Day 1: München

We flew out of Pearson on Thursday night, my 1st flight ever and honestly I was a little nervous. The seats were smaller than I thought they would be and even though it is a 767 still felt pretty narrow. I avoided caffeine or alcohol not wanting to be edgy or have some kind of weird reaction at 37,000 feet, also didn't want to get up multiple times in flight. The flight was ok we had some turbulence until we reached our cruising altitude. I started to watch the Hangover but they had to restart the touch screen entertainment system multiple times. I watched Sherlock Holmes and fell asleep for about an hour total. Dinner was ok, just really small.Our flight was finally about to pull into Munich Airport at 10 AM local time Friday, my first landing I was tracking the flight on the in flight information system and noted that we were getting further away, logically I was like ok the plane is geting ready for approach and had to turn around. My seat was on the aisle near the wing so I actually didn't see anything the entire flight except clouds. The guy in the window seat across the aisle from me makes some comment like something is wrong with the wing, I'm of course a bit freaked. Of course nothing is wrong, the plane lands just fine the sounds are just normal for landing the guy was either a moron or just being a jerk. We landed and it took about an hour to get through customs get our luggage.

It took us about 20 minutes to figure out how to use the transit machine. There are no turnstiles and no collectors. I thought perhaps Munich was like the Budapest honour system, as depicted in the film Kontrol, where passengers despise the Transit enforcement agents and no one pays. On the other hand I thought perhaps this is one of those cliche German thing. The stereotype about orderliness is well true, fines for "Blackriding" are an automatic 40€ fine and Bavarians as I learned are very orderly everyone lines up to get on trains and no one dares trying to jump on. Suburban os S Trains (like GO Trains) run from the same station as regular U Bahn trains. The transit system has multiple lines at least 6 U Bahn lines and the fare system works on a fare zone system, basically for short trips it´s 1 ticket and you have to cancel it yourself, for longer single trips it's more, they have a variety of passes we opted for one that allowed us to ride the entire system all day for 18,80 Euro, because a single trip into the city alone is close to 9 € each. We got off at the Hauptbahnhoff the Central Train Station and got all turned around. We wandered for about 20 minutes before we figured out where we were. We walked by a club called BOOBS which Leighann and I both thought was awesome. Finally after walking for about an hr with heavy packs we found our Hotel in the South end of the City's downtown core, The Hotel Drag Princess Elizabethin, a 3 star place we found on priceline.com for $60 USD a night a steal. The hotel room was great had some early 20th century Bavarian charm but was also very modern with smart lights and a nice big comfy bed.

We unpacked and then wandered around the corner to the Paulaner Brewhaus, one of the larger local breweries in Munich. I ordered a Stein of Paulaner Hefe Weizen along with a plate of mutant asparagus, potatoes in hollandaise sauce and schnitzel. We walked back through the neighborhood noticing all the local restaurants, the Thai, Japanese and an Indian Restaurant called Sheree Punjab all had Paulaner signs.One of the 1st things we noticed about Munich were the bike paths. The sidewaalks are really wide and the streets somewhat narrow. In actuality about half the sidewalk is actually a dedicated bikepath. It turns out Munich is one of the most bike friendly cities in Europe. The second thing we noticed is the drinking age is 16 for beer. We were in the brewhaus and saw these kids who were at most 17 ordering beer. I thought shouldn't they be in school.

We took the U Bahn North from Goetheplatz to Marienplatz. Marienplatz is basically the City Centre, it has the Rathaus, the old City hall, a glockenspiel a large clock tower, a couple fountains. It is what you think of when you think of Bavaria. Trying to take advantage of our Transit Daypass we took the U line to the There was a huge stage and people were walking around with beer and the band was playing what sounded to me a lot like Lisa Gerrard from the Gladiator soundtrack. At this point we had not yet had dinner. We attempted to get into the HOFBrauhaus, Munich's most famous bierhall but being some kind of holiday, and both a local and tourist favourite it was packed. Leighann and I opted for a Bratwurst and a Hacker Pschorr Hell beer from an outdorr vendor. The Bratwurst was actually more of a slab of sausage meat cooked with a crusty roll. It was quite good. The beer I thought was going to be a Hefeweizen but I believe was just a lager of some sort. We sat outside and drank our beer watching of orange clad Germans. We weren't exactly sure but it seemed apparent there is no laws about open containers of alcohol this was later confirmed. We sat at some outdoor tables and realized that it had to be close to the 0 celsius mark and there was quite a wind, it was probably as cold as it´d been all winter in Toronto. I had hoped to meet up with Bob my old highschool buddy, but he called me about 9 PM and regretted he couldn´t make it because he said he had been out the last 2 nights and was really suffering. We did however make plans to meet up on Saturday. Funny that Bob lives in Bavaria, I just now recalled the summer of 1994 a group of us would play marathon Shadowrun Roleplaying Game Sessions in the 2nd floor classrooms at Innis College. Shadowrun is like Cyberpunk meets Lord of the Rings. One of the most memorable scenarios was centred around an Old Bavarian Mountain Castle, Bob's character was coming up the mountain when Evil hemchmen nailed the tram car he was in with an RPG and Bob pulled off an imprbable escape, which involved some "inspired" dice rolling.

Leighann and I made our way back to the hotel with hopes to get in more sightseeing the next day. I found it hard to get to sleep, my mind was still thinking about all the details of the trip a combination of jet lag, lack of sleep. I finally dozed off about 3 AM local time the end of what to me seemed like 1 day but in actuality like being up 36 hrs with only about 1 hr sleep. I wasn't too worried about getting in all the sights as we fly out of Munich on Thursday the 27th and we planned to spend 2 days at the end of our trip doing anything we missed the 1st two jetlagged days.