A parting shot

That is it. My 65-day jaunt around Europe has now come to an end. I had a great time, but I was also starting to miss California and was glad to be home.

London-San Francisco

Late in the morning, I took the tube to the airport and caught my flight home. It was a clear day and I got to see some spectacular glaciers on the east coast of Greenland. I was sitting next to a Kiwi who was headed from London back to Auckland. Now that is a long trip.

The London Eye

Before my flight home, I went and did one last touristy thing. I went and rode the London Eye ferris wheel beside the Thames. The views were very cool. It was nice because there were only a few people in my car so you could walk around to all of the sides. It would be awful if it were packed.


After the eye, I looked for a pub where I could enjoy one last pint and a pie for lunch, but it was still too early and all of the pubs were closed.

Ripped off

On Wednesday morning I went to change my remaining Euros into Pounds. I went to a currency exchange in Paddington station. I have never gotten so ripped off in my life. I think with the poor exchange rate they give and the commissions and fees they kept about 20 of the 80 euros I was changing. I should have just gone to a British ATM, paid the $3 fee and brought the extra euros home.

Munich, Germany - Basel, Switzerland – Milhouse, France – Luton Airport, England - London, England

My flight for tomorrow was out of London and I had to get back there. The easy way to do this would have been to fly from Munich to London. Unfortunately since it was Oktoberfest, the flights out of Munich were super expensive. I had one day left on my Eurail pass and I used it to take the train to Basel which is on the border of France Switzerland and Germany and fly back to the UK. I had to switch trains in Manheim and only had an 18 minute layover. My train from Munich was 30 minutes late arriving. I went to the platform and the train I needed wasn’t listed. I went and checked the monitors in another part of the station and it said my train was an hour late. I went back to the platform and a train had just arrived. My train was supposed to be an ICE and this one was just a regular train. The sign said it was going to Basel, so I hopped on not knowing if I would make it all of the way to Switzerland. Luckily everything worked out fine.
The train ride up the rhine valley was very nice with castles and vineyards on the hillsides. I arrived in the swiss Basel train station with plenty of time before my flight. There is a border between France and Switzerland within the train station and there is another station in the German part of Basel. Despite being such an international city, they only accepted swiss francs, so I had to convert some Euros to buy dinner. I took a bus to the airport (in Milhouse, France) and got on my Easy Jet flight to London Luton Airport without a problem.
It was a clear night and I could see Paris in the distance from the air. Paris is enormous. I picked out the Eiffel tower and it looked like a tiny spec compared to the enormity of the city. I think we arrived in London around 10pm with the time change. British Nationals were given first priority in the customs line so everyone else had to wait. It was at least 30 minutes of waiting in line before we got through. London Luton is not really in London. It is about an hour’s drive to the North. I had to take a bus which cost 10£ to get into London proper. There was construction on the motorway too so it took even longer. Later I discovered that if I had taken a series of trains from Munich, I actually could have gotten to London a little faster than flying after the customs delay and the bus ride.
I think I got to the hostel I was staying at around 1am. I stayed at the Astor Victoria Hostel, which was the same one I stayed at near the beginning of my trip. It was like coming full circle.

In the morning before catching my train out of town, I went back to the beer tent from the night before and bought a beer stein. I figure that since I am flying home tomorrow I can finally collect a heavy souvenir. At 11 in the morning, the tent looks very different than it did the previous night.

German Efficiency

I spent the night at Matthias’ house. In his bathroom there are water meters that show exactly how much water you are using. When you flush the toilet or turn on the sink, the gauge starts spinning. I wonder if the intent is to make you feel guilty about excessive water use. This goes along pretty well with the German stereotype of being very efficient.

There was this machine that looked like an airport x-ray machine that takes in the dirty beer steins and spits them out clean.

Oktoberfest lived up to my expectations. It was basically a huge party inside the tent with everyone drinking, dancing and having fun. There is a band inside the tent playing all types of music and everyone gets up and dances on the benches and tables. It was a lot of fun.

It was pretty crowded inside the tent we chose and we didn’t get a seat right away, but we were able to get served. It helped to be there with a local. The beer was very good although at the end of the night your hand hurts from holding such heavy beers all night.

Oktoberfest

After wandering around town all day and seeing most of the main sights in Munich, I met up with my German friend Matthias and we headed to Oktoberfest. Oktoberfest is basically a big carnival with beer tents, food vendors and rides. Obviously most people come for the beer.




A beer tent. I think there are about a dozen different ones each operated by a different brewer.


Inside of one of the beer tents

Theatinerkirche

This is the Residenz palace and the adjoining Hofgarten.

Hofbrauhaus

I ate lunch at the Hofbrauhaus and had my first giant beer of the day. It was tasty.

Art?

This piece of art? was a couple of robotic arms that moved around and did stuff. One arm every few minutes would pick up a cup of water and dump it on the sidewalk where people were walking by. I waited to see if anyone would get wet, but most people noticed something was up before they walked onto the wet spot.

All around Munich were these painted lions, kind of like the cows in Monaco, but not a complete ripoff of the cows in Chicago. This was one of the better ones.

There were lots of buildings in town that had obviously been rebuilt and had their facades painted to look like they had elaborate relief work, when in reality it was just a flat wall. Here are some examples

Town Hall

Munich was heavily bombed along with the rest of Germany during WWII. Much of it has been rebuilt in the old style and looked very authentic. Other things were not so faithfully reproduced. This is the town hall on Marienplatz. At noon there are little figurines that come out of the clock and dance around.

Munich

Arriving in Munich after being in Italy and the South of France for a few weeks was a big culture shock. Everything, the people, the language, the weather, the architecture, was very different than it had been only a few hours earlier in Italy. I made my way to the Marienplatz which is the central square in town. It was way too early to see any sights, plus it was really cold, so I sat in a coffee shop for an hour or so and caught up on my journal. The pastries I had at the coffee shop in Munich were excellent and rivaled what I had eaten in France. After I felt a little more awake I found a newsstand and bought a little tourist book about Munich so I would know what to go see.

Pavia-München (aka Munich, aka Monaco)

I took the night train to Munich. Unfortunately I had to catch the train not at it’s origin in Florence, but when it stopped at Verona after midnight. I took two trains from Pavia through Milano to get to Verona and then I had to hang out for a while before the night train arrived. This night train was much less comfortable than the one I took from Vienna to Venice. It had about 8in less leg room which made it hard to sleep. It also arrived in Munich at 6:30 in the morning which only gave me about 6 hours of semi-sleep and was far too early to do anything touristy once I got there. I wish I could have slept for a few more hours on the train in the station.

It rained most of the day on Sunday in Pavia. We toyed with the idea of going into Milan, but Matt isn’t all that fond of it and I think after being bombarded by so many cultural treasures in the last two weeks in Italy I would have been a little disappointed. The only thing that is apparently worth seeing is Da Vinci’s Last Supper. Unfortunately you need to make reservations well in advance to see it. We ended up going into the main part of Pavia for the day only to discover that everything is closed on Sunday. My time in Pavia ended up being a bit of a let down due to the weather and the transportation problems. Matt was a good host, there just wasn’t much to do. It was good to have some rest before my next adventure, Oktoberfest.