Munich Part IV - Salzburg

On Monday, we went to Salzburg. We got a Brayen pass that allowed us to travel anywhere in the state for a whole day for 27 Euros. We had to wait until 9am to use it though so we walked around the English Garden a little bit and came back to the Hauptbahnhof to catch the train the Salzburg. It was a 2 hour train ride and there were lots of other people going. People travel a lot in Germany. Well, I think the people across from us were Italian and we saw a lot of Spanish tourists around too.

The Salzburg Hauptbahnhof is really old. We ate at a nearby café after getting off since we were both hungry. I got a pasta dish along with ice cream coffee. Both very good. We got a little guidebook with a map and started walking around the city. The old city is actually across the river from the train station. We walked around a really nice garden and saw Mozart’s birthplace before crossing over to the other side.

It wanted to rain for a while but never started pouring. We walked around some churches, an outdoor market, found the famous little street with cute street signs, and finally found another Residenz (not sure whose it is but it looked nice from the outside). There is a castle on top of a hill but it cost 10 Euros to take a lift. This included the admissions to the castle. We decided to just walk up since it wasn’t that far. But when we got there, it turns out that we had to buy a 7 Euro ticket to go inside, which included the lift to go down. We couldn’t even walk around the castle. I didn’t want to see the inside of the castle anyhow but we wanted to walk around the top and get a nice view of Salzburg.

After this we wanted to take a bus to see the Sound of Music pavilion. We got on the wrong bus so it took us like 2 hours to get there. It’s about 30 minutes away by bus. We got off at the wrong stop but the bus driver was kind enough to let us back on. So after getting lost a lot, we got there and saw the pavilion. Not very amazing given all the effort we put into finding the place. The rest of the park is very nice though. We didn’t have time to explore much since we wanted to catch the train that leaves Salzburg at 9:18pm, bringing us back to Munich at around 11pm. We got some food at a Burger King. I got a milkshake and some onion rings. People don’t eat onion rings much here. You can’t get it with a value meal and they had to fry mine especially for me. The onions weren’t very fresh, a bit mushy.

Munich Part III - Day 2

So while Jingwen is off to see the castle, I decided to go to see the Deutsches Museum. I didn’t go the most direct way because I saw on my guidebook that there are a few buildings that I should see. Well I saw those buildings and then quickly got lost. Yeah, again. It might have something to do with the fact that the street names change every two blocks.

Anyway, I finally found a bus stop with a map but at that point I didn’t really need a map. I saw the Isar River. I found out that I was so not where I wanted to go. But now I can just follow the river and hit the museum at some point. The museum is on its own island in the middle of the river. When I finally got there it was around 9:30am. The museum had opened at 9am and I wanted to get there as early as possible so I can visit the Residenz (where King Ludwig lived) later in the day. Every museum closes at around 5pm.

There weren’t a lot of people since it was so early. It only cost 3 Euros for me since I got the student price. This MIT ID is so handy. The first exhibit I went into was the one with ships and all things related to the sea. It was like heaven! I really love ships and such. They had two old ships inside the museum. I took lots of pictures of this exhibit. The basement was humongous too. I had though it was just something small so I went down. But the exhibit just went on and on. This pretty much describes the whole museum. There were airplanes, bridges (they even have a small suspension bridge that you can walk on!), sundials, ceramics, mining things, wind and water turbines, and everything related to science and technology. It’s definitely one of the most amazing museums I’ve been to.

I walked around for like 5 hours and didn’t see all of it. Around 2pm, I was really tired and didn’t want to see anything more. I went to the museum shop and was disappointed with the stuff they had. I thought they would have some of the cool stuff that I saw. But no.

From there I walked along a big street that took me back into the city center. Before I got there though, I stopped at a discount bakery store and got some food. Everything outside of the city center was really cheap. Should’ve tried those Turkish pizzas.

I walked back to the hostel and took a nap. I got out again at around 3pm. So since I figured I won’t get to see the Residenz, I thought I’d walk over to see Konigs Platz and the English Garden. I found the Konigs Platz and then got lost again. After walking in a big circle, I found part of the English Garden and could not find how to get to the rest of it. By this time, I was really tired again and sat on the grass.

That’s when Sigi saw me again. Such a coincidence. He invited me to walk with him around the city center. So I did and he told me about some of the buildings around the city. I found out that St. Peter’s church is actually the oldest church in Munich, not the Dom - the most famous church in Munich. He got me a cup of cappuccino at McDonalds and we stopped by some really pretty churches that were built in the Rococo style. I think he is Catholic and actually goes to these churches. I found out that he lived in Japan for 7 months for work. He works for Canon and has traveled all over Asia. He’s not married so I got a little uncomfortable when he invited me to dinner at his apartment.

He lives right in the city center in one of those places above a store. He invited me to a home cooked dinner but I made some stupid excuse and we parted. That was the last time I saw him. Nice guy but not sure what to make of his asking me to his apartment. I mean, he’s about 40 years old, has white hair, wears purple suits, etc.

Anyway, I went back to the dorm because I didn’t get to relax on the lawn and was dead tired by this point. When I walked in, I found a guy sleeping on one of the empty beds. I was really surprised since I thought I had booked a female dorm. Apparently not. This is really something since the shower is right in the room and there is just one glass door. We have to undress outside of the shower and it just wouldn’t work out with a guy there. So I explored the showers upstairs, found them empty, and took a shower there. It was only 7pm so most people weren’t back yet. At around 8 or 9pm, I walked around outside again, ended up getting some pizza at a pizzeria near the hostel, and just ate at the hostel. Jingwen came back later and was pretty upset about living in a mixed dorm. But since the guy was out, we just locked the door while she took a shower. This worked for us the next day as well. Another guy arrived in the middle of the night and neither of them came back until at least midnight both nights.

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.

Home

It's been 5 months but I'm finally back home! Yay! It's so awesome to see my family again, eat homecooked food, not have to think about groceries, speak English, yup.

My flights went pretty well. I got up at 4:30am and left my friend's place. Got to the airport but the check-in lady didn't give me a seat for my second flight. I thought it would be okay since I would be arriving at Frankfurt 2 hours early. But no. They have a stupid system where you have to stand in line to check in your bags, stand in line for security, stand in line to have to get into the boarding area, and stand in line again to board the plane. So since I didn't have an assigned seat and the people at the gate had to check everyone in before they knew which seats were available (stupid, stupid), I had to wait until everyone else gets on board. The info should already be available since everyone checked in already. Never seen such a dumb system.

Of course, I ended up with a middle seat, sandwiched between this big Italian guy and an American. Luckily, the American is a nice guy and we chatted during the flight. Lufthansa has really good service but some really old planes. There were no individual TVs in the economy class and the flight was 11 hours. The seats were so small and I had no legroom whatsoever. At least this time I could see the TV from my seat and watched Shrek the Third and Blades of Glory.

Sunday: Souvenir Hunting

At around noon, I left to go souvenir hunting, for real this time. Jingwen didn’t come with me because her feet started hurting again. She thinks it’s because she walked too much in the past couple of weeks. I didn’t know this could happen but it is.

I took the train the Frederickstrasse and walked towards the Brandenburg Tor on Unter den Linden where all the souvenir shops are. Not going to write about what I got since it would be no fun for the people who are getting these gifts. Well, half the stuff I got is for me but whatever. Anyway, from Brandenburg Tor I took Bus 100, which goes through a lot of the tourist attractions. I didn’t really know where I wanted to go but I was just getting a little tired of walking and wanted to find a good café. The ones on Unter den Linden didn’t look too great to me. So I hopped on the bus and got off when I saw a place that looked like it has some good cafes. Makes me want to get one of those shirts from Life is Good that say “All who wander is not lost.” That’s what I felt like.

Anyway, the area did have some good cafes. I got some more souvenirs and drank a ice latte mocha at a Balzac Café. There is one near where I work but I’ve never tried it. It was okay. Apparently they specialize in espressos and I wanted coffee. My mocha was made with espresso. Couldn’t find wireless but it was fun watching people walk by. This is one of the things I really like about Germany. On Sundays, people actually relax. They walk to the park, drink coffee at cafes, read the paper, and just sit around. Or they go to museums or tour other cities. I wish Americans traveled around more. Not camping but just tour another city for a day or two. I guess it’s not the same since there aren’t a whole lot of historical sites in the US. Not like in Europe anyway.

When I got back to Wannsee, I got currywurst at one of the imbiss stands outside of the station. There is actually an Eis Café (ice cream café) there. I didn’t even know. I mean, I knew that you can get ice cream since there is a big plastic ice cream cone in front but I didn’t know you can get eiskaffe (coffee with ice cream) and tall glasses of ice cream things. The currywurst was pretty good. It’s just sausage with ketchup and curry powder. I got it with fries. The fries were freshly fried and were so hot that I nearly burned my tongue 10 minutes after I got the fries. I wish I know more about sausages though. There are a million different kinds here. I don’t really like the pink, monotexture type. I like the thick, spiced ones. It seems to be a hit and miss every time I get a bratwurst. More misses than hits unfortunately. The best one I’ve tasted so far was in Lubeck. Outside their rathaus, during an Italian festival.

Speaking of ice cream, I've eaten more ice cream this summer than my past two years at MIT.

Saturday: Day of Misfortunes (luckily not for me)

Saturday morning I woke up at around 8am, nearly 9am. The first person I saw was a really frantic Salah running around the apartment. When he saw me, Salah: I’m going to miss my flight! What can I do?Me: You can probably pay a little extra to get on the next flight. Which airport are you going to?Salah: Tegel. Is there a taxi that I can take? Will it be faster?Me: There are taxis at Wannsee.After this he rushed out the door. I hope he made the airplane. Especially if he took a taxi all the way from Wannsee. The taxi would’ve been really expensive. Probably about 50 Euros or so. I found out later that he’s flying to Paris and then back to Lebanon. It would be a real hassle to have to change the connecting flight too.

An hour later, the Polish guy (I can’t spell his name), left as well. He just has to take a train. After this, I went to the computer room to check my email and came back to find Shahab really worried. It turns out that his mom had helped him buy an ICE ticket to go from Berlin to Frankfurt (where his flight leaves to go to Canada) but had put her credit card as the ID. So for the ICE, you need to use either a credit card or Bahn card as an ID if you buy a ticket online. They compare the ID and your ticket on the train. I think it’s so that you can’t pass the ticket onto someone else to use. Anyway, his mom had not made a Bahn.de account so they can’t change the ID online. He’s really, really worried and wanted to buy another train ticket and get DB to refund the one that his mom had paid for. I told him not to worry and just go to the Hauptbahnhof and ask about it and that the last thing he should do is to worry about buying another ticket. Train tickets are always available. But he’s still worried sick. He came back late that night and told me the next morning that they couldn’t change it so he got another ticket and has to go through a long paper process to get a refund. I guess people don’t usually ask for refunds on a fully flexible ticket. I think he could’ve gotten them to change the ID. It’s just that he was so suck on just buying another train ticket. What he really should’ve done is buy a plane ticket on German Wings. I mean, a full price train ticket to Frankfurt is like 100 Euros. Crazy, yeah? So lesson learned: Don’t panic. Always make an account.

I had planned to go souvenir hunting this weekend and was walking through the parking lot to catch the bus when I saw Jingwen walking into the parking lot. Very surprised, I called out to her because she had her head down. Turns out that she had missed her flight and had to reschedule for Sunday night. First of all she misread the bus schedule and caught a bus that left 10 minutes later than what she had planned. And then she found out that on weekends, the S-Bahn doesn’t go to the Shonefeld airport. She had to take a U-Bahn and an airport shuttle or something complicated like that. And on top of that, EasyJet closes check-in 40 minutes early instead of 30 minutes. So even though she wasn’t checking in any luggage, she still couldn’t make it to her flight. The next flight was Sunday evening. Since her original flight was supposed to be Saturday morning, that’s nearly 2 days less. She has to pay 50 Euros to change her flight and 100 Euros more if she wanted to change her return flight. The lady at the counter said that she could check the other airlines but they open at 10am; it was 8am. So after thinking about it for a while, she decided to change only her flight to Paris and came back to Wannsee.

However, luckily for her, some idiot tried to jam a whole folder down the key drop at the Housing Office’s key drop. So I couldn’t put Salah’s key down the box. I didn’t think it was safe just leaving where anyone can take it so I had planned to drop it off on Monday. So Saturday night she stayed in Salah’s room instead of on the couch in my room.

Okay, so the misfortunes end here, more or less. Jingwen and I went out to Berlin together. She wanted to go to Charlottenburg but I was pretty tired of seeing gardens and palaces at this point. I think she was too but she just wanted to be able to say that she had been there. I took us to the flea market at Tiergarten. Jingwen’s not very interested in flea markets plus her feet weren’t up to walking too much, so after walking through one aisle, she sat on a bench and waited for me. I really like flea markets and I found one stand that was selling a huge box of stamps for 5 Euros. I was so shocked at the amount of stamps in the box that I didn’t know what to make of it at first. All the stamps are in really good condition too. So after thinking about it for a while, I got the stamps. Great choice. I increased my collection of East European stamps by like 100 fold. Probably more.

After this we went to the Arkaden mall in Potsdamer Platz to eat at the ice cream place. Jingwen treated me to ice cream as a thank you for letting her leave her stuff in my room and such. We both got similar things. Even though they were on the small side compared to the rest of the menu, we both got full from it. I nearly didn’t finish. It was so amazing.

We sat in the middle of the mall and found free wireless with my computer. We both checked email and then decided to go to Alexanderplatz since Jingwen had never been there. After walking around there for a while, we wanted to take the tram all the way to Schloss Strasse since we had never been on the tram before. But after failing to find the right tram, we just go on one that took us back to Alexanderplatz. There we took the S-Bahn to Rathaus Steglitz and walked to the mall on Schloss Strasse.

This mall is pretty big and we walked around it for about 3 hours. I got a tank top and bag while Jingwen got a shirt, flip flops, bag, and probably some other stuff. She really likes shopping. I wanted to get souvenirs but apparently they don’t have any souvenir shops there. If they did, the stuff would’ve been cheaper than at the tourist attractions, which is why I wanted to check there.

So after not finding souvenirs, we went back to the dorm and cooked dinner. I packed a little bit. I have a lot of stuff but I think I will be able to manage. Most of the stuff that are still in the dorm I will not bring with me – oil, salt, laundry detergent, etc.

This past week at work

Will post more stuff about Munich once I get home. Hard to upload pictures at work.

So when I got to the office on Wednesday, there is a new girl at Christiane’s desk. I think she is joining the controlling department. Don’t think she speaks English either but she’s nice. I can tell she’s new since she had a guest card and she called Oli, Herr Raad. That sounded really weird. She was working with the laptop because they had a lot of trouble with the desktop. It took forever to turn on. At one point, she and Oli were both just staring at the screen for like 5 minutes.

My supervisor wasn’t here the whole week. So I didn’t really do much. Just searched the Internet some more and organized my stuff.

On Friday, I gave a presentation on the different project management styles of Germany versus the US to some Chinese and German students who were visiting Deutsche Bahn. Some people from the Strategy department came and gave a presentation. Long presentation and then the students asked a lot of questions. Some of those questions weren’t that great. Like, “why’s the Bahn Card so expensive?” Anyhow, I thought my presentation went okay. I rushed through the slides though. I have this really habit of making up a script in my head, rehearsing it, and then play it back. I don’t think that’s the best way of presenting. Really need to work on this. I think I should be more natural and just improvise more. Except that I have doubts about my ability to improvise. I just end up saying “uh” a lot, which is no good either. Sigh.

Afterwards, Lauren, the other intern who presented, and I went out to lunch. Apparently there is a restaurant at the Sony Center that has a special everyday for Deutsche Bahn employees. So the whole meal (including drinks) was only about 6 Euros. Which is really great. Don’t find out about stuff like this when your coworkers all eat at the office. We chatted about California and school. Lauren goes to Stanford and is from New York. Kati joined us later on and we talked about random stuff such as having siblings. Lauren’s an only child while Kati has at least one older sister. We didn’t really get to talk a whole lot since it was like 2:30pm and we all had to get back to work.

My stomach hasn’t been feeling too well lately. It was pretty bad in the afternoon. I should’ve just gone home early. But I stayed until both of my officemates left. I don’t think it’s actually that bad except that I was also really depressed about leaving Germany. I mean, I’m really glad to be going home but I’m really going to miss my coworkers. They’re such nice people. And fun to work with. I wish I can do it all over again except that I know German. I mean, they make an effort to eat lunch together everyday. You don’t find that everywhere. Not even in other departments of Deutsche Bahn. It makes people feel like they’re part of a family. And they are like a family. They know the names of each other’s family members, have each other’s cell phone numbers, and make fun of each other. I think when you can joke around with another person, poke fun at them, and laugh with them, that’s when you really get to know them. I only make fun of people that I consider friends. Because they know that I’m just joking around and not being mean.

Anyway, I came back to my dorm and took a short nap. All the FUBiS kids are leaving tomorrow. Well, except for one of the guys who is staying for the weekend. I don’t mind since that means I’ll have company. It’ll be really lonely when everyone leaves though. I just got really, really depressed thinking about leaving Germany and not working with my DB coworkers anymore. So I played some Starcraft to keep myself distracted. Didn’t help too much since I kept losing but it killed time. I feel better after writing this all down though.