Munich-Germany, Day 1&2

It’s Monday afternoon,  a few hours before I board a plane and be away from my home country for a month. I’m not excited neither am I anxious. All that’s going through my mind is the checklist, did I authorize my card for international use, did I pack my power bank, extra charger, universal plug, and the list goes on.

Mom is very nervous.  Her daughter has never been out of her sight for that long. She calls everyone to the lounge to pray.We all say a prayer and she kisses me goodbye with teary eyes. I avoid eye contact as I put my backpack in the car.

My sister drops me off at the airport, she’s excited. We keep our goodbyes very short. Reality still hasn’t kicked in, I’m still very calm and a bit tired because I was working the previous night.

My itinerary starts in Munich, the capital of Bavaria in Germany and I’ll spend two days there.

DAY 1

My flight to Munich is 10h 45min and I slept most of the flight. When we land in Munich it’s 6am, I get called by 5 customs personnel into a room for questioning. I’m not nervous, just bored. My schengen  visa is in my new passport, so they think that I’m a first time flyer.  We arrive in the room and before they asked me questions, I took out my old passport which had only two free pages and a file which had my itinerary and all my bookings. They look into it, spoke among themselves in German. They asked me to unpack everything in my backpack, now the nerves kicked in. What if someone put drugs in my backpack? I took everything out, it was just shoes and gadgets, one of them being an extra phone, now that looks suspicious. The one lady asks a question I’m kinda expecting, “why do you have two phones?”. In a nervous voice, I start explaining how I got to experience Murphy’s law. in my previous trip. They spoke among themselves again in Germany. The other lady reached for my travel journal which saved my life. She went through it, spoke to them in German and then turned to me and said, “we called you out because your passport is new so we thought you’re traveling for the first time, but now we see that you are well traveled.

Now I’m very nervous by whole customs encounter. I rush to get my luggage only to find that the one wheel has been broken. This is really not a good way of starting a trip. I went to report it at the baggage claim office. The lady working there temporarily fixed it with tape and gave me a reference number to use when I get back home.

By the time I got to my hostel I was emotionally exhausted. I spent the whole day in bed. Woke up at 17:00, went out to buy chicken and fries, had that meal at my hostel and went back to bed. The beauty about traveling solo is that you are in charge and can change plans according to your mood.

Day 2.

I wake up at 10am, no alarm was set. Now it kicks in that I’m on vacation, I can do anything at anytime.I can choose to go out or just Netflix and chill. Thinking about this just makes me happy, I love my life. I’m in a much better mood than yesterday. According to my itinerary I have to take a train to Hallstad in Austria. I look out of the window, it’s sunny, so I decide to spend the day in Munich and  go for a free walking tour.

My hostel doesn’t serve breakfast, so I ask for recommendations from the receptionist. A place which has good German breakfast and good coffee and view if possible. She suggested Coffe Fellows and I loved it.

After breakfast I went to the meeting point of the free walking tour in Marienplatz.  My guide is an American student who has been living in Munich for 5 years. He’s very informative and funny. He takes us to see some historical buildings and tells  all about the history of Munich and some of the wars that it had conquered.

He took us to the statue of Julia which is believed that if you touch her golden breast, you’ll find the love of your life. Let me not talk about what happens weeks later lol.

Munich has many beer parks and we visited a few on our walk. The city is well known for its beer festival called Oktoberfest which happens every October with an attendance of about 6 million people. On the 12 of October 1810 Crown prince Ludwig married Therese Charlotte Luise and invited the citizens and arranged free food, beer and horse races in a field outside Munich which was named Theresienwiese. It was so good that the locals kept observing their anniversary.

After the tour, I spent the rest of the day with a friend from Argentina. We walked through the city, visited a few churches and ended the day at the English garden where we sat down and he told me all about Argentina. I decide to try out the alcohol free beer but it didn’t go down well in my throat. I’ll just stick to coffee.

Apart from the beer, Munich is rich in history. Two days isn’t enough to explore, so I guess I’ll have to come back again.

When I got back to my hostel, I had to pack my bags and get read for my morning flight to Greece.