Munich Part II - Day 1

So after I finally got to Munich, I had a strange feeling that Jingwen and I were somehow going to miss each other at the train station, even though we agreed on which exit to meet at. We agreed to meet at the south exit but after standing there for about 10 minutes and not seeing her, I though maybe her flight got delayed since it was rainy out. It was rainy and cold. So cold that I had to put on 3 layers. Good thing I bought the right clothes. Anyway, I went to the hostel and found out that she had indeed checked in but wasn't in the room right now. So I got the key to our room and dropped off my stuff.

I went back to the train station to search for her one more time. Upon not finding her, I decided to go explore the city myself. This is why I now have a dozen pictures of my head and a building.

Munich is a nice city. It's different from Berlin in that it has a city center that is alive. Berlin's city center was where the Wall is and is now dominated by the Bahn Tower. There are no clubs or restaurants or anything fun yet I still see tour buses stopping at Potsdamer Platz everyday. I'm still trying to figure out why these tourists are there.

I followed my guidebook to one of the gateways into the city center. My guidebook suggested crossing the busy street by using the underground passage. So I did. Except I got confused once I got underground and came up on the wrong exit. So I went back down and this time, I just got out of the exit that had two escalators and a ton of people. Not sure why I didn’t do this the first time.

Munich's city center has lots of old churches, nice little stores, restaurants, and fountains. Lots of fountains. This cute fish fountain at Marienplatz is a popular meeting place for tours and such. There was a gay pride parade that weekend. Well, I missed the parade since it was in the morning but they partied all weekend at Marienplatz.

After walking around for a long time, I went back to the hostel and Jingwen was there, sleeping on her bed. She was looking for me at the train station and came back to the hostel right after I left the place. She had been sleeping ever since. Still jetlagged from China. We went out for a while and walked around a bit, mostly around the gardens behind the Residenz. There was no other people there since it was raining and getting dark.

We separated on the way back since Jingwen got a subway pass and wanted to take the train. I was happy to just walk back. When I got out of the an underground passage way that took me across a busy street, I looked around to figure out where I was. A guy who looked like he was about 40 asked me if I needed help. I said no and he asked me where I was from, etc. We chatted a little bit and I found out that he works for Cannon, something to do with office machines and electricity. I later found out his name is Sigi. Sigi asked me to go back into the city with him but I was tired and wanted sleep so I refused. I slept pretty well that night.