Last year at this time, I was literally on the opposite side of the earth: New Zealand is about 172 degrees east longitude, and this year the blog begins from Munich, at 12 degrees east longitude. Boy, how much difference a year can make….
Those of you who know me may remember that I was planning to take a trip “overseas” this summer with Aileen, my youngest daughter. She graduated from University of Illinois – Chicago this year with her Doctor of Physical Therapy degree and is planning to relocate around the beginning of August to San Diego. She’s always wanted to go “overseas”, and this may be the last time our schedules permit it.
We talked (for quite some time) about going to either Scotland or Germany & Austria, and finally decided on Germany / Austria - because ever since I was a kid, a Hoyne family vacation involved going to see mountains (thanks, Ed). And there are a lot more mountains in southern Germany and Austria than in Scotland, Ben Nevis included (Google “Ben Nevis” if you need to).
I booked our flights using frequent flier miles on United, which meant that we had to connect through London enroute to Munich. And after my memorable-but-unpleasant experience with missed connections flying to New Zealand last year, I made sure to leave enough time to have some “wiggle room” in London if our inbound flight leg from O’Hare was delayed for any reason.
The departure was supposed to be at 3:50 p.m. on Monday, July 9th. So we closed the doors and pushed back from the gate at… 3:43 p.m., 7 minutes ahead of schedule. The flight took a more southerly route than what I was expecting (we flew over Newfoundland instead of Labrador and the southern tip of Greenland), and we arrived at Heathrow at 5:40 a.m., instead of our scheduled 5:55 a.m. arrival time. By 6:15, we had walked about ¾ mile through the International Terminal, and were in the main lobby waiting for our 9:35 a.m. departure to Munich.
OK; I admit that leaving a 3 hour and 40 minute cushion sounded like a good idea at the time, but when you’re actually sitting in a foreign airport for nearly four hours with nothing to do, it’s a little boring. So we bought a snack (guess which one of us bought a cup of yogurt, while the other one bought THE national candy bar of England (Kit-Kat)), and waited… and waited… and waited. Finally it was time to go, so we started walking to the gate for the Munich leg of our flight – but took the following picture just to prove that we really were in London:
(Excuse the lousy framing of the photo; it’s my first-ever arm’s length self portrait.)
Our connecting flight on Lufthansa was about 15 minutes late pushing back from the gate (so much for Teutonic punctuality), but we arrived in Munich 3 minutes ahead of our 12:25 schedule anyway (Herr Flight Engineer: I don’t care how much fuel ve have to burn to arrive on time; ve VILL arrive on time. Flight Engineer: Jawohl, Herr Kapitan!). We cleared Customs, grabbed our luggage, a 3 days – all regions U-Bahn / S-Bahn pass, and the S8 train to Munich Haupbahnhopf. We checked into the Hotel Schweis just after 2:00 p.m. local time, which was 7:00 a.m. back home, and… took a nap.
Slightly refreshed, we headed into Alt Munich for dinner and wound up at the Hofbrauhouse.
(Note that the picture that I’ve included does NOT show either Aileen or me sampling the tasty adult beverages served here; this is intentional….) We dined on a basket of bread (two pretzels, one roll, and a piece of dark bread – all of which were tasty) and a plate of three types of sausages (bratwurst, two hot dog equivalents, and one slightly whiter but more spicy than the hot dog equivalents. The sausages were served over a plate of sauerkraut, which I don’t normally like – but this was a lot less sour than what comes in a Frank’s can at the Blue Goose.
Distance traveled: 4,539 miles (air), 40 miles (car – to O’Hare), 17 miles (rail), 3 miles (foot), or 4,599 miles for the day.
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