Je suis arrivé a Paris

I have arrived to Paris!!!!!
No, they were not 3. They were 4. I know, I couldn’t believe it either but that is how many bags I ended up having for my relocation extravaganza to Paris. That plus a backpack. It is incredible how much stuff you (or me in this case) can accumulate in only a couple of months. But luckily I managed to “manage" and survive the loading, unloading, and carrying of all those suitcases thru Europe. My dear friend Eliana S. came to my Munich apartment at noon to help me transport the suitcases to the main train station. It was definitely a good idea to travel on Sunday. The underground train was pretty empty so it was not that difficult to get on and off. We made it to the train station about 50 minutes before the train’s scheduled departure so it gave us plenty of time to accommodate all of the bags: a small one on the overhead compartment, a medium one and another small bag on the space between 2 seats located back to back and another medium one on the area right next to the entrance door of the wagon; and the best thing is that the train was not too crowded. I couldn’t help to feel a bit guilty for taking up so much storage space by myself. My main concern in all of this operation was the connection in Stuttgart: I had only 4 minutes to get off the train with my 4 bags. That is how long the train stopped in Stuttgart for passengers to get off and new passengers to get on. So about 10 minutes before the train’s arrival into Stuttgart I position myself and brought the 2 medium bags right next to the door and put the 2 small ones on my seat (I was seating right next to the train’s entrance/exit). So the train stops in Stuttgart, on platform 9, and I get off with the 2 bigger bags. While I put them aside and got ready to get on the train again to pick the rest of my luggage everyone getting on in Stuttgart started to board the train. I tried to cut in front of the line and grab my 2 other bags, back pack and coat to get the heck out of there before the train departed again. The cutting in front of the line was relatively easy, especially compared to trying to exit the train for a second time. The problem was that I was going in the wrong direction: everyone was trying to get in while I was trying to get out. Just imagine that you are the only person trying to exit a plane with 2 bags while everybody else is going in and accommodating their bags. Through the window I could see my 2 bags sitting outside and I was just praying that the train wouldn’t close its doors and take off. So I started saying to everyone standing on my way: Ich komme raus, Ich komme raus (I’m going out) so they would let me go first and allow me to get the bags off the train...and so they did. God was definitely with me (as he always is) and having arrived on platform 9 he made number 10 the departure platform for the train to Paris. It’s incredible; I could’ve just stood in the same spot where I unloaded my belongings and I would’ve walked at the most 40 feet to be in my next wagon: EXCELLENT!!! However, I did have to walk a little bit more because I looked for a place to sit down and have a sandwich to eat, one which I had brought from Munich. The connection time in Stuttgart was about one hour so the train was not there yet. The good thing is that the starting point of the journey for this train was Stuttgart so I did not have to deal wit the hassle of the train stopping there only for a couple of minutes. The train was ready for boarding about 40 minutes before its departure; therefore, I was the first person to board my wagon and I had all the time in the world and plenty of place to put my bags. I managed to accommodate all of the bags once again in the different luggage compartments. The other good thing, yes I know…the day was full of good things, is that the train ended its journey in Paris. So once again I had all the time in the world to unload the bags in Paris. I waited for everyone to get off the train in Paris and then I began once again with my unloading operation; taking one suitcase at a time off the train and putting it aside. I then proceeded to make 2 sets of what I call a “luggage tower”: I put a small bag on top of a medium bag and tied them with one of the belts from the bags; I put on my coat, got my back pack on and took one luggage tower in each hand while all the SNCF employees who were getting ready to get on the train to clean it were looking at me as if I had just arrived from a different planet. They really did look at me as if I was crazy… or maybe that is just the French way of looking at someone with pity. Oh well, I just continued on my merry way until I made it to the taxi line. Once I was seating on the taxi I knew that the worst part of the day was over. The taxi to the hostel took about 20 minutes and even though I did not get to see much of the city, because it was dark, I did get to start feeling it: I exchanged a couple of words in French with the taxi driver, jazz was being played on the radio, and the streets were filled with people even though it was 9PM on a Sunday night. I loved the fact that the temperature was about 13 degrees which is a wonderful improvement from the last 10 days in Munich where the temperature was between 0 and 4 degrees.

So nine hours after leaving my Munich apartment, with about 4 less fingernails (they all broke during the process of loading, unloading and moving the bags), and with 2 sore arms from carrying and lifting all that weight I’m very happy and thrilled to say that Je suis arrive a Paris : I have arrived to Paris. I have arrived to the city of lights and the city of love; the city of the arts, fashion, and of the fine cuisine. I’ve only been here for a couple of hours but I’m already in love with this city. I’m ecstatic to be here and feel I will have a great time and will enjoy the time I’ll get to live in this city!! I love Paris…but then again…who doesn’t????

Goodbye Munich

Goodbye in Bavarian

Goodbye in German

I still can’t believe it: that the time has come for me to leave Munich. It feels as if I just got here the other day….and that was more than 5 months ago. Every time I said good bye to the people I met and who were here only for a couple of weeks I saw the date of my own departure from Munich too far out in the future. And here I am, with half of my stuff already packed and ready to begin the second part of this adventure: living in Paris for about 3 months. Thank God I haven’t had any problems so far and I can only pray that it continues to be that way. The experience thus far has been fantastic. Probably one of the (if not THE) best things I could’ve done in my life. I’m very grateful for all the things that I have learned, the things I have done, the many places I’ve had the chance to visit and the lots of great people I have met during my time here. I can truly say I feel I have gotten out of my stay in Germany what I wanted to get. I have that sense of accomplishment and feel that it is time for me now to move on the next stage of this adventure and begin living a whole new set of experiences. There are some things I did not get to do but the best news is that Germany and Munich are not going anywhere. I can always come back here on vacation and do them. This just gives me a reason to come back here….as if I needed one..... ja ja ja!!!
So how do I feel about leaving Munich? Just as it happens most of the time when you leave a place I have mixed feelings. In a way I´m sad to leave a place where I´ve felt so good and comfortable since the beginning, to leave a city which I really like. But I leave happy, content and with that sense of accomplishment because of everything I’ve gotten to learn and experience. I’m also excited and looking forward to relocating to a new city, picking-up a new language, start discovering new, interesting and exciting places not only in Paris but in France; start identifying my new favorite coffee shops, eateries, bakeries, and stores; meeting new people and finding out what are the reason why they are in France, and the list just goes on and on. But then I stop to think about it again (the fact that I’m leaving) and I realize how much I will miss Munich: the people who I leave behind and all those things I have gotten to love and enjoy doing in this city, my Munich "routine", and the character of the city itself. But Munich is not perfect and Germany is not the perfect world. There are definitely other things which I won’t miss. For that reason I have decided to compile a list of those things I will miss about Munich…and those I won’t...

What I’ll Miss about Munich

• Jogging at the Nymphemburg Park with its cool air, the peaceful "silence" of its forest, the sound of its water falls and its views.
• The German language: I’m in love with this language and now I won’t have that many opportunities to listen to it, speak it, and learn something new everyday.
• The beer culture: the beer itself (over here beer really has very good taste), the beer gardens.
• The bakeries with all of their variations of breads and pastries and with that smell of fresh baked bread which calls you and tells you to go inside and treat yourself to a carbohydrate overdose.
• The cereal yoghurt from Danon (I hope to find it in Paris)
• The sense of being in a safe place anywhere in the city at any time of the day or night.
  

What I Won’t Miss about Munich

• Writing text messages in German on the cell phone. Some words can be extremely long and I feel like giving up halfway thru the message. Confirming a meeting time and place with someone can easily turn into a 2 page message.
• The fear of being run over… by a bicycle.
• People on the sidewalks who continue walking and do not deviate from their path even if that means they literally bump into you; without apologizing: a very common practice here.
  

Being a Munich tour guide

Touching the nose of the lions near Odeon´s Platz for good luck

Having returned from our tour of Germany’s neighboring countries I continued my task as a tour guide of Munich and it surroundings.

Catholic memorial at the Dachau Concentration Camp

On Wednesday we went to the nearby town of Dachau: the place where the first concentration camp built by the National Socialism Party (the Nazis) was erected in 1933 and which served as model for the other concentration camps built around Europe. The Dachau camp was allegedly only a working camp and not a death camp; however, many prisoners died here due to the poor and inhumane living conditions they were exposed to. The tour of the concentration camp is a very sad one but one that I truly believe is all the worth while. I’m totally with all those people who agree that sites like this one should be kept open to the public to remind us all today and also the future generations of what happened there so that we don’t let such things happen again. The camp has preserved only a couple of the bunkers where prisoners were kept and which have now been converted into an exhibition hall of pictures and texts documenting the history of the site as well as the history of the second world war. The camp site also has a lot of monuments that have been erected in honor and remembrance of the victims who died there and the victims of the holocaust worldwide. It also has a couple of small churches or shrines from different religions which pay tribute to the holocaust victims (Jews and victims of those specific religions who were also executed during that time). There is for example a Russian-Orthodox church, the Church of the Reconciliation (Evangelical) a Jewish memorial and a Catholic memorial. The camp was freed on April 26, 1945 .

After visiting the camp it was off to the city center and then home for dinner. Later that night we went to the Hofbrauhaus to get our daily dose of beer and witness some traditional Bavarian culture at its best.

Having some fun at the Hofbrauhaus

Thursday it was off to the Olympia Park and the BMW museum. The museum was situated at a temporary location since a newer and bigger one, which opened last week, was being built. The new museum is called BMW Welt (BMW World) and it is a shame they did not get a chance to visit it. I still haven’t been there but it does look very cool and modern. It supposed to have a bigger exhibition of cars including more of the current models. However, the visit to the temporary museum was nice and it had a good combination of old car models as well as motorcycles and vehicles used in different races. After doing some more sightseeing around the city we went home. We had already made plans for Carlos to come home so he could say hello to my family and also because my mom was going to make buñuelos: another Colombian treat that she brought with her. Another friend also joined us on this smaller version of what I call the official Buñuelada of 2007. The buñuelo turned out to be really good even though they were made with a white cheese that I found here which is somewhat similar but not the same as the cheese that is used to make the original ones. We all had very good time that night just chatting, eating, and drinking some wine.

BMW building in the back and BMW Welt (museum) in the front

Inside the BMW Museum

On Friday morning we went to have a typical Bavarian breakfast: Weiβwurst (white sausage) with sweet mustard (which I love) and Pretzels. The rest of the day we spent it visiting some sights we had not seen such as the Maximilianum, the Freedom Angel, and the Isar River; and also doing some last minute shopping. On Friday the strike of the train drivers was going on and the suburban trains, like the ones that go to the airport, were driving sporadically. Not knowing if the strike was going to continue on Saturday we developed a contingency plan. Since they had to be at the airport at 730AM our goal was to be at the main train station at 6:20AM, find out whether or not the strike was going on and at what time the next S8/S1 to the airport was departing, and then catch the 40 minute suburban train. In case the strike was still going on we would then walk outside of the train station for my family to catch the next available Lufthansa bus, an express bus service from Munich to the airport, but in that case I wouldn’t accompany them. Luckily they had stopped striking and we were all able to travel to the airport with the train; which was my preferred way of going.

Olympia Park -- National Theater

Saying good-bye at the airport was to a certain extend sad but not as traumatic as I expected, especially for my mom. I came back from the airport and met up with a couple of friends with whom I spend the rest of the day: we had a coffee near Marienplatz, we went home and cooked something for lunch similar to picadillo and white rice (actually they cooked and I supervised), and spent the rest of the day just chatting and walking around the city. I was very tired and sleepy by the time I got home since I had waken up so early that morning but I managed to stay awake until almost midnight when my family called me to let me know they had arrived safely in Miami. Their flight got delayed 2 hours so that explains why they called so late. All in all I had a wonderful time during the 2 weeks they were here. It was great to spend time with the family again; too bad that the time went by soooooo fast. I really enjoyed their visit, showing them around Munich and the places I frequent, and also having had the chance to take a family vacation.

Neuschwanstein & Zurich

Neuschwanstein

We left Prague early on Sunday morning (this time around we went to the right train station from the get-go) and arrived in Munich around 3:30 in the afternoon. It was a long train ride. But being it the last day of Oktoberfest we decided to go back there that night to be able and enjoy for the last time the beer brewed especially for the occasion. And contrary to what we were expecting the place was not that crowded. We were able to easily find a place to sit ourselves and order a beer while we listened one more time to the songs that get played over and over and over and over again the whole day, every day.

The trip to Zurich was always in the back of our mind but we did not really make any plans for it. We finally made the decision to go on Sunday afternoon. On Monday morning we packed lightly and headed to the main train station to try to rent a car. The first 3 car rental companies did not have a car available, the 4th one had one available starting at 4PM and then the 5th one we went to -Enterprise- had one available immediately. After filling all of the paperwork we were driving ourselves out of Munich around 1PM: my brother as the co-pilot and me as the pilot. The strategy was for me to drive since I could understand what the signs said and for my brother to be in charge of the GPS he brought me: one of those GPS systems that you connect to the laptop. The plan was to drive by the town of Füssen in Bavaria and stop at the Neuschwanstein Castle on our way to Zurich. And so we did. After stopping to have something for lunch on the road we arrived to Neuschwanstein sometime between 4 and 5 in the afternoon. Visits to the inside of the castle were not possible anylonger because of the time. However, our intention was always to see the castle just from the outside. I really do believe that the castle is more beautiful on the outside (the building itself, the setting, its location, its surroundings) than on the inside. Since King Ludwig II died before the castle was finished he never got to live in it and therefore it never got to be decorated and furnished as he intended it to be. Ok, so it was sometime around 5 o’clock and the castle’s inside was closed. This also meant that the buses that take you to the top of the hill where the castle is located were no longer running. This in turn meant we had to walk ourselves to it. After walking for about 25 minutes (uphill) we made it to the always beautiful, stunning and breathtaking Neuschwanstein.

Trail to the Neuschwanstein Castle

We get to the top and my family realizes they needed a restroom. I wasn’t really counting on that. We see a guard; I approach him and ask him about the closest restroom. He explains to me where it is located and we head back to the location he pointed out to us but find it to be already closed once again because of the time. So we head back to the location of the guard and I asked him if there were any other restrooms nearby. He tells me that unfortunately the only other restrooms are inside the castle but that he cannot let us in because the castle was closed. He then asked me where we came from since he had overheard me talk in Spanish to my family. He also told me that even though he did not speak Spanish he could recognize this is was the language we were talking. And he just continued to talk and talk and talk: in German. He told me how he had to wait until everyone had left the castle, tourists and employees, and then go back and make a last round to make sure there was no one inside, how when he works the night shift he has to make 3 rounds inside the castle, how in the summer he comes to work in bicycle, how much he likes his job because he gets to meet people from all over the world and talk to them as long as they can talk some German etc etc. Since the whole conversation was taking place in German my family had no idea what we were talking about. I could only see my family’s eyes opening wider and wider and their faces becoming more and more concerned and worried. My brother later confessed to me that a couple of minutes into my conversation with the guard he turned to my mother and told her “Mami, I think getting to the restroom is going to be somewhat complicated”. But I wasn’t that mean to them: after a couple of minutes I started translating to them everything that the guard was telling me so they could realize he was just giving me a lot of information about himself and about the castle and not giving me directions to get to the restroom. The conversation was actually very interesting. He told us a lot about the history of the castle, its construction, about the King etc. We also had the chance to ask him a lot of questions for which he always had a very thorough and detailed answer. My mother, who loves all these stories, was thrilled asking lots of questions. That is how we found out for example that from the 2 castles located in this area (the Nueschwanstein and the Hohenschwangau) one of them belongs to the state and the other one still belongs to the family, how on August 25th (the birthday of King Ludwig II) there is a firework show which includes a display of the letter L for Ludwig II, how Ludwig II body is buried in a church here in Munich (until that day I had no idea) but his heart is buried in another town in Bavaria. After saying good bye to the guard we walked to the Marien brücke (bridge) for the most amazing view of the castle. After taking lots of pictures we walked back down and made it to the car…and to a restroom.

Marien Brucke -- View of Neuschwanstein from the bridge

We arrived in Zurich somewhere around 10 o’clock at night after driving thru Austria and crossing the almost non-existent border with Switzerland. Oh, but I must first make a stop and tell you what happened as we were driving on the last segment in Germany. From Füssen we took –as directed by the GPS- a state road that took us through a couple of small towns before taking us to the freeway. So I’m driving through one of the towns and we are all very much into our conversation when all of a sudden FLASH! A bright light dazzled us. We were all like “What was that?!?!” My brother then starts to laugh and tells me he thinks I was photographed because I was going too fast (according to him I was going over the speed limit). Of course my first reaction was to deny it and complain why the driver in front of me did not get flashed since he was going as fast as I was. We later realized that since we were driving through the middle of a town the speed limit was somewhat between 30 and 40 km/hour but I honestly don’t know how fast I was going at the time. As of today I still don’t know if I got a ticket or not. Carlos tells me that the flash means a picture was taken and someone should be getting a ticket; however, he tells me that sometimes the camera is full and even though it flashes the pictures does not get saved or that sometimes the car that is photographed is the one in front of you but you still do see the flash. So I’m really hoping this is the case. Maybe it is just wishful thinking on my part but like the saying we have in Spanish goes “la esperanza es lo último que se pierde” (hope is the last thing you loose). What bothers me is that I have never ever gotten a ticket in my life. I’ve been continuously driving for about 15 years now and I am very proud to say I have never even been pulled over by a police (well, except the one time I was driving the FPL-EV (Electronic vehicle) to go field check a job site, with an expired tag, and got pulled over; however, I did not get a ticket. That is the only one time). So as I was saying, what bothers me is that I have never gotten a ticket in Miami, where I for example have driven over the speed limit, to now come and get a ticket for speeding in the country that is famous for its roads or freeways not having a speed limit. It’s quiet a paradox; actually to a certain extend it is an embarrassment. Oh well, what am I to do now??? It is what it is. The damage is done so we’ll just have to wait and see what happens. I’ll keep you posted. By the way, the no speed limit thing works only on certain sections or segments of the expressways and it is wonderful. I love it. People here do something that is so hard to believe (when you come from a place like Miami): they use the left lane of the expressway only to pass a car and then they get out of it (I’m being somewhat sarcastic of course) and this is the time, where on the most part, they use the no speed limit option. Once they pass the car they don’t stay there holding back the other cars that want to pass other cars.

Zurich Opera House ---- City Center

Lake Zurich

So we arrived in Zurich somewhere around 10 o’clock at night with no hotel reservation. Luckily we had the GPS which had a list with the names and addresses of several hotels around the area we arrived into. After about an hour of asking from one hotel to the next for an available room we were able to finally get one thanks to the help of one of the employees at the Novotel Hotel who called a couple of places for me to try get us a room. Zurich, even though is the most populated city in Switzerland with about 351,000 inhabitants, is a rather small city. And in a recent study conducted by a consulting firm it was found that it offers the highest quality of living among 250 cities in the world from the 5 continents. We woke up early on Tuesday morning and headed out to Lake Zurich. It was then off to the city center, Bahnhofstrasse with all of its designer shops (only to window shop) and the pedestrian zone. I found Zurich (and I guess Switzerland as a whole is like that) to be extremely expensive. We were all in shock!!. The exchange rate that day was 1.09 Swiss francs per 1 US Dollar. The starting price to have a simple sit-down lunch at a restaurant at the city center was around 20 francs. We even walked into a McDonalds thinking that eating there would not be as expensive only to find out that a combo was 11.50 Swiss francs. So instead we went to the supermarket purchased a baguette, ham, salami, cheese, a potato salad, a pasta salad, chips, cookies, something drink and had ourselves a really good picnic right before heading back to Munich.

Picnic--somewhere in Zurich

It's snowing

This morning I woke up to realize that it is snowing. I know…it is too early in the year for it to be snowing, no??? It is only the third week in October. I don’t know much about this type of weather but I still believe it is too early. Oh well!!! At the beginning it was a combination of rain with some snow flakes until it eventually turned into just snow. From my window I could see that the top of some of the cars parked on the building right next to mine were covered in white. I could also see that the top of the roof that covers the mailboxes at the entrance of my buildings was also covered with white snow. I guess I better prepare myself for a long and cold winter. And we’ll just see how my tropical body and soul will take it…and will survive it.

Prague

Prague's Castle at night

It’s midnight and it’s time for the main TV stations to re-broadcast the night news. I’ve just made myself a hot tea (the temperature is supposed to drop down to 1 degree Celcius tonight) and while my computer turns on so I can begin my writing activities I start zapping thru the channels and realize they are all talking about the same: the strike of the train drivers from the Deutsche Bahn (DB): the German national railway system. The DB trains connect cities within Germany and other big cities in neighboring countries. The DB drivers are also in charge of driving the suburban trains in the main cities that connect the city center with the outskirts. In Munich for example they drive the trains that take you to the airport and back from the airport to the city. Strikes like this one are very rare in a country like Germany; they may be the bread and butter in countries like Italy and France but in Germany like I said are very uncommon. The drivers have been in conversations with the government since I got here. Among other things, they are demanding a raise of about 30% (from what I understand) which would probably require raising the prices of the train tickets; as if they were not already pretty high. To travel by train within Germany is usually very expensive, especially if you compare it to traveling by train within other European countries. The drivers stroke a couple of days back in July when the frequency of some trains diminished and many of them were not driven at all. After those couple of days it was back to negotiations. Last week they stroke again on Friday. On Monday an offer was made to the train drivers: a 10% pay increase and a 2,000 euros bonus before the end of the year. They did not like the offer and therefore they stroke again today (Thursday, October 18th). People are starting to loose their patience and I can only be thankful they did not strike on Saturday when we needed to go to the airport so my family could take the flight back to Miami, and that they did not strike while they were here and we needed to take a DB train to follow our vacation itinerary. Now it is back to conversations and there is a new threat of striking on Monday which we will not find out until Sunday night.

We arrived in Prague (population 1.19 million) around 2:30PM on Thursday, took the tram to the hotel, left our suitcase in the room and walked straight to the pedestrian zone of the Nove Mesto area (New Town) to start enjoying the sights of this beautiful city. Prague is an amazingly beautiful and enchanting city. Every street we walked thru in the center of the city was full of buildings with gorgeous facades: the colors, the details, the painting and sculptures that adorn them. I have chosen a few pictures of the many we took so you can see what I’m talking about. We stopped for something to eat (a sandwich) at a local bakery and continued on our walking tour (remember that we had been on the train all day long and we still had not made our 10km quota). Unfortunately it started to rain early that night so we had to look for refuge in a store until it was safe to return to the hotel.

A building....anywhere in Prague

Our hotel included a really good breakfast which saved us a lot of time every morning since we did not have to waste any time trying to find a place to eat which was good and within our budget. On Friday morning we had then a nice breakfast and started our daily walk towards Prague’s castle. The castle is located on top of a hill in the center of the city and I would say it was about a 15 minute walk from our hotel. We made it there sometime around 10:30 AM which was perfect timing to position ourselves in front of the main gate and be able to witness the change of the guards. The castle was full of tourists all over. The castle is actually a complex of several buildings which include a chapel, a basilica, a cathedral, a convent, several towers and courtyards and a garden.

Change of Guards - Basilica of St. George

View of the city from the castle

Afterwards we walked down again to the city, had lunch and made our way to Charles Bridge: another one of Prague’s landmark. The bridge, which is only a pedestrian bridge, is lined up by different statues from the 18th century, street musician and street vendors who will sell to tourists anything from old coins to little paintings, bracelets, cd’s, you name it. It was then back to the hotel to recharge our batteries before going out for a night stroll in the lively Staré Mêsto (Old town) neighborhood.

View of Prague's castle from the Vtlava River

Our first stop on Saturday morning was the Church of our Lady Victorious: a must see for every Paisa (or every Colombian for that fact) who visits Prague. This is the church where the famous Baby Jesus of Prague is preserved and exposed for all of his followers. You need to understand that Colombians have a lot of faith in “El niño Jesús de Praga”; including me and my whole family. Everything that I have asked him for I have gotten, and even more. Therefore, this was a very special visit. The church has a small museum displaying dresses made in different countries to dress up the Baby Jesus. One of those dresses for example was a present given by the people of Colombia. The dress, which is white in color, has ribbons with the yellow, blue and red colors of the Colombian flag together with pre-Colombian symbols. As we were leaving the church wee met up with one of its fathers who blessed the stamps we collected inside the church and the small medals we purchased on its store. After having this dose of Catholicism we walked to Staré Mêsto: the neighborhood in Prague which contains what used to be once the Jewish Quarter with its Old-New Synagogues, the Old Jewish Cemetery and the Jewish Museum. However, there was a Jewish Holiday being observed so all of the above mentioned places where closed and we couldn’t go in. We visited then the Old Town Square where I finally got the very well deserved and long awaited applause by my group of tourists (my mom and brother) after I explained to them that this is the third largest town square in the world after the Tiananmen Square in Beijing and the Red Square in Moscow. We finished the day with a visit to Wenceslas Square and the stores along the pedestrian zone of Staré Mêsto for some last minute souvenir shopping.

Charle's Bridge---Wencesla's Square

Change of plans

There has been a small change in my original plan of driving from Munich to Paris. I’ve been trying to rent a car at a reasonable price but forget it. They are way too expensive. So I have decided instead to take a train to Paris which should put me in the city of lights 6-7 hours after my departure from Munich. The stretch between Stuttgart and Paris is done in one of the newer high speed trains which reaches a speed of 320 km/hour. My only concern is moving my 3 bags by myself (I hope everything fits in these 3 bags, actually everything must fit in these 3 bags). In Munich it shouldn’t be that big of a deal since a friend is going to help me get the bags from my apartment to the train station and into the train. I will have to figure out a way though of moving the bags in Stuttgart to make my connection. Luckily the bags are not that big and they all have wheels. The only nonstop train from Munich is an overnight train which takes about 10 hours and costs double the promotional price there is currently going on to take the high speed train. Once I get to Paris I will get a taxi at the train station to drive me to the hostel where I will be staying the first week. The firs week/week and a half in Paris the plan is to stay at a hostel while I go look at a couple of places to live which I have already identified and also go to the school and take the placement test. I shall then be starting the classes on November 5th and hopefully moving to what will be my home in Paris that same week. We’ll see how it all works out!!!
This week my plan is to start my farewell tour of Munich: visit a couple of places I still haven’t been to and also go back to my favorite ones for the last time, I need to go to the immigration office to “un-register” (just to let them know I’m leaving Munich), pass by the school to say goodbye to everyone, get together with some friends for a goodbye dinner and coffee throughout the week and finally pack. Wow!!! I can’t believe it: that I’m getting ready to say “Goodbye Munich”.

Vienna

The Alvarez siblings: Don´t we look like J.Crew models???

We arrived to Vienna’s West train station somewhere around 7:30 pm but our Vienna tour did not really start until Tuesday morning when we went for a walk of the historic city center. And just like every other tourist does we walked past the beautiful buildings of the Museumsquartier and the Imperial Palace until reaching the pedestrian zone with all of its shops, cafés, restaurants and the stunning St. Stephan’s cathedral. We entered several churches, listened to a pipe organ concert given at one of the churches, walked past the city park which is filled with statues of famous composers such as Strauss and Bethoven and ended the night with a delicious mélange (the Austrian version of a cortadito) and an even more delicious Sacher torte (a chocolate cake which has its origin in this city). The weather was nice and cool so we decided to walk back to our hotel for about 45 minutes and enjoy the stroll thru the lively Mariahilfe Str. with its many shops and restaurants. According to my brother we needed this walk in order to make the 10 kilometers of the day.

View of the Garden and "Die Glorietta" from the palace --- Vie of the palace from "Die Glorietta"

More pictures from the gardens of the Schönbrunn palace

During our stay in Vienna we also visited Scloss Schönbrunn: the summer palace of the Habsburg family. The gardens and fountains around the palace are so unbelievably beautiful that I can see why the emperor enjoyed visiting this place so much. After seeing the palace it was off to the Imperial apartments near the city center (the official residence of Emperor Franz Joseph and his wife Elizabeth a.k.a Sisi). In there we got a tour of different rooms inside the residence as well as a walk thru Sisi’s museum. Afterwards it was off to the Danube River to see a more modern Vienna with its skyscrapers, the city park right next to the river and then back to the city center for the last “sitting down” at a Viennese coffee house.

Museumsquartier ---Imperial apartments

Early on Thursday morning it was off to the train station to catch the 10 o’clock train to Prague. We walked to the West train station we arrived at from Munich since it was about 10 minutes by foot from the hotel. We purchased a sandwich and a coffee for the train ride and started looking for the platform number for our train. However there was a small problem. We couldn’t find it anywhere. It so happens that the train was supposed to leave from the South train station and not the West one. Oooops!!! Big mistake on my part. Totally “mea culpa, mea culpa mea culpa” I just assumed (this is why you should never assume) that it would leave from the same station we had arrived from Munich. Thank God we had made it to the station with plenty of time and we still had about 40 minutes before our scheduled departure time. I spoke to someone at the information counter who told me our best bet was to take a taxi because it would take us at least 30 minutes to get there with the subway. We ran downstairs, caught a taxi and 8 euros and 15 minutes later we were at the South train station: Ufff…what a relief!!! We made it there about 10 minutes before the train’s scheduled departure time and since we had a reservation we were still able to sit together. Believe me I learned my lesson: always double and triple check the name of the station your train departs from as many of the cities over here have more than one train station. With this small incident I think I lost like 5 points as a tour guide; no wonder I did not get any applauses at the end of the tour like all the other tour guides did and why my tip was substantially lower than what I expected.

Oktoberfest Part II

My mom and I at Marienplatz

OK!! No need to panic. Due to popular demand and also to this need I have developed to write I am finally back. As predicted, I did not have a chance to update the blog during the last 2 weeks that my family was here visiting and vacationing. As German as I can sometimes be, I had prepared a full agenda which kept us doing some sort of activity every day of their visit and which did not really include any stops at an internet cafe. And even tough I started writing this post the first week they were here, with the hopes of having access to the internet at any one of the hotels we stayed; it is not until now that I can post it.

It didn’t take much to convince myself to continue going to the Oktoberfest a couple of more times during its first week. Not knowing when or if I will ever be back in Munich during Oktoberfest and having had a blast there the first weekend was all it took. I lucked out because once again we were able to go into one of the tents. We tried going into a couple new tents but they were closed because they had too much people inside or the lines to go in were too long and were not moving. We decided to try once again the Hofbrau tent and were able to go inside after standing in line for about 20-30 minutes (not too bad, considering I have waited longer to go into a bar in Miami during the years I still waited in line to go into bars). Once inside, even though we did not find a table, we were still able to order a beer, strike some conversations with the others who like us were just standing around, get treated to a beer by some German guy, and discover that my German and Italian speaking skills improve exponentially as I drink beer and that I become totally fluent in both languages at around the 1.5 Liter level of beer consumption (ja ja ja ja!!!): “Io sono in Monaco di Baviera (that is how you say Munich in Italian) per cinque messi per imparare il Tedesco”.

That whole week the city continued to be inundated with tourists and locals who filled up the streets, shops, suburban trains, subways, trams, buses and the restaurants and cafés near the city center. 2 of those tourists were my mom and my brother who arrived here on Saturday morning (September 29th). Thank God they had a good flight and an uneventful arrival into Munich: no delays, no missing luggage and no problems finding me at the airport…especially because I look just the way I looked when I left Miami 5 months ago: I haven’t gained any weight (one of the most frequent questions I get asked, and a valid one considering I gained about 10-12 pounds when I was here for 3 months back in 1990), I haven’t dyed my hair blue (at least not yet), I haven’t had any part of my body tattooed, and I haven’t fallen victim of the Gothic, punk or skinhead “fashion statements”. The only small problem they brought with their arrival is what I called “the plague”. My mom arrived just having had a cold and my brother caught it as soon as he set his feet in Germany. And yes, you can guess what happened next: I caught a cold as well!!!.

After picking them up at the airport we went home so they could rest and sleep a couple of hours. Actually, I only allowed them to take a 2-hour nap in trying to keep them awake the rest of the day to help them get synchronized with the European time and minimize the effect of the jet-lag. After waking them up and preparing them a delicious home cooked meal we headed to the infamous Marienplatz in the afternoon: every tourist’s first stop in Munich. We walked a little bit around the downtown and then I took them to experience their first cultural shock of the trip: Oktoberfest (including the craziness of getting into the metro to get to it). There I also introduced them to one of the most basic Bavarian foods: a sausage with bread and mustard.

Juan enjoying a "Bratwurst" at the Oktoberfest

Somewhere around 9 o’clock at night we were able to get inside the tent where the school had a table reserved. My school friends where there, drinking beer, since 5 o’clock in the afternoon so when we arrived everyone was pretty drunk and excited to see me and my family. Not to be out of sync we ordered ourselves a maβ (a 1 liter beer) and stayed there a couple of hours talking to the people in our table and toasting every time the band played and sang the “Ein prostsi en prostsie der Gemütlichkeit…” I got to introduce my family to my teachers, the school owners, and my school friends while they also got to enjoy the festivities: the beer, the food, the music, and the people wearing their traditional Bavarian clothing. We all had a great time and my family left wanting to go back to “The Wiesn” the following day.

On Sunday morning I woke up earlier than my guests to still catch the bakery around the corner open and get different types of delicious German breads for breakfast. I wanted them to have fresh baked bread but it so happens that all the supermarkets here are closed on Sundays and the bakeries open only until 11 AM. After having ourselves a little carbohydrate overdose we went out on the tour I had prepared for the day: Nymphemburg Schloss and the English Garden. That day we did not stay out until very late because we were all tired: especially them with the jet-lag and with how much I made them walked; something that we are not really used to doing in Miami. My brother used to complaint that I had set a goal of making them walk someway or another at least 10KM per day.

Nymphemburgh Schloss

Upon my request my dear mother brought me “Areparina” (a flour mixture for making arepas) and a parrilla (something that we use in Colombia to cook the arepas on the stove). So on Monday morning we enjoyed a delicious and much awaited (by me) Colombian breakfast with arepas, white cheese (one that I found here that is very similar to the one we eat) and café con leche. The right meal to give us the energy we needed to pack our suitcases, make our way to the main train station and take the four and half hour train ride to Vienna. We left to the capital city of Austria around 3 o’clock that afternoon and so began a week where we had the chance to visit 2 gorgeous cities (Vienna and Prague), experience spectacular views, learn a lot of history, and enjoy some old family fun together.