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TRAVEL BLOG ENTRY
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“Germans don't cross the road until the pedestrian light is green” |
After a cool trip exploring where Sven grew up, it was again time to head back to Munich for the last part of my trip. Again, we basically flew down (or we might as well have, it couldn't have been much slower by car).
The last couple of days were very chilled. Sven just showed me around Munich some more and we played a lot of Xbox (very big in Germany for some reason – in the UK it’s much more geared to Playstation. Weird hey?). I had the opportunity of going to the German Museum as well as the BMW Museum. The German Museum was very educational, and probably the most interactive and practical Museum I’ve ever been to. These guys have been cooking at engineering for a long time now. Still, only a Museum and can’t say that it rocked my world. Saw some legend old cars at BMW though. They’re busy refurbing the original building as well as building a new showroom. That’s going to be stunning when it’s done. But until then it has been moved to an area built for the 1972 Olympics, where all the terrorist things went down.
Sven also took me to the Alps, and this was (along with the first day in Munich) probably the best part of the entire trip. We caught an open air cable car to about 1250m (still low considering that Pretoria is at about 1400m (?) and hardly ever drops below 0C, nevermind get any snow. Still, this was WAY more beautiful). We took a little hike up to a restaurant (what a rave place to work) to have a hot drink, not that it was that chilly, but still. We then took a little walk up to a point close by. Sven and his girlfriend Kerstin (she joined us about a day before) didn’t have have the right shoes, so they went back down after a while. I therefore had to enjoy the AWESOME view by myself. Made me very sad cause I don’t live close to a mountain anymore. I really miss Table Mountain (and the sea with good waves, and good food and good weather and….I’d better stop now). This was the first time I’d seen snow since I got to England this time round, even after a winter of being so cold I sometimes thought I was loosing my legs. So a very cool experience.
A couple of comments on my experience in Germany –
1. Germans are very practical, and this shows in everything they do. Style takes a definite second place to ease of use and optimization. Took me a while to get use to this, but once I did I felt a lot more at home, cause this really is how I think the world should be.
2. I was very surprised by how new everything looks, compared to the UK (I’m talking about everything, but the most obvious are the buildings – houses, etc). I pointed this out to Sven and we tried to come up with a couple of answers for why this is, but I’m still baffled.
3. The language is not the prettiest in the world, but it’s interesting, maybe more so for me cause I found that sometimes I picked up a lot of words due to being able to understand Afrikaans.
4. Judging by the football stadiums that I saw, I’m seriously worried about the 2010 world cup. I read somewhere that if a host country is not ready, the tournament falls back to the country that hosted it the previous world cup. After my trip through Germany I think this will be the first time that a country will hold the tournament twice in a row. Obviously I hope not, but still, I wonder….
5. Last but not least, (how weird is this) did you know that in general Germans don't cross the road until the pedestrian light is green? They do actually have a good reason for it, but who am I to spoil the fun. Weirdo's!! (hence the "standing still" in the title)
previous travel blog entry
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