Squareface @ 31°North

(It isn’t all that unique, I was just trying to make it rhyme. I’m lame that way.)

The flight there was 12 hours, the flight back 10+hours with a transfer at Frankfurt, and so after being amongst the clouds and above sitting in the aircraft for 20+ hours, I saw the city of Munich for all of… ONE HOUR.

(A note on the Lufthansa flight to Munich. I guess I’ve gotten too used to Chinese planes and have been deprived the pleasure of having in-flight entertainment. Sigh. Anyhow, I woke up during sleeping time (you know, when the lights are off) and couldn’t find the bathroom. After feeling around the walls that wouldn’t open, a crew member told me the bathroom was downstairs. Downstairs?! There’s a downstairs on a plane?! There were around five very spacious lavatories in the basement (?) of the plane, equipped with emergency oxygen masks hidden in the overhead compartments, and had a counter for drinks. Wow.)

At Munich airport, there was some issue with the client’s company which allowed me to be well acquainted with the customs office for 4 hours. It was 6 in the morning and a custom officer was nice enough to let me go off and grab some morning coffee (I didn’t, I spent the time touring the airport instead), seeing how I had to shout into the emptiness of the waiting area with no one responding. -_-

While waiting I chatted with a girl from Switzerland who also became familiarized with the customs office since she had to wait for someone she didn’t know to settle the papers (welcome to the club!). Apparently she had a luggage full of expensive watches that were to be brought to some millionaires’ fair in Munich. I was carrying…boxes of something far less glamorous.

When I could finally get out of the airport, I ran to catch the 10.40am S-Bahn (train) heading for Marienplatz (city centre) in five minutes. Despite a year’s worth of learning German, I WAS NOT ABLE TO BUY MYSELF A TICKET. I struggled to understand what I could do with the machine, and in the end chose to ask the lady beside to help me :S

Autumn goldness welcomed me to my first trip to Germany, and I was listening hard to conversations I couldn’t understand (I really must work on my German). So German actually doesn’t sound as rough nor throaty, nothing like coughing up phlegm. When it’s fluently spoken by a native you listen to it like it’s a pleasant song. And I don’t know if it’s only because of the weather, but everyone dresses well. People dress according to their age and personality, decently and appropriately. It’s a refreshing change from seeing unnecessary glitter on chests or graffiti on the butts of jeans daily.

A tour of an unfamiliar place should always begin in a local supermarket. They have shelves filled with so many different types of chocolates, biscuits, liquor, and even cigarettes in cans!

This orange juice dispenser peels the orange for you!

And I would be on a sugar high everyday:

One minor complaint I have is that nobody I approached could help me take a complete background image for me though. Haha. And so I had to resort to taking some pictures of me on my own. Imagine how silly I looked in Marienplatz, holding my camera in front of me trying to get some of the architecture in the photos (took quite a few attempts) in the town square where old couples were walking by hand in hand; parents held their kids who were staring at this odd asian; single people walking their dogs; physically/visually challenged people manoevuring with their aids. I tried to look as casual as possible when actually I couldn’t help feeling very self-conscious. :S

Well, I had all of one hour to explore Marienplatz in Munich, and I sure wish I didn’t have to pay for flight changes so I could have seen Frankfurt for a bit!

(Do click the image below to see some pics of Munich. Please allow some time for the slideshow to load.)