Im my effort to maximise my expensive wifi, I didn't want to leave the hotel until the last possible moment. By that time, the bus had already filled up and Nicole and I couldn't even get seats together. I sat with Kaylee who wasn't feeling well and spent most of the morning sleeping, much like everyone else at the back of the bus. Nicole spent the morning chit chatting away to an Australian girl called Jordi, who is even shorter and chattier than Nicole is, if you can believe it!
This is the first time on this trip that I've really felt homesick. The things I miss most, though, are surprising. I really miss 3G for one. Trying to scrape by with either expensive or free but unreliable wifi has been more frustrating than anything else. I really miss my bed with its big comfy pillows. All the pillows we have had on this trip have been flat and useless, like sugar packets.
I miss the sun so much, too. We have been very unlucky with weather. If the sun does peep out, it tends to happen while we are on the bus. A good day at this point is one that is merely overcast but not rainy. I can see why people living in these climates get depressed and moody. I also miss fresh fruit and vegetables, of which we have hardly been eating any (and if we have, the quality hasn't been great). Everything else, I could still live without (for a while at least, anyway) but those are the things that I'm very noticeably wishing that I still had.
The scenery changed dramatically as we were driving through Italy towards Germany. There were charming little villages and vineyards along the mountains that got more and more snowy as we travelled on. It was super pretty, but I was feeling quite sorry for those poor little vines that were struggling against those icy conditions.
It was four hours before we finally stopped at a service station for lunch, which is probably the longest driving stretch that we have had so far. Quite a few people couldn't make it and ended up using the coach toilet, which we have been warned is very small so needs to be used as a last resort. I haven't needed to use it yet, so I have no idea what it looks like. We have also been warned that the only thing we are allowed to do in there is pee. Anything else will apparently stink the whole bus out. I'm relieved that no one has tried.
At the service station, our only food options were McDonalds and an Austrian restaurant (we had just crossed the border). Arguing that we didn't come all this way to eat McDonalds, we went to the restaurant first, but the food was so expensive that we resorted to fast food after all. It was so expensive, though, setting Nicole and I back R75 for a meal each! And that's for something we could eat at home for half the price. I wasn't super impressed. At the very least, it was filling and the view of the snowy mountains was incredible! We consoled ourselves by reasoning that we were paying for the view.
We only had two more hours to go on the bus after that, but even the shorter bus rides are starting to feel longer and longer as our tour goes on. Everyone's mood had improved considerably after we'd stopped to eat, and laughter, fun, and games had returned to the bus again. My cough has still been bugging me, and I had two really bad coughing fits, which I felt really bad about since I was sitting next to Kaylee and not Nicole. I don't mind giving Nicole back the germs that she gave me in the first place, but I do feel pretty awful spreading them to someone I'm not related to.
We finally arrived at our hotel in rainy Munich, and what a hotel it is! This is the kind of place I'm more used to staying at in South Africa. The beds are big and comfy with puffy pillows - and we get two pillows each! The rooms are clean, and the toilet has a whole basin between it and the bath/shower. The decor isn't from the 70s.
It's so unfortunate that we will only spending one night here. Nicole literally flopped onto the bed when we arrived, saying that she had died and gone to heaven. "Vicky, can we skip seeing Munich? I don't want to ever get up from this bed!" I was tempted to agree with her, since the cosy rooms really lifted my homesick spirit. I actually hugged the bed, myself.
Of course, we did get up eventually, and we boarded the bus again to head into town. There, we were met by an American guy who gave us a very amusing walking your of the city. Although it was only early evening, it was already quite dark, so we couldn't get many photographs.
Some of the highlights of the tour include the discussion about the palace in the city that was practically destroyed in the war, so they began rebuilding it but ran out of money. They ended up cutting corners by painting columns and windows onto buildings rather than actually building them, which was quite funny. You can even see where they probably ran out of money because on one wall, the first few painted windows actually had frames.
We also saw a church that was built by a prince who had trouble producing an heir and so "prayed to God for some swimmers," but kept ending up with daughters. After his sixth girl, he went down on his knees publicly and promised to build a church if God gave him a boy. According to our guide, "nine months later, God had this piece of real estate in Munich."
He ended of by telling us that his favourite place to hang out is a pool hall nearby on account of the irony that he is a "black dude with a big-assed 'fro" playing pool at a joint that was a favourite of Hitler's back in the day. We ended our tour at the Hofbrauhaus, Munich's enormous and famous beer hall, but our guide warned us that it's really a touristy spot now and suggested that we go hang out with the locals instead.
Jen recommended a place to us just around the corner where we could buy pig's knuckles (seems to be the same thing as eisbein, as far as I can tell) from a display and pay for it according to weight. It's supposed to be the best german fare in town, so we headed there with the Trio and three other members of our group.
I wasn't about to leave Germany without having sampled some of the famous Bavarian beer, which is apparently free of any additives or preservatives and is supposed to prevent you from getting hung over because of that. Of course, neither Nicole nor I were interested in having our beer "neat" so we ordered it as a lemonade shandy, which wasn't too bad.
For dinner, we weren't about to put away a whole eisbein each, or even share one as the others did. Instead, we just ordered slices of it, served with mash and sauerkraut. It was super expensive, with our meal coming to R260 each, but it was an outstanding meal. I was expecting Nicole to complain about the expense once we'd paid, but her comment merely was, "now THAT was a meal worth paying a lot for!" She's been somewhat disappointed by the quality of some of the expensive excursion meals that we've paid for.
After dinner, we headed off down the shopping street (where we were very good and didn't go into any open stores or spend any money) to the Christmas markets and ice rink. If you know Nicole at all, you already know that we didn't go skating. We bought steaming mugs of gluhwein (we kept the empty mugs as souvenirs) and watched the skaters from above. They have these cute little polar bears on skis that you can hold onto like a walker to keep you upright if you can't skate. We took some photos of the Aussie's we'd dined with doing their best not to fall!
On our way back through the shopping street, we counted four H&M stores, three Zara's and two Swarovski shops. I know it's the big shopping street of the city, but you have to wonder how many of each store they need within a few hundred meters of each other!
Back at the Hofbrauhaus, we spotted one of the New Zealand guys from our tour smoking a cigarette by himself in the street, so we went to say hi. He invited us to go up with him to the private room in the bar across from us where other members of our group, including Kaylee, were hanging out. It was super rowdy when we got there because they were putting steins of beer away as they played a drinking game. We had a lot of fun despite not having time to take part because we had to leave soon in order to catch the bus back home.
Our beds with their comfy pillows were calling to us. Our rooms even had a pillow menu where you could order the kind of pillow that you wanted! And we had that luxurious bath to soak in. No amount of fun drinking games was going to distract us from that fact at this point of our tour! #GettingOld
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