Europe Trip: Munich

This is what Munich looks like.


This is mostly what we saw of Munich.

This, and 30-odd hotels, the red light district, numerous subway stations, and hundreds of oktoberfest revelers stumbling through the train station in their dirndls and lederhosen. And a laundromat.

We dutifully checked the Oktoberfest schedule long before we made our plans, as any good traveler would know to do. We knew that if Oktoberfest was happening, rooms would be outrageously expensive and booked in advance. We saw (on many official sites, if you doubt us, you can go check for yourself (Mom)) that Oktoberfest ended the day before we got there. Well, those silly Bavarians decided that the last day of Oktoberfest might conflict with another holiday, so they added a day, only in Munich. Their extra day of celebration conflicted with the largest Real Estate Expo in all of Europe, which started, coincedentally, on the night we arrived. So, there was not a room to be had in all of Munich. And that is not an exaggeration.

This all became clear to us as we inquired at hotels left and right, only to be turned away, and as we saw the remains of Oktoberfest (people in their costumes singing, stumbling, and carrying pieces of the decorations and decorated cookies) steadily streaming through the train station. We decided to ride the subway to another part of town to try to get away from the craziness, but still every hotel was booked (it was a MONDAY night by the way...who would have guessed?) We rode back to the train station to try to buy tickets to somewhere, anywhere, so that we could sleep on a train or in the train station (which we would have done but there were no benches and it was Germany...there are probably rules against that). I started to wonder if we would be sleeping under a bridge.

We returned to the red light district (with the cheapest hotels) and a man at the front desk said his hotel was full but he knew someone who could provide a room in his apartment. It was 2 am and we had no bargaining tools left...and our marriage was on the line. We agreed. We made an old Croatian man very happy and very rich.

Now lay your eyes upon the most expensive hotel room we have ever stayed in and probably will ever stay in:


Oh, it came with breakfast, what a deal:

It was actually very similar to a Kazakh apartment, with twin beds pushed together to make a king and wrapping paper on the wall as decoration.

The next day, we put our efforts toward laundry and getting out of Munich. There were now rooms available for a third of the price in some of the hotels, but we were done with Munich. It was rainy all day, which made me a little smug...if it's going to rain, it might as well be on our worst day ever.

We figured out we wanted to get to a Bavarian village, so we chose one called Fussen that was big enough to have lots of lodging and transportation, but still in beautiful surroundings. Jeremy called lots of B&Bs and cheap hotels while I stood in line to try to figure out train tickets. As I was in the line for English speakers (Euraide), I read an article about how the man at the Euraide office has come to the rescue of unsuspecting tourists who arrive in Munich during Oktoberfest and end up sleeping in a field or taking the next train out (and the article claimed he saved many marriages as well...I felt a little sheepish for relating so much to the article). Suddenly, the man from the article appeared, speaking American English and asking people where they needed to go and swiftly securing them the best deals. He was an angel. The whole line of frustrated tourists seemed to offer a collective sigh of relief. Thank you, man in the Euraide office.

You would think our troubles would be over, right? Wrong.

I got us our tickets while Jeremy got us a reservation where we thought we wanted to stay, the lovely Bavarian town of Fussen. We triple checked our train information, were proud of ourselves for realizing on our own that we would need to change trains at one of the stops, we asked for help, paid attention, blah blah blah. We didn't even eat dinner because we were holding out for pretzels and German refreshment sitting on a patio overlooking the mountains when we finally arrived and could put our suitcases down and relax. Near the end of our train ride (we were to arrive in Fussen at 6), Jeremy looked troubled and said, "We're on the wrong train." What???? We asked a fellow passenger and she said, "Oh yes, at the last stop, the train split in two and one part went to Fussen but this part went the other way." Um, how were we supposed to know that...and if we had just happened to sit in another coach we would have been in Fussen?

We tried not to panic and managed to figure out how to get back to Fussen without having to pay for another ticket. We would now arrive a little past 8 pm. We went to a grocery store and bought a carton of ice cream and scrounged up 2 forks and consoled ourselves while we waited for our train back the way we had just come.

Upon arriving in Fussen, which was cute and quaint and wonderful, we were informed that our hotel was NOT in Fussen, but out in the cow pastures 5 km away. And the busses had stopped running at 8. And the two taxis were already taken. And it would be an expensive ride. Jeremy tried hitchhiking, but we didn't even know what direction we were going. We finally got a taxi and drove past cute Bavarian beer gardens and restaurants and into the dark to the middle of nowhere. He dropped us at the hotel we had listed on our paper. We rang the bell, and a rather drunk front desk assistant finally appeared and refused to honor our booking. I felt my feet cement to the floor as I decided fiercely that there was no way we weren't staying at that hotel for the price that we had been quoted. The lady just gave up and gave us a key and told us to come back to do paperwork the next morning. We did, the room was great, the lake view was really a construction site view from what we could see in the dark, we walked down to the one restaurant that was open and had schnitzel and actually enjoyed ourselves for the first time in 24 hours.

Would we go back to Munich? Probably, but only for free because we left enough of our money there on this trip. But I don't ever think I want to see the Hauptbahnhof (Main train station) ever again. And do you want to know a secret? I would want to go back during Oktoberfest because I want to wear a dirndl and see Jeremy in lederhosen. Don't laugh.




Next Stop: Bavaria, and "The Hills are Alive with the Sound of Music (aah ah ah-ah)"