4 We arrive in Munich

Sunday, July 3--
We made it to Munich fairly uneventfully. The only confusion was that our transfer vehicle voucher didn't say which bus company it was for, but the Lufthansa bus driver took us in and drove us all the way to the hotel. Andy observed that Munich roads looked a lot like home. The bus was quite nice, even to the point of having a table setup every few rows.  We weren't in a rush because the airport was so efficient we got through it very quickly--and it turned out that we had the whole bus to ourselves, a really big limo!
We arrived at the Novum Hotel fairly early in the morning, about 8-ish, so we had to store our luggage for a while before getting to check in to our room. We went and found breakfast at the train station, at, of all places, a Burger King. It was fairly normal, though I don't usually get a breakfast sandwich with tomato and mayonnaise...we had our first experience with the restroom attendant, who doesn't give you a paper towel until you pay the 50 cents. But the biggest surprise was that whom would we meet at the BK but our new Colorado friends! We chatted a bit and exchanged texting numbers and promised to try and make a dinner date before we left.



I saw on GoogleMaps that there was a Dunkin Donuts, Andy's favorite, very near the hotel, so we walked around the block and didn't find it where it looked as though it might be; but we did see a cool vegan-friendly store.




The rest of the area was characteristic of city life: homeless men sleeping in their sleeping bags, broken liquor bottles around the corner, humanity of every ilk mingled together according to their varied purposes, whether traveling or businessing or out-of-businessing; "ah, look at all the lonely people" comes to mind--no smiles.
One thing we were told was that Munich is a fairly safe place, and actually it did seem to be so; insofar as surly derelicts and the misunderstood were a block away in one direction, the Polizei station was only half a block away in the other.

Finally it was time to go on our Munich: Monks and Monarchs tour. We did find the Radius Tours office around the corner and then another corner in the train station, "across from Gate 32, you can't miss it!" Our tour guide met the group of us who had innocently signed up for a low-pressure introduction to the city, an elderly professorial type whom one would think likely to retire to a biergarten and give a lecture--mistake! He walked so fast we could hardly track him! It was all we could do to keep up with those salmon-colored trousers of his.

It was a rather unstructured tour, which in a way was okay as its goal was to give an overview so that we could go back later and see stuff at a more leisurely pace. Well, this was NOT a leisurely pace by any stretch of the imagination. Whenever he would stop, we would be catching up with him as he was in mid-sentence about some feature of the architecture or history of the building or who stood in front of it. Some names were vaguely familiar, others totally obscure to me, but Andy seemed to know most every detail; he is the history expert in the family!

We encountered several edifices of significance, like the Ministry of Justice and many Catholic-influenced churches, but it was clear that to our guide, the one nearest and dearest to his heart was the Hofbrauhaus, in which resided his treasured stein in a specially designated locker (see them behind the copper sink). It seemed the highlight of the tour, the one that made his eyes light up--as he put it, his "little piece of heaven." It was such a loud place, we knew we wouldn't be able to hear each other talk, so we at least knew to avoid it in the future; but it looked as though people were truly enjoying their repast in full vigor.

        

There were a couple interesting post-WWII attempts at revitalization of the area, so it was interesting to see one doorway lead through a tunnel to open up into a multilevel mall with modern architectural features--and a Starbucks--and a comic book store with Deadpool prominently displayed. It was hidden away in a corner of a courtyard, though, and I despaired of finding it later.

 

This one had a lovely white cap;
another was almost entirely white with green iridescence.

I had noticed pigeons in the train station, but it was in the pedestrian areas like the Marienplatz that I noticed not only the leucistic nature of some of them but the wide diversity of coloration across the spectrum--fascinating example of adaptation and selection! They were the only birds I saw in great number; I did see a few crows and starlings and hear other birds, but pigeons were the clearly dominant species in this urban area.
Anyway, what with next to no sleep, the Energizer Bunny for a tour guide, and extra hard cobblestones under our feet, we finished the tour a little cranky. We got to our room (fortunately we had been able to check in right before the tour) and napped so soundly that, upon waking, Andy actually thought that it was the next day! But it was only time for dinner, so we put different shoes on our feet (Andy had developed a quarter-sized blister on the ball of his foot caused by the shoes he had worn for the flight, not for speedwalking; he asked me to lance it, and apparently it helped because it didn't get infected and, with the industrial fingertip bandage I had that conforms to curves fairly well, didn't peel off or cause any problems after that) and retraced our steps back through the City Gate into the pedestrian area and to the Augustiner Grossgastatten, an Augustiner-style  weissbiergarten. We enjoyed a lovely meal of soft pretzels from the bread basket, a rich beef/vegetable soup, cabbage salad (UN-sauer-kraut), beer-marinated  or roast pork, and a baseball sized dumpling each. Apfelstrudel with vanilla sauce for dessert. It was hard to not be able to eat but about half, if that, of each meal, but Andy helped!

A pleasant walk back to the hotel, with a quick stop at the Subway (yes the sub shop) to buy water--the employee thought I was German and proceeded to sprechen Deutsch at me until I shook my head and he said, "Okay." Ich spreche kein Deutsch. When we got back to the room and Andy opened the water, he realized that you have to make sure you are getting still water, not bubbly, which is very common in Europe, apparently.

Speaking of the hotel, the doorknob to our room took a little figuring out; it didn't turn, just the key turned a few different times, so we had to figure out the right number of turns to get in or how many to lock ourselves in, etc. Once we got into the room, we found out that four stars mean very little. Andy said it was like his dorm room but smaller, and that was about right--two small twin beds and no air conditioning. It is in THE middle of town, with concomitant noise, right across the street from the train station, so it was louder than Andy's CPAP machine, which made for very poor sleep conditions. But it was clean and the water pressure was good. (I actually liked that there was no A/C--for a change I was not freezing to death!)

We watched a little of a Korean "Chopped" type show that made me want some noodle soup! Then we channel surfed to Sweeney Todd with German voice-over--funny! Andy paused on one station where a woman was caressing her own black vinyl-covered posterior--it was kind of silly; THEN she turned around and revealed that she had forgotten her shirt. Andy forgot to change the channel--I had to ask if he was planning that soon...haha! Too much Game of Thrones gratuitous skin has him accustomed, perhaps, but he quickly surfed away and eventually turned off the TV entirely.

Regardless, we were grateful for the little room and the opportunity to be horizontal for a whole night, and we slept soundly, right through the trains and buses and trams and do-so-do-so-do-so-do-so police sirens.