Awoke
the next morning to discover eyes worse, not better, and I was a bit
of a scary sight to behold with my almost totally red sclera. Aware
that this was not
right and could no longer be explained away by allergies, I plucked
up my courage after breakfast and asked the hotel man at the desk
where I could find a doctor. Naturally, it was a Saturday. He did his
best to explain it to us where the after hours was, and in hindsight
he did a darn good job. The place was inside another building, not
signposted on the street, and up on the fourth floor. Additionally,
it was lucky I had looked up the German word for 'doctor' so I could
identify it on the lift list.
I have decided that
given my ailment was/is on the minor end, it's not such a bad thing
that I had to go to the doctor. It all adds to the experience of a
different culture... and I think of all the places we went to/ are
going to this trip, Germany is probably one of the better places I
could have got sick! The people on the desk and the doctor herself
all spoke good english, and despite being 10.30am on a Saturday, the
wait was only 45mins. They had a specialist eye doctor on site and
she was motoring through us.
I
explained my symptoms and she took a brief look at my eyes through
the eye scope thingy and said immediately “It's nothing serious,
just bacterial conjunctivitis” - which was a relief because I knew
that there was a treatment for that! Aren't antibiotics just the best
thing? Within minutes I had my presciption, a lighter wallet, and was
happily trotting back to the apotheke. As we left the nice doctor
lady asked where we were from and when said New Zealand her and her
assistant both gasped and she clutched her hands together and said
“Oh we all dream
about going to New Zealand!” So there you are. We actually do
live in a desirable tourist
destination – it's not just hype!
First
dose of drops in and already feeling better (if only it had
actually worked that quick!) we jumped on the underground. This
morning the rain was holding off so we had a date with the “English
Garden”... but more importantly the beer garden within the
English garden. We made it there without much to do and entered the
garden past the beginnings of some kind of summer festival outside
the Munich University.
Token tents already up for the mystery festival (university behind)
The garden itself was a pleasant greenish sort of place with pretty gravelly paths and streams/rivers winding through it. We had grand plans to circumnavigate the whole thing but true to the theme that was Munich, we were feeling very lazy and my wee eye problem made me tire of things pretty quick. So when we came across the beergarden after just 10-15 minutes of walking, it was easy decision to sit down, have some lunch and a beer, which we both knew (but both quietly ignored) would put an end to any further meanderings.
We observed the buffet chaos for a few minutes to suss out how it worked. People seemed to be going everywhere with trays and plates full of food, and, of course, enormous mugs of beer. We managed to figure it out though and naturally everyone spoke english so that made life easy. Although I still managed to grab someone else's meal by accident (when the plate was put down in front of me with slightly not what I had asked for on it I assumed I had been misunderstood or what I had asked for hadn't been what I thought....). Anyway being called back to swap only made me look spectacularly stupid, but the embaressment was soon forgotten in a large mug of wheat beer.
The rain held off as we heartily enjoyed a gratutiously heart disease rendering meal of half a chicken and a huge pile of grilled potatoes for me, and a large sausage + chips for Greg. Greg fetched our beer and came back with the hugest mug of beer I have ever had! It was a struggle to lift it with one arm, but I guess it was good there was some exercise involved in our meal!
Eyes still puffy and itchy - but who could care when you've got a mug of beer bigger than your head in one hand and half a roast chicken on a fork in the other?
Greg was very entertained by little ole' me with such a giant beer
It was pretty quiet when we arrived so there wasn't any 'squashing up' and making friends with random strangers, but when I came back from the bathroom just before we left another old couple had joined Greg (but they were talking to eachother in German and reading the paper so not exactly friend making). Nevertheless we all cheerfully farewelled eachother as we got up to leave.
By the time we left it was packed out!
A brass band was up in the weird multi levelled gazebo thing, playing traditional German tunes for the beer guzzlers below.
Pretty tipsy (me especially) we bumbled back onto the undergroud and home.
The underground stations all made me a feel a bit like I was on the set for Austin Powers for some reason...
Lego vending machine in the underground station - the Germans think of everything!
Back at base, the rain had started up again and nothing else on the list of attractions in Munich was enough to tempt us to budge from our room for the rest of the afternoon and even the early evening. We were relishing the excuse to have a break from sight-seeing and given my main sight-seeing apparatus was rather impaired there was no better time. There was another soccer game on that night so Greg watched the first half on the TV in the room.
In the break between halves the plan had been to dive over to the train station and grab some McDonalds or something equally fast-foodesque. But when we got to the McDees and stood in the queue with a bunch of drunk German 16 year olds we just couldn't bring ourselves to do it. So we doubled back to (yet another) pizzerria we had passed, that had the game on, and took a seat upstairs. The place still had the feel of a chain restaurant (but was infinitely superior to McDees...) and was called Caffee Eis.. which I believe exists as a gellato place in Welly??
We watched the end of the game over a yummy Italian meal. I forgot to take my camera or even my phone so no stomach-envy inducing photos for this meal!
Then it was home for sleep!
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