Monday, September 18, 2006 - Augsburg, Germany
We left Knoxville yesterday at 3:40 p.m., flew through
Philadelphia, and arrived in Munich, Germany, at 10:30 a.m. I got
quite a bit of sleep in the eight and a half hours from Philly to
Munich, but Tom not so much. He's going to be exhausted. The TSA
carry-on restrictions were recently tightened to ban all liquids,
so we weren't able to bring our usual bottles of water.
Unfortunately, US Airways did NOT make up the difference, and we
arrived pretty dehydrated.
Immigration was a breeze entering Germany. There weren't even
any silly forms to fill out. The immigration agent scanned our
passports, asked if we were traveling on business or pleasure, and
welcomed us in. Customs was even quicker: one question and they
waved us on by.
Just across the courtyard on exiting the airport, we spotted
a sign for the S-bahn, and a Geldautomat (ATM) was conveniently
located right inside the doors. It's so much easier to get foreign
currency out of an ATM rather than changing money. At the time of
our trip, a euro was about $1.25.
At the ticket desk for the trains we bought a Bayern Pass,
which allows up to five people to travel within Bavaria from 9:00
a.m. to 3:00 a.m. the next day using all city transportation and
all regional trains (basically everything but the InterCity
Express). At €27, it's a heck of a deal. To make the same trip from
the Munich airport to Augsburg taking the ICE would cost
€70.
It's a 45-minute S-bahn trip from the airport to the Munich
Hauptbahnhof (main train station), where we had a 45-minute wait,
and then another 45 minutes by train to Augsburg. Outside the
Munich train station, vendors were selling pretzels as big as your
head. Now we feel like we're in Germany!! A lot of locals in
Lederhosen were making their way to Oktoberfest. We'll join them
there tomorrow!
On the train to Augsburg, a local Indian asked if he could
piggyback on our Bayern Pass since it's good for up to five people.
We figured he might as well, since it wouldn't cost us any extra.
It would have been nice if he'd then offered to pay for part of the
pass, but no big deal. He spoke English well, and we chatted with
him a bit about Oktoberfest.
I was fumbling with my luggage outside the train station in
Augsburg, trying to find a map to our hotel, the Ibis beim
Hauptbahnhof, when we looked up and spotted it from where we where
standing. Well, that was easy. We're here for three nights, €65 per
night, an additional €7 with breakfast. Our room is pretty small,
but the hotel is clean, with multilingual receptionists, and has a
bar downstairs. We're satisfied.
We relaxed until 5:00 p.m., when we went down to the lobby to
meet up with my brother Brian and friend Mooney. They had flown
into Amsterdam a few days ago and were taking a train into Augsburg
today. Brian and I had set up a series of backup meeting times just
in case any of us had travel delays, but luckily they were
unnecessary. Brian and Mooney were waiting for us when we got
downstairs, and it turns out their room is right across the hall
from ours. Cool, that worked out well.
The dreary skies that greeted us on arrival in Europe had now
turned into rain, so we grabbed our jackets and set out for dinner,
with no real sightseeing today. We chose an Indian place,
Restaurant Mayuri, in the Lochbrunner Hotel. The waiters spoke
fluent English, but the menu was, they said politely, too hard to
explain to Americans. They suggested bringing us a mini-buffet.
Naturally, there were no beef or pork selections, but we feasted on
lamb, chicken, fish, various veggies, rice, pita bread, and beer.
It was great.
At the Ibis
Back at our hotel bar, we sampled various German beers and
quizzed Mooney on her experiences so far on her first trip to
Europe. It was no surprise that since she started her trip in
Amsterdam, she was in a mild state of shock!
Confusing German signage
Our bartender, Florian, had spent several years as a teenager
in Austin, Texas. Somehow the conversation devolved from chatting
about his time in Texas to a debate between Tom and Florian on U.S.
foreign policy. It was pretty good natured, mostly, but the rest of
us just wanted them to hush. Pretty soon they quit, and we went
back to drinking beer like God intended. The Erdinger Weissbier
Dunkel was my favorite beer of the night.
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