Day 1 in Germany - Discovering Munich

Day 1 – Discovering Munich

Theatinerkirche in Munich

This morning we woke up near the United Kingdom, ate breakfast over France, and landed in Munich around noon. We flew on a Lufthanza airbus, a pretty new, pretty nice plane that had a lower level with bathrooms, which kind of impressed us – none of us had ever gone downstairs on a plane before.  It was an easy flight, and we slept for a lot of it, sure, squashed into an uncomfortable sitting position with a child draped half over us, but still we slept, so jet leg wasn't too terrible.  We made our connection in Chicago easily, all except Paul's suitcase, which for some reason hadn't been checked through to Munich, and was still sitting in Chicago, waiting for him to pick it up.  We hope it will get here tomorrow.

View from St. Peters

The fun thing (probably frustrating is a more accurate term, but it's vacation, so it's kind of fun too) about going to a different country is that everything is different, and it takes a while to figure it out.  For example, until we missed our exit ramp from the highway between the airport and our hotel, we didn't realize that our rental car comes equipped with a GPS that doesn't tell you when to exit.  And until we held up traffic on a busy street trying to parallel park the rental car, we didn't realize that we couldn't figure out how to put the car in reverse.  Turns out you have to lift a thing on the gear shift and squeeze while you shift.  The manual was no help, not only because it was all in German, but also because it was about a different kind of car.

Window shop[ing for ladybug-shaped chocolates

We finally got to the hotel in the middle of the afternoon, and were pretty hungry, so we set out to have a look around.  Of course first we had to find a place to get some money, and it turns out ATMs aren't as thick on the ground in Germany as they are back home.  We didn't get a receipt, so we don't honestly know how much that cash cost us.  Then we had to find a restaurant that was open, because in Germany, lots of restaurants aren't open in the middle of the afternoon.

Paul and Kyra in Marienplatz

But it's good to have an excuse to get out on the streets of Munich to explore, and looking for an ATM and a bite to eat did the trick.  What we found was Mexican food – our first German dining experience.  And it was great.  We ordered our bottled water without gas.  We could have gotten it with, but it hardly seemed necessary with Mexican food.

We weren't sure how much Kyra was up for, given her first go at jet lag, and we were a little nervous about going to the tourist center, given that our hotel clerk warned us about a demonstration going on there that had closed the public transit stops in that area for the whole weekend.  I'd pictured mobs of angry people, hostile political diatribe, maybe violence.  After all, we're from Wisconsin.  Turns out there was some important meaning lost in translation, and that the demonstration turned out to be a street fair with an LGBT theme.  We got a tiramisu-flavored ice cream cone (excellent) and a free balloon.

When you're in another country, even something as trivial as buying a subway ticket can be a major headache (or adventure, whatever) when you have to do it at a machine, and the marketing guru who came up with the snappy names for types of tickets didn't take into account that someone who had been in the city for approximately 90 minutes wouldn't have any idea what any of it meant.  We probably wasted about 20 euros and about 20 minutes, only to discover that nobody ever collected or checked the tickets.

Kristin and Kyra at the top of St. Peter's

We discovered some of the usual tourist stuff, and it was great.  We went into a church that was 400 years old, with an unbelievably ornate baroque interior, while mass was in progress, which added a hushed reverence to the tourist experience.  We climbed the tower of St. Peter's, another old, old church, built in 1060, that had 303 steps, which is more than Holy Hill, and more than the old courthouse tower in West Bend.  And the view of the city, in all directions, was exceptional.  And then we climbed back down again.  And then jet lag caught up with us.

Kyra on the Playground

On the way back to the hotel, at 7:30pm, which was only 12:30pm West Bend time (and that's how you can really tell when someone still has jet lag, when they still care more about the time back home than the time where they are) we came upon a small park, with a playground that wouldn't meet any American safety standards, but was fun, and a basketball court with a sand floor (nobody was playing) and several ping pong tables, and some cool concrete Hippo sculptures for kids to climb on, and a couple of German girls who looked Korean.  Kyra's stated goal for the first day of the trip was to go to a playground and play with a German kid, so we stopped and she did.  And now we're back at the hotel, ready for another day.