Munich Sonnentag

The best way to get to München is by ICE train. It`s a direct shot from Stuttgart, roughtly two hours in quiet comfort, from the heart of the city to the heart of the city. It´s also really really expensive. Say, $60-$80 normally.

Fortunately, there are a few bus lines that also make the run, for less than a third of the price, and only an hour more of travel. So sunday morning we got up early, packed, and cabbed it over to the Zuffenhausen ZOB (central bus station) about twenty minutes from the house. Actually, the price of the cab ride was about half the price of the ticket to Munich for all of us.

The cab driver did a U turn after dropping us to wait for passengers. When he saw us walking up the stairs to get some coffee, he rolled down the window and shouted after us, pointing, ¨BUS!!¨
Still too early for me, I didn`t realize it was our driver and shouted back ¨No thanks!¨

We were too early, so we got a coffee from the bus station bar/cafe where some people were already ordering beers, and got back down the station to board. The driver scanned our barcode and we jumped on board. It was a long forgettable trip. Three hours went by ok and I played a lot of super-breakout. Tay and Saori napped a bit. We stopped outside of Ulm and in Augburg before pulling into the bus terminal near the central station around noon.

Our hotel was on the other side, a bit of a hike, but we got there. H+ Hotel is located in the middle of a large, seedy neighborhood on the less classy side of the train station. The street was a colorful mix of cell phone stores, translation centers, strip clubs, bars, and ethnic restaurants, mostly middle and far-eastern. Tons of middle easterners walking around, Turks, gulf Arabs, Indians, Eastern Europeans. The hotel was nice though. The room accomodated the three of us although Tay had to sleep on the fold-out couch. The only thing they forgot was an extra towel for the third guest, and toilet paper.

We dropped our stuff and crossed the street to a Lebanese restaurant for lunch. It was really good! We ordered Lebnah with olive oil, some cheese quesadilla things, chicken schwarma, and a variety of drinks, and I think our bill still came out to be less than $40. Tay also ordered a salty watered down yogurt drink which tasted exactly as it sounded and we all took turns trying to appreciate it.

Tay wanted to go direct to the city center platz, but we convinced him to make a detour to Lenbachhaus, a recently renovated (and very nicely done) museum of artwork, mostly focusing on pre-WWII German modernism and expressivism in painting. Lots of work by Paul Klee and Kandinsky. I was really happy we went. From there, we walked to the city center and the ¨virtual alien market¨ where of course, everything was closed because it is sunday. What did we do all day? We mostly walked around. We probably spent about an hour at the museum, but by the time we got out and downtown it was already late afternoon. We shopped around for a good beer hall. At Zum Paulaner, we wandered through the Disneyland of huge beer halls, lederhosen clad waiters carrying giant sausages and pretzels, and an Ompah band playing lustily in the bandstand for the hordes of tired tooking tourists at the wooden benches.

We ultimately decided to get dinner and drinks at the main Augustiner restaurant. It was a LOT quieter. We sat under a wall decorated with a Greek nautical motif and oystershells under a glass canopy. We were all not that hungry but ended up splitting two meals of various fried and baked meats and potato dumplings and some really good white asparagus with Hollandaise sauce. After dinner, we were all just really exhausted so we decided to make an early night of it at the hotel.

We tried facetiming mom for mothers day, but because of technical difficulties, we decided to try her again later. Slept restlessly, filled with bizzare dreams.