Munich Day 1

Tuesday, Sept. 8th 2009

We made it to Munich! And after just one day here, we’ve already had our share of adventures.
The kids did really well on the plane rides (13 hrs. total) They both slept soundly most of the flight from Chicago to Munich, which I am SO glad about! Sean and I didn’t sleep well at all though...

(Peter and Jackson asleep on the floor)

After we spent half an hour trying to figure out how to buy a train pass to the city center, we had a nice relaxing train ride to our Hotel Max. The city is SO wonderful. I absolutely love it here. I love that the buildings are so old and are all squished together on narrow crooked streets with mercedes benz’s zipping around. I love that every corner we walk around we are greeted by some king-riding-horse statue. And I love that there will be beautiful sculptures that are hundreds of years old atop the store front of the most modern fashion designers shop.
We checked into our hotel room (which is a little smaller than our dining room back home), rested up for a couple hours, and then took out into the city. The weather has been blissful today - sunny and cool. There were street musicians, fruit stands in the pedestrian zone, and incredible amounts of cafes and modern clothing shops.
We have a little double umbrella stroller for the boys and nearly every old lady we passed had to stop and babble German baby talk to them! We can’t quite understand what they are saying, but it’s really cute!
So, after wandering around with grumbling tummies for quite some time, we finally found a little shop that had a salad bar. So we filled up a big bowl with pasta salads and fried things (potatoes?), grabbed a big bottle of Apfelschorle, and headed back to a nearby park. We sat on the sunny lawn, eating our meager dinner and listening to the Marien-Platz bells playing on the next block over. It’s amazing how comfy the park seemed in such a big city - people walking their dogs, children playing, people making out...everyone just made themselves at home and it was just nice to be in such a peaceful place.
After we ate “dinner” we walked around and tried to find some food for breakfast in the morning. We bought grapes, nectarines, and croissants, but ate them all before we got back to the hotel! Food here is so expensive! We hate spending so much money on food, but we have to eat, right? It seems like whenever I come to Europe, I am hungry a lot because I don’t want to spend so much on food....ah..I’m still hungry. But we found a grocery store that is about 4 blocks away - we’ll be walking over there tomorrow morning and finding something for breakfast. Hopefully once we have a kitchen at our apartment in Vienna, we will be able to save more money by cooking at home.
I have been really surprised at how quiet this city is! Our apartment in Provo has so much noise around. But here, the cars aren’t as noisy, the trains all go underground, and people walking down the sidewalks aren’t loud and boisterous.
As I sit here in this tiny room, both of the boys sleeping on make-shift beds, I can smell the fragrance of sweet breads and coffee from the nearby cafes.
Oh! I almost forgot to tell the bewitched key story. The key to our room looks like the same key Cinderella’s evil step-mother uses to lock her up in her room!


And guess what... we got locked in our room. Only we did it to our selves because we don’t have an evil-step mother. The key works half the time, and then doesn’t work the rest of the time. We had locked the door from the inside to keep any intruders out. But then I had to go use the bathroom and the kids were crying and we were hungry (of course...) and the key was bewitched. So we started yelling down to the people 4 stories below on the sidewalk to please tell the hotel front-desk guy that we are locked in! Then he came upstairs to help us and I said through the key-hole “Wir sind geschlossen! Unser Schossel ist kaput!” Front-desk-guy stuck his copy of the key in the lock, giggled it around for a bit, and realized he had the wrong one. We tried again while he was off getting the right key copy and our key had become un-bewitched! yay! So I happily skipped off to the little girls room and while washing my hands I realized what I had said to Front-desk-guy: “We are closed! Our castle is broken!” how embarrassing... I’m glad he knew what I mean though!
Well, that’s all for Day 1. Abenteuerlich, nicht?