Back in Bavaria

After a dinner with Kate, and 12 hours of sleep, I woke up with some very sore forearms from lugging my 2 suitcases and laptop around 3 airports, 2 train stations, and the streets of Munich.  People look at me like "you're backpacking? How much stuff do you need!"  To pack enough of my life to last me a whole year into a grand total of 33 kilos is pretty freakin' good, I think.

So far, a few adventures.  First, in Edmonton, I got through security at 11:45am.  My flight leaves at 1:10pm.  I figure boarding isn't going to start for close to an hour.  So I'm walking around, looking at books, buying some water, when I just happen to hear the "final boarding call for Airtransat to Frankfurt" at 11:55am! Yup, final boarding call a full hour and fifteen minutes before take off!  Yay frantic running through airports! Needless to say, I made it.  With time to spare, actually.  People were showing up for around 30minutes after I was seated.

The long flight was surprisingly good. No crying babies, and the seat next to me was empty, so it was even quite comfortable.  And the sleeping pills I got are incredible.  I slept for around 5 hours and the flight landed almost a full hour earlier that it was supposed to.  Unfortunately, bumping up my second flight was going to cost around 100 euros, so I opted to spend 5 hours in the Frankfurt airport.

Munich  is just as beautiful as I remembered it. Although, I haven't seen the sun yet.  It's rainy and a little cold, but I hear it's going to clear up in the next couple days.  Kate met me at my hostel and we went for a quick bite last night. She did all the ordering, which was nice because I was really too exhausted to think in english, nevermind german.

Although I copped out in the airports a bit by asking "sprechen Sie English?" right off the bat (I figured airline tickets are too expensive to risk f'ing up with my crappy pronounciation, vocabulary and grammar), I have done all of my purchasing (food and shampoo) auf Deutsch.  I even asked a lady in a pharmacy where the nearest drugstore was and understood her directions without needing her to point dramatically.

When I woke up this morning, I decided to go for a jog around Teresienwiese - the big park where Oktoberfest is held later this month.  It's about 10 blocks away from my hostel.  I almost got trampeled by a group of german joggers, who kind of yelled at me to get out of the way (I was waiting for a traffic light) and then invited me to join them.  I breathlessly explained "i'm not that good!" but I have no idea if they understood or not.  It was a good run which wouldn't have been too long had it not been for the fact that Munich is NOT a grid with streets that are perpendicular and run in straight lines.  The park is kind of round, so I did what I thought was a full lap and left on the street that I thought I started on.  It wasn't.  I got very lost.  I was sweaty and gross and had been running without seeing anything that I recognized for about 20 minutes when I finally broke down and asked a couple of men at a bus stop.  They both eagerly gave me directions, despite the fact that I was smelly and sweaty (and looked even more so now that it had started raining again).  It was going well, and I was understanding what they were saying, but then I made the mistake of saying "yes" instead of "ja" (which I have a hard time with because "ja" sounds so much like "yeah" which feels so informal/disrespectful)  so right away, the guy asked "verstehen sie?" (understand?) and even though I nodded enthusiastically, he didn't believe me and took the time to repeat everything in English.  I was doing so well too.  Oh well, I'm sure there'll be plenty of opportunities to get lost and ask for directions again.  The Bavarians are just so eager to help, especially when they see I'm trying my best to use German.

Now, I'm off to walk around Marienplatz - Munich's centre, and maybe a museum.  I'll be meeting Kate tonight for a beer and a punk-concert. Real German punk!

liebe Grusse

Jessi