Week One Part II: Of Munich and Beer

Ok, so, to recap, when we left off, it was the second night in London, and we had just gone to bed, after seeing the really cool performance of Wicked.

The next day, well technically it was still night as the sun hadn’t come up yet, we got up before the crack of dawn, 5am to be exact. You see London’s Heathrow airport, the second busiest in world, is located about 30 miles from anything. It is literally in the back of beyond. So between London’s abysmal traffic and the fact that after Chicago O’Hare Heathrow is probably the worst run airport in the Western World you have to get that at least five hours before your flight, especially if you are traveling internationally, which technically we were.

Getting seventy people and their luggage onto a bus is quite a production, and in our case it took almost half an hour because we couldn’t find someone. But, at 6am we rolled out of the door and made it to Heathrow. Fortunately at that early hour, there was absolutely no one in the terminal so we moved through security relatively easily, though some people had their liquids confiscated. And then we sat around Heathrow and got to know each other a little bit better. I got to be the expert Kindle salesmen as everyone seemed fascinated by the handy little tablet device.

The plane was really tiny, barely more than a puddle jumper, especially compared to the flight I was on to the United Kingdom. The hope over to Munich was blessedly short, less than 2 hours, and then the wait at customs and the bag claim was virtually non-existent. After that we got onto a bus and headed into downtown Munich.

Upon arrival at the hotel we got to meet our roommates in Prague for the first time. Mine’s a pretty chill dude named Jake. After discovering that we would be spending the night in a roughly postage stamp sized room, Jake and I, and most of the rest of AIFS headed, down to the lobby to wait for our 5pm tour of Munich.

Munich and London literally couldn’t have been more different. London has to be one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world. Walking down the streets, you hear people of all hues and shades speaking a dozen languages, every kind of food, beverage, money exchange house, and historical site you could possibly want is located within a few blocks of your hotel. Munich, at least when we got there, was a kind of gray and shabby, especially compared to London. The city seems to have suffered from an almost comically tragic history. As the guide pointed out to us, the location where Hitler started his career, the Hofbrau House (the beer hall of the Beer Hall Putsch), the city hall where he first met Himmler and Goring and ordered Kristallnacht(when all the Jews windows were broken) and the Olympic Stadium were all the Israeli athletes were murdered by Black September all reside within Munich’s city limits. In addition, beyond these wonderfully cheerful sites, there really wasn’t that much to do in the city itself(except maybe go to the place with the gigantic Boobs sign down the street from the Hotel, but I certainly didn’t want to do that) . I was lucky in that my roommate (Jake) and I managed to find a guy (Adrian) who know about a great restaurant in Munich…which turned out to be a little whole in the wall Chinese joint where eight or ten loud Americans stood out like a sore thumb. With that out of the way, we headed back to the hotel.

And then it started snowing…kind of a lot, and we had a twenty minute walk back across the Marionplaze, which was kind of Munich’s central square. When we got home, I was pretty much done for the night, though I did stay up playing cards(spoons) and had a beer(Pilsner, more on that later) at the Hotel Bar with a couple of other AIFS people, including my roommate (the afore mentioned Jake) and Adrian.

And it was night, and I slept.

And then we got up for the six hour bus trip…at 10am, hallajuh thank the lord. After a hurried breakfast, I got my suitcase down the stairs for the 10:30 bus departure, which actually happened at about 10:45, but that’s OK. Most people on the bus slept some because they had a massive hangover from the night before, and others just because they were exhausted. We stopped once at a nice scenic truck stop in Germany, with well…lots of trucks, and Germans, spent the last of our Euros and crossed the broader into the Czech Republic…

And by crossed a border, I mean literally just drove across a line on the map. Thank god for the treaty with the impossible to spell name that means you don’t have to have a passport to cross borders between EU Countries. Anyway, after that nice little border crossing, we reached the city of Pilsen(not how its spelled in Czech, but as I’m not actually Czech I’ll use this spelling). Pilsen was wear they brew, surprisingly enough, Pilsner, the beer I had the night before in Munich. Pilsen is also home to some really fabulous examples of Soviet Era architecture aka really big square shaped buildings with not a lot of color. We stopped for lunch at the Pilsner factory, where I got my first real taste of Czech food, which was pretty good I have to say. I also got to know my fellow travelers a lot better, as lunch lasted for almost an hour. As it turns out, in the Czech Republic you own the table at the restaurant until you ask for the bill, and pay it. So that was pretty relaxed.

Full of Czech food, we got back on the bus, and headed off to Praha(Prague)…