Highlights:
- Efficient, smooth German transport
- Lovely Bavarian beer garden
- Venezuelan Luis, Lucas Sr and Lucas Jr
So snoring took on a whole new level last night. I was having this dream where someone was trying to force me to go to a dupstep club night, and I just wasn't interested. I could hear the beat, and my companion was all 'doesn't that sound awesome?'. I listened and I heard 'di-di-di-di hfraaaawn, hfran' on repeat. Gradually I woke up to find that hrfaaaawn was Simon from New Zealand, and hfran was a girl from the Philippines. Well, it takes about 90minutes to get back to sleep with dubstep in your ears. Bloody snoring.
I woke and packed, and slowly headed to the station. I stopped for a guilty McDonalds Cappuccino and caught up with the US girls as they legged it for their train. My last memory is of them, 5ft 11 Carly and 5ft 1-ish Brianna, jogging away from me on the platform, their huge backpacks bouncing as they descended into the stairway ahead.
At the platform, a stuttering guy came up to me with what I thought was a question about the train. Even when he'd reverted to English, I still couldn't understand him until he started repeating 'give me two euros' in an unusual way. I didn't give him two euros. I pretended I had to look at something further down the platform.
The journey was uneventful but wondefully smooth and beautiful as we headed through Austria. We're talking Austrian hills, green and vast against snow capped mountains and blue skies, with these little Austrian villages in the valleys. It went on and on, until you entered a 5minute tunnel through one of the mountains and then emerged again in another valley. We passed through Salzburg and then headed into Germany. The landscape become less epic, though after a few hours of fog, we hit some sunshine. A car transporter passed us on the track, full of brand new Volkswagon and Audi cars. There were two levels on each carriage, with seven cars stored on each level. About 50 carriages must have passed by on this train. That's mass German transportation.
I arrived in Munich around 3.30pm. The girl opposite me thought I was German and rather than disappoint her, I followed her lead and laughed at what seemed like the relevant punchlines. She looked like a German, dark-haired and pierced-lip version of my friend Helen Martin. We both laughed at a child crying in the corridor.
I was staying at the Wombats hostel, a 3minute walk from the Hauptbahnhof. The receptionist was refusing a 40something couple as I arrived, explaining that they were fully booked. The couple got angry, though the receptionist, with a somewhat smug grin, repeated that it was a busy hostel and you really needed to book; she couldn't exactly throw existing people out, could she? Quite cleverly, the hostel made you make your own beds. I was a bit outraged, until I got a grip and realised it was a pretty smart move and that I'd been spoilt for a month not having to change my sheets since Berlin.
As it was sunny, I headed to what I thought was a beer garden, recommended by my friend Gurk (her au-pairing had been in Bavaria, the capital of which is Munich). It turned out to be a beer hall, which was cool but I wanted to be outside enjoying the sun. After a brief stop off at C&A to see if they sold any baby lederhosen for my new favourite baby (Charge Gridley-Stickland), I found an outdoor beer garden on Viktualienmarkt. Loads of long tables, surrounded by beer and food huts. It was packed. I'm told it was their first sunny day in a while. I bought a beer then used my best 'Kann ich hier setzen' on a German family and sat reading Kindle Samples about the Munich Olympics massacre (the only thing I know about the place beyond the Busby Man United plane crash). I eavesdropped as the 13 year old daughter of the German family came back, having bought a T-Shirt with the word ROCK on. Her older brother moaned how lame those T-Shirts were, then defended his Nirvana T-Shirt saying 'Nirvana were not a rock band' (I've translated this). It all got a bit heated.
The family were soon replaced by three guys, a late 40s guy asking in English if he could sit down. The youngest guy of the group asked me something in German; the only German he knew it turned out, as they were all actually Venezuelan. They were returning from Kanton, China, where they went once a year for a conference on plastic pipes. They'd started their own company the previous year (and were all partners) and had their manufacturing based in China, hence the trip. The two older guys were Luis and Lucas Sr; the younger guy was his son Lucas Jr. They all spoke great English (though had to speak in Spanish for a while trying to work out what 'The Sound of Music was' (whilst the direct Spanish translation is supposedly beautiful, it's called something like 'The Rebel Nun' in Venezuelan)) but Lucas Jr had studied in Boston so he had to help the older guys from time to time. They were stopping on the way back from China for a short holiday in Munich, and invited me to join them in Salzburg the following day ("either Venezuelan Style or English Style". The former, they pay everything for me, and the latter I pay for myself). They showed me photos from Hong Kong Madame Tussaurd's, with various comic poses next to Mao, Princess Diana and Steve Jobs (showing him a blackberry). Lucas Sr bought me a beer and we hung out for a few hours as it got darker. I learned that Venezuela is famous for its beaches and beautiful women.
We left about 7pm, and I stopped off for dinner near the station. Quite proudly, I spoke entirely in German throughout the process, somehow making myself understood even in the Bavarian dialect, and then headed back the hostel. I'm sharing with two Chinese girls and a Taiwanese girl who study Jewellery making in London and were in Munich for this big ole jewellery fair. They felt it was a small world meeting someone from London. I don't think it's that unusual.
Also sharing with a really unique looking Aussie called Courtney; she had a Dutch-Indonesian Dad and an Aussie-Sri Lankan Mum. I headed to the hostel bar with Courtney, and we sat next to two Argentinians, Martin and Lucia. They were studying in a small city in Germany and could speak really good German, but limited English. German seems a pretty unusual language choice for two South-Americans though, doesn't it? They were playing a complex Argentinian card game called Gruco, using a pack of cards with four different suits (apparently it's always different in Argo).
Courtney had been travelling since August on her own. She'd been really shy when she started, and used to find it difficult going into restaurants alone (fairly problematic) or speaking to strangers. Her boyfriend was joining her in a few weeks, and they were heading to London, Berlin, Morocco, Spain, Italy and then New York for Christmas and New Year. They both worked for the National Bureau of Statistics in Australia, and she explained how she'd been focussed on the census Australia had last year (I used my best open university Census chat here; "it's just so important for allocation of medical and education resources"). She wasn't sure about going back there; the work environment is really sexist, and her bosses notoriously ganged up on the women in her position. We had a few drinks and then went to bed. Courtney showed real concern when I painfully slipped into the splits from the wet bathroom.
End of day 24.
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