Whirlwind Munich

Not loving this overnight train business. After a night of shuffling bags around in a space not much larger than the bags themselves, at least I can solve the Tower Of Babel in about 20s now. Didn't get much sleep, only to wake up and get dressed thinking it was 7:30am when, in fact, it was only 6:25am. Hmmm...

At least we had a small breakfast served on the train. We arrived in Munich at 9am and found the lockers to dump our baggage after booking the Vienna-Venice overnight train.

Not quite sure what I've done, but my left heel started to get quite sore last night and this morning it's quite painful to walk on. I think I might have strained some ligaments when I stepped awkwardly on the curb in Paris yesterday? After a quick chat at the tourist information office and grabbing a map of the city centre we consider whether or not to take a 1hr bus tour or just walk ourselves. Given the map of the tour, we decide under normal circumstances we could easily walk it in a few hours and, despite my foot, decide to do just that.

Munich is a great little city, but coming straight from Paris the landmarks are rather, erm, tame in comparison. Still, there's a few impressive places to visit, including the Church Of Our Lady which we ascended to get a fantastic view of the city and its surroundings.

We walked (I hobbled) from about 10:30am until 6:30pm, with an hour for lunch - get to that in a minute. We basically followed the bus tour, and managed to see all but one attraction, all at our own pace. Munich is "just the right size" for me - large enough to have everything you need, but not too many people or too much traffic and no-one seems to be particularly rushed to get where they're going. The architecture is rather plain overall but with some hint of the Bavarian Alps to it. People seem friendly and everyone we needed to talk to could speak English.

Lunch was at the world famous HofBrauhaus Beer Garden - wow! Real Barvarian live music played by men in lederhosen as the waitresses carried 10!! 1L steins of beer for customers to wash down the gigantic pretzels. After a pretzel we both opted for the traditional sausage platter server with sauerkraut and mash. The sausages weren't half bad at all, but I'm not much of a fan of the sauerkraut. After helping Karina finish her 1/2L beer, I was starting to feel the effects of 3 schooners in about 40mins. Needless to say we both left feeling rather satisfied.

It was a whirlwind tour of Munich (our only stop in Germany) which, sadly, was cut short by a lack of accommodation and hampered by my sore foot, which isn't going to be much better tomorrow. But what choice do I have?

I'm typing this blog on our 1.5hr trip to Salzburg in Austria. We have a 6-seat cabin to ourselves - about twice the size of our cabin last night. We just watched another 2 episodes of King Of Queens on the laptop and right now we're about 30min away from our destination. We caught glimpses of the snow-capped alps before the sun set and we can't wait for tomorrow!

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