8th of June... (quiet cringe at how far behind I am)

Day one in Munich.

On the whole, we slept well on the night train to Munich, except that the walls were fairly thin and our neighbours had decided it would be a good idea to carry on and extended conversation at 4.30am for some reason. I lay there listening to them, convinced it must be nearly time to get up if they were awake, and then when I was finally awake enough to check the time, lay there feeling a bit annoyed!! But I did get back to sleep.

However it was still a 6am wake up as the train got in at 7am and we needed to be showered and ready to go by then. Also, breakfast arrived at 6am! I hadn't realised that there would be breakfast. The breakfast was an amusing affair – cereal with no bowl to put it in. It was the kind that came in a plastic bag inside a small cardboard box, so we decided to keep it in the bag and make it in that. I had more success than Greg, who wound up with milk all over his shorts. There was also a muffin, cheese, small slices of really gross bread, spreads, and a hot drink.

Breakfast in a Bag.

Also, we were in Germany! Somewhere infinitely less scary than France, we have discovered. For a start, everyone knows english (everyone) and they don't seem offended if you rock up and speak it to them. In fact, they seem more offended if you apologise that you don't speak German or if you ask them if they speak English – it's a bit like, of course I speak English, I work in a train station/restaurant/hotel/etc., are you suggesting I don't have the required skills to do my job well? Quite a sea change from France. End result: Jane has become very lazy has learned no German beyond hello and thank you... I've decided I have 'language fatique' after trying so hard in Turkey and France, and when people speak english to you before you've even opened your mouth and identified that you are an English-speaking person... why make life harder?

Anyway, Munich: First thing we noticed in Munich is that the train station has more to offer than some of the ones in Paris and there are always escalators or a lift which makes life easier with bags!! Second thing I noticed is the bakeries full of German baked yummies. Third thing I noticed is that my eyes were killing me, and according to Greg were becoming a rather zombie-like shade of red. So after dropping our bags at the hotel (8am was far too early to check in!) we headed back to the 'Apotheke' to get something for my 'eye allergy'. Lovely pharmacy lady gave me anti-allergy eye drops and off we went, me convinced that soon all would be well.

We attempted the walking tour of Munich as per the guidebook. We we distracted by needing to find a toilet and disheartened by the constant drizzly rain (yes, rain again) so once we had found the main streets and pedestrian malls, identified the main square and churches, we were ready for an indoor activity!

The main square with the gothic town hall imposing itself upon the passers-by.

Greg found a sausage shop! He had been looking forward to some German sausages.

We waited until the info desk opened so we could get a decent city map and see where things were. Greg was very very keen to see the science and technology museum. After the last two days we were all palaced, arted and ancient artifacted out so an interactive science museum sounded like just the ticket. On the way we stopped at a market type area to grab some German baked goodies!

Note the puffy eyes!

Look! It's a church!

The main square.

For 'The Little Mermaid' fans out there "and oh that blowfish BLOW! Yeah."

Randomly, an entire store devoted to Maggi...??

The Science and Technology Museum.

The verdict on the museum: It was pretty ok, in my opinion. In Greg's opinion it was fabulous and he could have spend all day there.

I tried my best to be engaged but only truly enjoyed certain sections of it. Whether or not there were english explanations of things was fairly sporadic. So for example it was difficult for me to get excited about models of various ways of drilling for oil, when the explanations that would have turned "oh that's a pretty model..." into "ooooh, that's how that works, how interesting!" were unintelligable to me. I suspect this was my karma for taking Greg to the Picasso museum without the audioguide...

One really cool thing we managed to attend was the electricity demonstration. The man spoke totally in German of course, but the fact that you had no idea what was about to happen didn't detract from the 'ohhh' when they turned all the lights off and made electricity arc dramatically around the room or explode loudly.

The set up for the electricity show - the silver metal ball was actually a cage one of the dudes sat in as electricity travelled around him!

Greg playing with the demonstration models in the 'metals' section.

Cool glowing models of old timey iron smelting.

There was even a random piece of sculpture, to keep the art buffs happy!

We looked at sections on nanotechnology in bioscience (I enjoyed this), metals and casting, the origins of computers (this was also cool – they had so many really old computers – the really really big ones) and also the progression of musical instruments – again an impressive collection of music instruments from the really old progressing through to their current-day forms.

These weird 3-D faces showed movies of scientists talking about nanotechnology (in German)

This proved that the earth's axis was on a tilt. 

Old harps!

So many old pimanos!

Old timey bagpipes!

The evolution of the guitar.

These ones had weird growths. Tumour Guitars.

Pre saxomophone?

Greg's favourite: The French Horn. I believe he was quietly figuring out how he could steal one...

Chinese Gong! How I long to be a percussionist... they get to do the best stuff!

A very large sailing boat and ship, just casually parked inside the museum. As you do.

Greg easily lit up all the lights and got the light bulb in the box to turn on. He's just that bright ;P

Surveying stuff through the ages - took this photo especially for Tee and Shar!

Old computers!

So much less mobile than a smart phone..

The first Japanese keyboard.

That thing must have required a university degree to use!

After a few hours in here I was struggling as my eye drops weren't working as I'd hoped, and we were both super hungry. We left the museum in search of some eats and found a nice little restaurant with a cheap lunch menu. We nommed down some yummy fare that I would just call 'normal' rather than 'German'.

We were excited by the presence of vegetables!

It was a funky little cafe. We felt very at home!

We then headed back through the main streets to check in at last to our hotel. The streets were full of people, which surprised us after their comparitive emptiness at 9am that morning when we'd first come through. The rain was still drizzling away. In the market area the local beer garden was chokka!

Weird German duvet folding practices - it was the same in Austria. 

We checked in and fell in a heap in our hotel room, exhausted from the early morning after a disrupted sleep on the train, and my eyes adding to the general discomfort. The drops not being of much use I began to suspect and infection and jumped on Dr. Google to confirm and also to see if it was possible to get antibiotic eye drops over the counter in Germany or not. It seemed not.

The rain continuing and the general prevailing feeling being 'we can't be bothered' we decided to do laundry, seeings as there was a laundromat just around the corner. We happily whiled a way an hour in nice warm laundromat surrounded by other tourists all scratching their heads and trying to work out how the machines worked or sitting around chatting to pass the time. Greg and I both had books so we were a bit anti social but by eavesdropping we discovered that another older couple were from NZ as well. For a little country we do well to scatter ourselves consistently across the usual tourist destinations! Feeling proud to once again be People Who Have Clean Clothes To Wear, we struggled back to the hotel with the umbrella protectively covering the bag of freshly dried booty.

It was straight back out again to have some dinner at a friendly-looking pizza place we had passed while doing laundry. We got in and sat down and found the place seemed to double as a local sports bar and a soccer game was just starting. We enjoyed eating our yummy pizzas and drinking our too large beers to the cheers and mutters of the German sports fans. We left after half time though, as much as staying til the end would have been nice, my eyes were telling me it was bed time.

(Wasn't sure if it was my eyes or the camera that couldn't focus properly...)