A Trip to Munich

Munich was the first stop on my ten day trip. Leading up to it, I was actually really nervous. I think it was a combination of a lot of my friends leaving Paris the day before I left, having to travel alone, and spending ten whole days by myself. It was pretty unlike me to be so nervous before, but even waking up the morning of my flight, I still felt it.

Friday I packed up all of my last minute items and completely finished moving out of my homestay in Paris. Before I left, I stopped to talk to my host mother. She had mentioned that if there wasn’t already another student moved into the spare bedroom when I came back the 18th, she would be happy to let me stay those last two nights before I flew out of Paris, so I started to tell her that I would message her a couple days before I return to see if the room was empty. She said that she had forgotten to tell me, but there would be another student staying with her by then. I totally understood, and it was nice for her to offer, but it just made me realize that I still needed to figure out where I would be staying for two nights when I came back to Paris. Oh well, there was no time to think about it then. I walked down the street to the school I had been attending where I’m kept the majority of my belongings while I traveled. I weighed my bag again and put a couple more things that I didn’t want to take with me in my large suitcase. Then I headed to the closest station to catch the train that would take me to the airport. It didn’t take too long to get to the right station and the shuttle to the airport took less than 10 minutes. I arrived at the West terminal of the airport and wasn’t sure if I should have gotten off at the East, so I got in line to see if the lady working the ticket booth could help me. I asked her which stop would take me to Terminal 1 and showed her my boarding pass. She then kindly informed me that I was at the wrong airport. “Oh, well that’s not good,” is all I could say. I was completely on the other side of Paris; not even Paris! The opposite side of the suburbs of Paris. I was basically screwed. A lot of math was going through my head. My phone said it would take me about an hour and fifteen minutes to get to the airport if I took the metro. If I was there by 1:15, I would still have an hour to get through security, find my gate, and board at 2:15. That was more than enough time. I guess I could have taken an Uber, but it so expensive to take them outside of Paris. I could make it. I took the shuttle back to the station and went to the opposite side of the tracks. The next train wasn’t the one I needed, but it was arriving in about three minutes. As long as mine was next, I was going to be okay. That one passed and the next one coming wasn’t what I needed and it was going to take another fifteen minutes. I was basically screwed, again. I wandered around and I must have looked just stressed enough for a woman to ask if I needed help. I asked her when the next train to the airport would be and she said that I could take the next one back into the city and transfer there. Apparently there was a problem with the trains heading out to the airport because someone had left their bag unattended which of course caused huge delays. Perfect. More math was running through my head. If it took another ten minutes for the train to arrive, and another 30 minutes to get into the city, and who knows how long for me to transfer to a train that would take me out to the airport, would I make it? I looked at what an Uber would cost and decided it would be worth the risk. If anything, I could just get back into the city, closer to the airport, and take an Uber. At least I would be able to knock a couple euros off the cost. When the train arrived, I got on and took it to its last stop in the middle of the city. I found some security officers and asked where I could transfer to a train for the airport and luckily it was just up the stairs. They said the ride out would only take about 45 minutes. I looked at the time, 12:50. If I could get there by 1:30, I would still have enough time to get to the gate by 2:15. At this point, waiting for an Uber to find me and traffic would probably just take longer. I ran up the stairs and had to choose between two trains. With a 50/50 chance, I chose the wrong one and ran to the other before the doors closed. I’m fairly sure everyone who saw me jump into the train knew that I was having a rough morning. While I was approaching my stop, bracing myself to run through the airport, I received a text message from the airline saying that my flight had been delayed until 3:15. I had never been more excited for a delay. When I finally got to the airport, I got my boarding pass, thankfully didn’t have to check a bag, went through security, and headed to the gate. Luckily I was there in time and despite all the stress and nervousness that I had felt earlier, I felt much better about the trip as whole. I hoped that that monumental accident was what I had been nervous about and the rest of the trip would be fine. I got some food and waited to board. I chatted with a student from San Francisco in line and got on the plane around 3:30. As soon as I heard a screaming child, I knew that everything was back to normal.

It didn’t take long to get there, about an hour and a half, and I felt pretty confident walking into the airport. All that confidence disappeared once I heard everyone around me speaking German. I can make my way through a French conversation pretty well, but I didn’t even have that option in German. There were really no signs showing me where the trains were, so I stopped and asked someone working. Luckily, they spoke perfect English and pointed me back in the direction that I came. I turned around and walked back until it really didn’t seem like there was any sort of exit ahead. I stopped someone else and asked for directions. They told me to go the opposite way, the way that I had originally tried. Confused, I took their advice and tried again. After walking back and forth about 5 times, unnecessarily going through customs and being laughed at by the workers when they informed me that I didn’t need to be there, and spending about 45 minutes wondering if I would ever live a life outside of the airport, I finally found the train station. I saw the exact train that I needed sitting on the tracks and got on just in time. I was happily sitting and relaxing after my struggle when a man came up to me and asked me something in German. I apologized and he showed me a badge. “Do you have a ticket?” I was basically screwed, yet again. I explained that I didn’t because I had been confused trying to find the trains. I hadn’t seen any gates and when I saw the train I needed I was just happy to have found it and jumped on. He was really nice about the whole thing but I was still charged 60€. I was upset but at least then I knew not to do that. Feeling a little defeated, I got off the train and walked the very short distance to my hotel. Luckily I had no trouble checking in and I went right up to the room. As always, I enjoyed having the room to myself and feeling like I actually knew what I was doing. After a shower, I walked the area around the hotel to try to find something to eat. It took a while, but I finally decided on a Greek restaurant and sat outside. The waiter brought me a menu and I chose something with meat, vegetables, and cheese; and a beer of course. I put in my order and right before he left, I remembered to ask if they accepted credit card. They didn’t, so I just ordered the food. Luckily I found a couple more euros in my purse because a few minutes later, the waiter came back with a beer. I figured that I had confused him and that I would pay for everything when the check came since I found more money. The food was amazing. It was just what I needed after my stressful day. I asked for the check and saw that the waiter hadn’t even charged me for the beer. Needless to say, my opinion of Munich was boosted pretty high that night. I went back to the hotel and had a great night’s sleep. Saturday Breakfast was included which was some of the best news I’d heard in a while. I got up around 9:30 to eat and tried to figure out what to do that day. The student that I’d talked to the day before at the airport suggested the English Garden so I planned to walk there. Because I was in no hurry, it took me a while to get there because I kept stopping to look around. When I finally arrived, I knew that I would be there the whole day. There was a stream that circled the whole park but it flowed pretty fast so there were tons of people sitting of rafts drinking beers just floating by. There were more people playing volleyball or beer pong, swimming with their kids or their dogs, or just laying out. There was even a place right at the beginning of the stream where the water ran fast enough to crest a huge wave where people could surf. It was great to watch. I hurried back to the hotel to get my swim suit and came back to the park to work on my pathetic tan. I sat by the stream and listened to music for a couple hours while enjoying all the activity around me. Unfortunately, the imminent rain made me leave. Usually I wouldn’t have cared about some rain, but because I had a little bit of a walk back to the hotel and I was planning on stopping at a grocery store, I decided I should leave so that I didn’t have to carry wet groceries all the way back. As sound as my thinking was, it didn’t work out like I planned. I ended up carrying groceries through pouring rain for about 10 minutes and by the time I got to my hotel, I was soaked. I showered before I made myself a dinner of microwave tortellini, microwave vegetables, chocolate pudding, some sort of German chocolate roll, and a Corona. I called it a night early Saturday because I had to wake up at 4:30 to make it to my train on time the next morning. Sunday See “A Day In Salzburg” for more details on my whereabouts Sunday morning and afternoon. Warning: lack of knowledge about The Sound of Music may be an issue for some readers. I arrived back at my hotel around 9:45 Sunday night and still needed to find dinner. I had been craving pizza all day and found a restaurant just up the street from the hotel. I sat down and ordered spinach pizza with another Radler. The pizza was huge and I couldn’t finish it all but it was delicious. I was talked into a second beer and when I asked for the check, I instead received another, smaller, beer and some sort of dessert. When I finally left the restaurant, I showered and went to sleep around 2, making it a 22 hour day and completing my leisure time in Munich.