I’m sitting in my hotel in Munich, Germany tonight (German time at least), trying to recover from a long day. It seems when you travel for business, the days are longer because first there’s 8 hours of work, 1-2 hours of traveling back and forth, then there’s 3-4 hours of supper, then there’s 3-4 hours of email. And this is not counting the folks that are out at the dance club – I’m too smart (read: old) to join them in their efforts to stay out until 1 am.
I arrived on Monday morning after taking three flights to get here. It was interesting to see the different treatment between the flights – when I flew the short leg to Minneapolis I was in first class, but I received no food and only the plastic mini-cup of orange juice or water the peasants in economy receive. Then when I was a peasant on the long flight to Amsterdam (without exit row seat to boot), I sat uncomfortably, but enjoyed a personal video player that allowed me to watch three movies on the way over. I was also server dinner and breakfast, along with some free wine. Besides the suffering on my long legs, I had an enjoyable flight. I watched Sex and the City – which was funny but sad, Indiana Jones – which was very typical Indy, good enough, and My Super Ex-Girlfriend – which is the corny type of movie I like.
When I arrived in Amsterdam I had to have my passport checked to get through to my connecting flight to Munich. No big deal, right? Wrong. I actually arrived early on my flight to Amsterdam and almost missed my flight to Munich because I stood in that line for over an hour. Part of it was my fault for being stubborn enough to stay in the same line when there were opportunities to get through faster – but that would’ve only saved me 10 minutes. I was the last one to arrive in the gate area for my flight to Munich and it was a flight where I had to take a bus from the gate out to the plane – I’ve only ever done that in Europe. I arrived in Munich about 9am and took a taxi to my Marriott hotel (home of all the Americans). After getting settled, I slept for about three hours since I hadn’t slept the entire time on the plane – I put my head down to rest a few times but never fell asleep. I’m not sure if that sleep time did me any good, because I was kinda miserable the rest of the day but stayed up anyway. I headed to work by 3 that afternoon and then went out to a place called Augustiner Brauhaus for dinner – it was a gigantic place. I had the pork with cucumber mashed potatoes. I’ll admit I was surprised when the mashed potatoes were cold, but they weren’t bad. All German pubs seem to serve pretzels as appertizers, and they were great there. Enough to get you to drink more beer, I guess.
Tuesday was fairly uneventful – I worked and after work just stayed at the hotel for dinner (had a steak sandwich and fries, just like home) and went down for a beer with those folks that ventured out for dinner about 9:30.
Today was a little more adventure-oriented – after work I went with some colleagues to Olympia Park which was the site of the 1972 Olympics. We walked by the Olympic soccer stadium and walked into the Swimmehall – Natatorium. Then we went up the Olympic tower so we could see everything in Munich – we could see for 20-30 miles in each direction, it was quite cool. We got a good look at the Olympic grounds and where everything was in the city. It’s amazing the size of the parks in the city. I also enjoyed the drive there and to downtown as I pestered my German colleague with hundreds of questions. We walked forever downtown (because you have to park far away) and arrived at the Marieplatz – the city center. Our friends weren’t there – instead they were at the Hofbrauhaus, the most famous beer garden in the world. We took in some pretzels, beer, pork and oompah-pah music as we all had a good time. It’s pretty hard to be mad when they are playing that kind of music. Unfortunately, I didn’t bring my camera for any of this. My colleague from Mexico City did, so I’ll have to rely on him to get the pictures out. He has a good little video of all of us locking elbows and swaying to the Bavarian music.
I like Munich – it’s big but not overwhelming, it’s pretty, the people are friendly and the town seems quite safe. I was able to head back from the city center to my hotel with no problems and notice many other solitary people with no concerns. The area is very near the Alps and a vacation area in Germany, so maybe it would be good to come back someday when I have more time to spend.
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