Die Nächste Tasse Kaffee

In case you haven’t noticed we have been a bit lax sharing our blog this year.  Perhaps we have been distracted by the addition of a new family member, perhaps we have been chasing other butterflies, but whatever the distraction, we love those of you who have been following us these past six (yes six!) years.

Some of you have reminded us that we have yet to share  stories and photos from our recent travels. 

First stop Munich.  Not a location on our short list, but it was a good direct flight landing near the Alps and seemed like a good starting point.  Our plan:  Two nights in Munich, a bit of sightseeing, rest up and reset our internal clock.

Arriving at the Munich airport, the day was gray and overcast.  The inside of the terminal could have been anywhere.  Signs were available in several languages, thankfully including English. 

Grabbing a taxi from the airport into the City Center we passed by scenes that were industrial mixed with rural.  If you plan to travel from the airport to  Munich’s City Center, you might want to check out the local train.  A taxi ride was about $120 euros. The train would have been about 12 euros each and would have delivered us 2 blocks from our hotel. 

Arriving at 8:00 AM Munich time, we were hoping to drop our bags at  the hotel and grab some lunch at a nearby restaurant.  How surprised we were when they checked us in immediately.  Ah…naptime in a soft bed.

That afternoon we both woke with the grogginess that lingers following a 13 hour flight.  We found some clean clothes in our bags, dressed and went looking for something that would serve for breakfast at about 4PM.   We found schnitzels.  Not exactly breakfast food, but we told ourselves it was a pathway to resyncing our clocks. 

I must admit we did not have high expectations for Germany and did very little to prepare our expectations here.  Call us naive, uneducated goons, but we both thought a schnitzel was a wiener, sausage.  To our surprise we received a breaded pork cutlet that looked more like a chicken-fried steak than a hotdog!   Though our initial reaction was a bit halted, we looked at each other, chuckled, and reminded ourselves that exploring new places, foods, locations, is all about experiencing the unexpected, challenging what we know, and finding the flexibility to enjoy the all of it.

On day 2 of our trip, we received a call from our son with some startling news. We were grandparents.  Our first grandchild, Sawyer, arrived 2 months early, something we had considered, but dismissed as unlikely.

  Between the jet lag, time resync, and the excitement of our new arrival, we had little time for sightseeing.  So, employing the learnings of previous adventures, we bought two tickets for the Open Top bus.  Over the next couple of days we began to fall in love with Munich, and were wishing we had planned more time here.

On a note (things we missed but would like to see), Munich is the capital of Bavaria and is filled with buildings and museums that are centuries old. 

The architecture is fanciful, the history is complicated, and the people are surprisingly warm.  English is spoken most places, though only in simple phrases, mostly learned to assist the foreign visitors.   

 

The third day we packed our bags, walked to the train station and caught a train to Austria.

It was a good start to our trip.