Andy was starting to feel a little better but was not fully recovered; so we were in no rush to get up and about. We sauntered over to the Coffee Fellows (very nice chain of Starbucks competition) for iced coffee and a Vollkorn (whole grain--with sunflower seeds!) bagel with cream cheese. The cream cheese here tends to be grainier, kind of like last night's sour cream, not bad but not my favorite; I guess I am partial to carrageenan. I do like the colorful interior design of their stores, clean fresh lines, a cheerful atmosphere for those not so entrenched in the Starbucks culture.
At one point Steph had casually mentioned, "Hey, Veganz, the first vegan grocery store in Europe, is there in Munich; you should go check it out." So a quick Google showed it was only seven tram stops away from the hotel, and it was yet another sunny day--no problem, let's do it! We had determined to figure out the tram system anyway--how hard could it be? Well, our determination not being what it used to be, once I checked out the ticket kiosk in the train station to not have the specific "all-day inner circle ticket" and didn't want to spend almost twice as much for the other one that would have worked, upon a little chat and another look at GoogleMaps, we decided to walk; it was less than two miles, a 30-minute stroll, right? Haha.
Let me say again at this point that I was grateful for Steph's help in getting my phone set up for the trip; it was nice to have a texting buddy to send pics to (hopefully for free--well, that's what the travel plan said; we shall see!) and to ask her to Google something when we were away from wireless. Today it proved invaluable to our, well, not-exactly-wilderness survival.
Long story not so long, and certainly not so long as our erstwhile sidewalk trek: we walked south-ish for a couple miles through city blocks of shops and produce markets
Finally we reached the end of Andy's accessible blood sugar supply, so we rested on a park bench for a few moments to have a fig bar before proceeding through the quiet mapled-and-elmed streets. I shared part of mine with an opportunistic crow who must have seen the shiny foil wrapper before we rose and proceeded onward.
"...and we're walking...and walking...and--" it became rather obvious that once again we had lost our way relative to our directions. The street signs didn't seem to be matching Google's. We came upon the Kilchenerplatz U (subway) station, where Andy saw "W.C." relief in sight! We descended the set of stairs, and while he proceeded toward the toilette, I tried to orient myself on the subway stop map. He returned and reached for his phone to snap a pic of it when he realized in a mild panic--"Where's my phone?" He had left it back on that park bench, some 15 minutes' walk ago! I waited at the station while he went back to hopefully retrieve it.
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| "Looks like a maypole" she said... |
Andy returned, with his phone--and a little story! Apparently (insert observation that the distance he walked started to grow in size in manner similar to a fish-that-got-away story, but HE was the one who had to walk it; so I will defer to his estimation...), when he returned back to the bench in question, there was an elderly woman and perhaps her son sitting there. He asked them if they had seen his phone, and, at first it seemed as though the man didn't really speak English but then he did and pulled the phone out of his pocket, then demanded a code to open the phone to prove ownership, but it didn't have a code, so then he was like, "well, show me a picture of yourself on the phone", but Andy is not in selfie mode, so there were no pictures of him, just family members, etc. Finally he convinced the guy to give him his phone--I mean, c'mon, like he would be walking intently down a sidewalk and coming to a specific bench and asking about a lost phone and the guy having it and not thinking that it belonged to that person? But ultimate success of phone retrieval was accomplished; ask Andy to tell the story--I'm sure I left out some details, and he tells it well--it gets better every time he tells it!
Anyway, after hearing that account, I said, "Give me your phone" which he did, and I took a picture of him should this event occur again in the future.
Then we proceeded--how hard could it be? The sign says "Schaftlarnstraße" just like the map, right? Well it did for a while, but in less than five minutes it had turned into Maria-Einsiedel Straße. At least this time we had gotten lost in an upper class neighborhood. It seemed to still be pointing us in the right direction, perhaps paralleling the street we wanted, until the road curved--either to the left or up a hill to the right. We had walked on level ground for miles at this point with little problem, but we were not in the mood for a hike. The upward direction led to a park (side note: parks here seem to be designated by the white silhouette of a woman and a child; I guess dads aren't allowed in...), and the leftward direction was hidden by tall trees.
At the fork in the road there sat a stately manor named the Asam Schlössl. There were a couple black cars with diplomatic plates, so it was hard to tell what this place was; but perhaps we could get directions out to the main road or even call a cab--haha, it couldn't cost as much as the one in Iceland had!
"Fork in the road" was a fortuitous turn of phrase because it turned out that the Asam Schlössl was a quaint biergarten with an interesting centuries-long history. For us, we were glad that it had been converted into a restaurant because we were not only fairly exhausted by our larger than anticipated adventure, we were hungry, too; it was already 14:30! We were walked through the indoor dining room to an absolutely lovely rose garden surrounding a large patio of tables and umbrellas.
We had a lovely luncheon--I ordered a small schnitzel with "warm" (pan-fried) potato salad, and Andy order the wurst plate--basically 4 hot dogs! We also had bretze (pretzels) with mustard. Andy had his first experience with shredded horseradish...
Our lovely fraulein server called us a cab, and a few minutes later he arrived--a hulking, surly character reminiscent of the cab driver in the scary part of Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. Well, we could certainly relate to being lost! He did get us to our destination in a somewhat circuitous route, which at first we met with some skepticism--only 2 miles, right?--but by then we were resigned and relieved to be done with the hunt for our elusive destination. Well, until it was time to pay up--€16 for two miles? Shh, Andy...I gave the driver a €20 bill and walked away.
But, there it was, in the midst of rush hour one way traffic, glowing like a veritable Emerald City: Veganz!
This must be a haven of rest for German vegans because so much of the food is MEAT MEAT MEAT. I hope they do well. Live long and prosper, Veganz!
I completed my purchase and returned to the front of the store where Andy was waiting at one of the little tables with a surprise: "Let's walk up to Marienplatz!" But an even bigger surprise: "Look what I had in my backpack all this time--" and he held up a large map of Munich. Some irony and probably a spiritual analogy in there somewhere, after over 20,000 steps, many in the wrong direction.
So we began our northward trek OLD SCHOOL, i.e., with a paper map. That reminds me--I just read that people who use GPS and Siri and other travel aids exclusively do not develop the ability to see the big picture as well as those who use maps. This is especially important for young people to realize that it is a brain development issue. Bottom line, if you are going somewhere unfamiliar, at least look at a map first so that your brain will have some sense of where you are going--that way you won't end up in a river, stuff like that.
Just a quick perusal of the map helped us find the places that we had taken wrong turns, perhaps because Google thought we were on the other side of the street or something.
But we weren't done yet...of course it wasn't long before we encountered (yet another) Starbucks--ah, cool (not very cold--note to Europe: more ice!) coffee on a warm day!
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| This window was like the star leading the way to the comic book store. |
Ah well, moving on...or not. Andy was having a low sugar again and said, "We should get a cab" of course not realizing that it is kind of hard to find a cab in a pedestrian zone. So we sat down on a bench, and he had a food bar; I shared my orange, which was quite tasty, just what we needed at the time. We knew that the hotel wasn't far away, but we waited a bit for the sugar to kick in. On our way through the Karlsplatz gate, we met Christians who were just sharing the Gospel with passersby. I asked how we could pray for them, and then Andy did. I do pray that their words do not return void but, as Isaiah said, accomplish their purpose.
Finally back at the hotel, we got a text from our Iceland traveling companions to meet up with them for supper. Their hotel was actually just across the station from ours, on the Bayerstraße. Apparently they had secured a very nice room with AC and listened to our tale of woe with due respect and sympathy and "use Booking.com; they are great!" Right near their hotel was a restaurant they had passed and had peered in the window a few times to Ca'd'oro, a highly rated Italian restaurant.
Total miles walked 10.18 (24,778 steps)! The strange thing was that we were not that tired. We returned to do some packing for the train, which fortunately was not weight sensitive. (We had had to do some shifting of luggage contents at the Keflavik airport because one bag was 2 pounds over---SOMEBODY'S Twizzlers...) As the saying goes, with regard to the day, all's well that ends well, sometimes better!
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