ sets of escalators and tried to make sense of the signs saying where the U-bahn was headed. I gave up on that and asked an older woman, with my mixture of English and a poor excuse for German, if the train was headed to Marienplatz. She told me that I was on the U-bahn and I had to take the S-bahn, showing me on the map. I thanked her with a quick, Danke! and was up two escalators in no time, reaching the S-bahn just in time to jump on the train with less than 10 minutes to spare.

I reached Marienplatz with around 5 minutes left until I was supposed to meet Robert, and reached the fountain with 2-3 minutes left -- but at least I wasn't late!

After telling him a bit about what I had done that day, he easily pointed to St. Peter's (useful for the next day), and then showed me around a bit. We went to a German restaurant and I had currywurst and fries. A big game between Manchester United and Barcelona was going on, but we couldn't get a seat that faced the TV, so we just got to hear the reactions of the throng of football (soccer) fans. I checked the score before we headed out, and Barcelona was up 2-0.

We then headed back to his place, and I was exhausted from the long day of walking everywhere. So after talking for a while, I got to bed by around midnight. Another long day in Europe was over.