Beers & more ...
I'm actually writing this from Munich in Germany, so naturally beer's what everybody thinks about when talking about Munich. Or, if you're a car nut, a BMW.
I flew into Munich yesterday morning from London, on a very early morning Easyjet flight. It was a Stansted flight so naturally it is very early start even though the flight doesn't take off till 8am. And Easyjet might have cheap fares (compared to, say, BA), but it costs you an arm and a leg to get to Stansted. My flight to Munich was £45 cheaper than the BA flight at roughly the same time from Heathrow, but by the time you pay £23 to the minicab driver (it took a full 20 minutes in a minicab from the Globetrotter at Ravenscourt Gardens to Liverpool St, so it was a long way, and glad I didn't take the first Tube at 5am), and then £15 for the Stansted Express, and £5 to buy breakfast, you save nothing. I did, however, promise myself to fly on Easyjet after watching one too many episode of Airline.
And it was a good planespotting opportunity as well, seeing something different from the usual fare at Sydney. Instead it was Ryanair (some very new 737NGs there - they look so clean without the "eyebrows"), Easyjet, Thomsonfly, and even a Maxjet 767. Stansted is a very nice airport, except that if you get off the transit at the wrong stop, it means trouble, and of course there are no screens to let you double check, unless you walk 100m there and 100m to get back ... yes, I found that out when I got off the transit one stop too late. And I wasn't the only one.
Still, the flight was very nice, on a brand new A319 (it made the BA 747 I flew to London on look positively ancient), and really that seat pitch isn't any worse than most airlines, cos the seats are even more slimline than most.
Wasn't too long before I landed at Munich. Or, somewhere near Munich ... it was a long wait for the Lufthansa airport bus, and a 40 minute ride to the Hauptbahnhof. I ended up next to a family who juggled three languages at once. Dad was a German, Mum was Chinese ... so, the parents talked to each other in a blend of German and English, Dad talked to the kids in English, and Mum talked to the kids in a blend of English and (mostly) Chinese - they never spoke to the kids in German. I have to wonder what the kids (one a baby and the other no older than 2) make of all this ...
Anyway, I got checked into my hostel (20 bed mixed gender dorm is a bit of a shock to the system, to be honest), and went out to explore. Being a Saturday afternoon, it was just buzzing, people everywhere, shops overcrowded, and of course lots of tourists. My lack of German doesn't hurt much, as everybody speaks English (and more willing to speak it than the French ...), and a bit of guessing never hurts.
I took the very lazy way out and instead of exploring the city on my own, I paid for a bike tour of Munich, which was quite good (I'm actually quite interested to know how much of the guide's humour is trained, cos it just sounds far too slick!). As usual, all that history stuff came in one ear and went straight out the other, I just looked at the nice architecture instead. One church and whatever religion / history it represents is much the same as the other, especially when they're almost all Catholics and all seemingly built 400 (or is it 550) years ago ...
Munich has a great system of bike paths (with bike signalling!), and the drivers are patient, what a refreshing change that is from the madness of Sydney's roads! There was a nice ride through the Englisch Garten (beautiful, even if it was slushy and cold), and even a stop at the Biergarten (I wonder what their insurer thinks about that!), where I had my first taste of Bavarian beer - and it was lovely. Prost!!!
Anyway, as with any city on the Continent, the architecture is just so different, the markets always so lovely, and there's always a McDonald's or Burger King on every street corner ... and, of course, the Americans are always as loud and obnoxious no matter where they come from and where they go, and do they ever stop comparing everything they see to "back home"? %^*%^*%^*!!! (Of all time I picked the spring break period when there's actually quite a lot of American uni students travelling, actually it's full of students everywhere, all these European kids are on school excursions and their teachers shouting everywhere)
I also spent some time just people watching at the Hauptbahnhof, so many different trains from the sleek ICEs through to the rather dumpy looking regionals, and so many people. Definitely something you don't see at Central Station.
I visited the Deutsches Museum today, and no wonder they think it's one of the best science and technology museum in the world ... the exhibits are simply amazing, especially those Viking ships, and the huge aeronautics display, which includes entire aircraft like the Junkers Ju-52, and a big section cut from the first A300 prototype, and more ... I spent so much time just looking through the aeroneutics section and there's never any chance to get this close to so many different types of old aircraft. Tomorrow I'll go visit their car and (more) aircraft collection in outer Munich (I was considering going to the Neuschwanstein, but I think I won't now). There's also history on virtually every other manufacturing industry as well. Simply fascinating and I didn't get anywhere near as much time to see all the exhibits, you simply wouldn't even if you had a full day.
Anyway, from here it's another day in Munich, then a day trip to Salzburg (a 2 hour train journey away), and then onto Heidelberg for yet another aircraft and motor museum - the Technik Museum, before spending the next weekend in Belgium and the Ronde von Vlaanderen. I see Tom Boonen has won a one-day race this weekend and so has Oscar Freire, so it should be a mighty interesting Ronde next Sunday!
I flew into Munich yesterday morning from London, on a very early morning Easyjet flight. It was a Stansted flight so naturally it is very early start even though the flight doesn't take off till 8am. And Easyjet might have cheap fares (compared to, say, BA), but it costs you an arm and a leg to get to Stansted. My flight to Munich was £45 cheaper than the BA flight at roughly the same time from Heathrow, but by the time you pay £23 to the minicab driver (it took a full 20 minutes in a minicab from the Globetrotter at Ravenscourt Gardens to Liverpool St, so it was a long way, and glad I didn't take the first Tube at 5am), and then £15 for the Stansted Express, and £5 to buy breakfast, you save nothing. I did, however, promise myself to fly on Easyjet after watching one too many episode of Airline.
And it was a good planespotting opportunity as well, seeing something different from the usual fare at Sydney. Instead it was Ryanair (some very new 737NGs there - they look so clean without the "eyebrows"), Easyjet, Thomsonfly, and even a Maxjet 767. Stansted is a very nice airport, except that if you get off the transit at the wrong stop, it means trouble, and of course there are no screens to let you double check, unless you walk 100m there and 100m to get back ... yes, I found that out when I got off the transit one stop too late. And I wasn't the only one.
Still, the flight was very nice, on a brand new A319 (it made the BA 747 I flew to London on look positively ancient), and really that seat pitch isn't any worse than most airlines, cos the seats are even more slimline than most.
Wasn't too long before I landed at Munich. Or, somewhere near Munich ... it was a long wait for the Lufthansa airport bus, and a 40 minute ride to the Hauptbahnhof. I ended up next to a family who juggled three languages at once. Dad was a German, Mum was Chinese ... so, the parents talked to each other in a blend of German and English, Dad talked to the kids in English, and Mum talked to the kids in a blend of English and (mostly) Chinese - they never spoke to the kids in German. I have to wonder what the kids (one a baby and the other no older than 2) make of all this ...
Anyway, I got checked into my hostel (20 bed mixed gender dorm is a bit of a shock to the system, to be honest), and went out to explore. Being a Saturday afternoon, it was just buzzing, people everywhere, shops overcrowded, and of course lots of tourists. My lack of German doesn't hurt much, as everybody speaks English (and more willing to speak it than the French ...), and a bit of guessing never hurts.
I took the very lazy way out and instead of exploring the city on my own, I paid for a bike tour of Munich, which was quite good (I'm actually quite interested to know how much of the guide's humour is trained, cos it just sounds far too slick!). As usual, all that history stuff came in one ear and went straight out the other, I just looked at the nice architecture instead. One church and whatever religion / history it represents is much the same as the other, especially when they're almost all Catholics and all seemingly built 400 (or is it 550) years ago ...
Munich has a great system of bike paths (with bike signalling!), and the drivers are patient, what a refreshing change that is from the madness of Sydney's roads! There was a nice ride through the Englisch Garten (beautiful, even if it was slushy and cold), and even a stop at the Biergarten (I wonder what their insurer thinks about that!), where I had my first taste of Bavarian beer - and it was lovely. Prost!!!
Anyway, as with any city on the Continent, the architecture is just so different, the markets always so lovely, and there's always a McDonald's or Burger King on every street corner ... and, of course, the Americans are always as loud and obnoxious no matter where they come from and where they go, and do they ever stop comparing everything they see to "back home"? %^*%^*%^*!!! (Of all time I picked the spring break period when there's actually quite a lot of American uni students travelling, actually it's full of students everywhere, all these European kids are on school excursions and their teachers shouting everywhere)
I also spent some time just people watching at the Hauptbahnhof, so many different trains from the sleek ICEs through to the rather dumpy looking regionals, and so many people. Definitely something you don't see at Central Station.
I visited the Deutsches Museum today, and no wonder they think it's one of the best science and technology museum in the world ... the exhibits are simply amazing, especially those Viking ships, and the huge aeronautics display, which includes entire aircraft like the Junkers Ju-52, and a big section cut from the first A300 prototype, and more ... I spent so much time just looking through the aeroneutics section and there's never any chance to get this close to so many different types of old aircraft. Tomorrow I'll go visit their car and (more) aircraft collection in outer Munich (I was considering going to the Neuschwanstein, but I think I won't now). There's also history on virtually every other manufacturing industry as well. Simply fascinating and I didn't get anywhere near as much time to see all the exhibits, you simply wouldn't even if you had a full day.
Anyway, from here it's another day in Munich, then a day trip to Salzburg (a 2 hour train journey away), and then onto Heidelberg for yet another aircraft and motor museum - the Technik Museum, before spending the next weekend in Belgium and the Ronde von Vlaanderen. I see Tom Boonen has won a one-day race this weekend and so has Oscar Freire, so it should be a mighty interesting Ronde next Sunday!
posted by Kin-Yat | 06:32
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