Wednesday, June 28, 2023
Step Count: 23,257 Anika, 22,345 Nathan
Last night we stayed out late with Pat and Andrew for dinner and we had nowhere to be first thing this morning, so you’d think we would enjoy a little extra sleep this morning, but Nathan woke us up with the chickens. A quick shower and some packing and we were downstairs at the Hotel Sonne’s marvelous breakfast buffet. We again managed to pack a lunch from their offerings and squirrel it away for our journey on the train.
Today we head to Munich. We have a couple free hours this morning to fill with tourist shenanigans, so after a trip to the train station, back to our hotel, and then back to the train station, we had our tickets for the 12:17 to Munich’s main station. We could have bought the tickets from the machine, or online, but somehow even the English site was confusing as heck. It was our hotel that suggested that maybe we would be better off buying from a person than the kiosk, and normally I would take offense to that, and I did, but in comparing all three prices; kiosk, online, or in person, somehow we made out better by buying our tickets from a person. She knew all the right questions to ask, I guess…
With train tickets in hand and our bags mostly packed up, we spent the morning walking around old town, touring the Basilica St Mang, walking back up to Lechfalls, and then touring the old Hohes Schloss and museum. We were getting pretty tight on time, so we sped through the schloss and museum in about 20 minutes. Normally I’d be embarrassed, but we told the gals selling tickets that we needed to be at the train station, and they told us to be schnell.
By 11:30, we were hustling out of the museum, down to our hotel to check out, and then over to the train station.
Pat and Andrew were on our train and the ride was uneventful. We were due to pull into the main train station in Munich at 2:20, and that’s precisely when we arrived. Not a minute before, and certainly not a minute after.
Nathan and I managed to get our four backpacks off the train and get situated, and oh my, this place is huge. The masses of humanity moving about. Wearing two backpacks, and trying to look like I knew where we were going, I navigated us out of the train station and to our hotel.
Major culture shock. I forget how much I love the countryside and struggle then once we get to the big cities. This place is huge with people hurrying everywhere! The largest city I’ve lived in is Fargo, North Dakota! I’m much more suited to nice, medium-sized cities!
We found our hotel rather quickly, thank you Google Maps, settled in, quickly did some laundry in the sink, and set off for the main square.
The walk to Marienplatz took about 20 minutes, and we arrived at the square by 4 pm. I sought out the TI, and there they gave me information for getting to Dachau tomorrow and when the glockenspiel goes off.
The next glockenspiel performance is at 5 pm, so we sat at an overpriced cafe on the square to wait for it. The chimes, twirling figures, and scenes go on for 10 minutes, and when they are done, the square clears and we head out to find some dinner.
We walked over to the Viktualienmarkt area to eat at Der Pschorr. We took a bar seat overlooking the beer garden and had a lovely dinner for two before we walked back through the square, ice cream in hand, to go to our hotel.
