At the airport, and the flight to Frankfurt

The taxi came at the arranged hour - 01:30. I dozed on and off until the airport, so the ride passed quickly. At the airport, the check-in was speedy, and I received boarding passes for both the flight from Tel Aviv and the next flight from Frankfurt.

At the border control, I went to the biometric counter to sign in, as I had plenty of time until the flight and the line was small. The biometric quick border control is especially useful when you land back in Israel and are eager to get home ASAP.

The airport wasn’t too crowded tonight. There was, however, a rather large group of officers from various units, in uniform with special tags attached which said “Israel” and had an Israeli flag on them. These were people going to Poland for the “Edim be Madim” (witnesses in uniform) program.

I bought some alcohol and Toblerones in the duty-free and went to the Dan lounge (hail Corporate MasterCard). Had a nice cup of coppuchino and surfed the net until the flight (they have free wireless in there).

The flight went through just fine. I managed to scratch a couple of hours of intermittent sleep. They were showing a movie - “August Rush”. I saw only scraps of it because I was partly sleeping, but I had enough to see it’s a good movie, and we should probably watch it when I come back home.

Frankfurt airport and the flight to Munich

The Frankfurt airport is huge and I only had one hour for the connection, so I was a bit in a rush. I’ve lost my bottles of Neviot to the German hand-baggage checks (just like in the flights in the US, the Germans don’t allow liquids on board), but other than that there were no special events.

Contrary to the first flight when I had a seat in the middle of the plane, in the second flight I sat next to the window (and the plane was half empty, anyway) and had a nice view of Germany from above. I was amazed at the amount of cultivated land - there was good visibility of the ground all the way between Frankfurt and Munich, and I don’t think I saw a patch of unfarmed land, except for small pockets of trees between farms. Most of the trees here are bare of leaves, which gives the countryside a bleak look. It’s not surprising as the winter hasn’t officially ended yet (there was a snow storm here just a week ago). I’m sure in a month or two it will all be very beautiful.

The Munich airport is much nicer - it’s new and modern (kinda like the new Natbag). It took me longer than expected to get out of it, because (1) my baggage took its time and made me wait for 25 minutes until it made the honor of appearing on the carousel, and (2) I wasn’t sure where to buy tickets for the subway. This turned out to be a bigger problem, because there is no subway in the Munich airport. There’s an on-surface electrical train, though. It’s called S-Bahn, and the subway is U-Bahn, by the way.

When I finally found where to buy the tickets, I immediately caught the train. It was easy, because my hotel is right next to the Munich central train stations, and any train from the airport goes there. The ride took about 45-minutes, since the airport is 25 km out of the city center, and there are many stations along the way.

Munich

Munich is a very pleasant city. Wide, clean streets with pretty houses in many colors. The houses are not high and are built in this peculiar European style that makes the whole city look like one big castle.

The transportation here is excellent. Many travel guides go as far as to suggest that the Munich public transportation system is the best in Europe. I haven’t been much to other European cities, but I can testify that in Munich it’s all well thought out. In addition to the S-Bahn and U-Bahn (which conveniently spans most of the city), there are also trams, buses, and longer-range trains that conveniently link Munich with neighbor cities. The best thing is that you can buy a combined ticket that includes rides in all these means of transportation - whatever fits you at any given moment.

Besides, Munich also has a very developed bicycle culture. There are plenty of bicycle paths, and the city is full with special metal fences to hook your bike to. All in all, you see a lot of people moving around in this clean, efficient and quiet (not to mention healthy) means of transportation. This all should result in few traffic problems, I think. I didn’t have a chance to judge yet, because today is Sunday and all the businesses are closed, so the traffic in the city doesn’t really reflect peak hours.

After I got to the hotel, I put the big bag in the room and went out for a stroll in the city. I had no goal in particular, just to look around and perhaps see some of the recommended sites.

It’s a 20-minute walk from the hotel to the city center. In Munich, the center is at Marieplatz, a large, ancient square - a part of a long pedestrian-only promenade, with several magnificent old churches.

I kept walking until I reached the river (Isar), and seeing signs to the Deutche Museum I turned in that direction.

Deutche Museum is one of the major attractions of Munich. It contains a huge science and technology museum. It took me 3 hours to see only a small part of it, when I felt my legs are failing me (after 3 hours of sleep at night, two flights and 4+ hours of walking through the city and the museum) and I decided to come back to the hotel (another 40-minute walk).

On my way back, as I passed Marieplatz again I saw a demonstration of solidarity with Kosovo - the new Balkan country that declared its independence a couple of weeks ago, and since then is seeking international acknowledgement. At the demonstration, many people were waving the Kosovo flag and holding signs. It appears that there’s a large Kosovan population in Germany, living as political refugees or something like that. I noticed that many of the youngsters who took part in the demonstration had exactly the same hair style, which otherwise I didn’t see much of on the streets. Must be their way to express national unity.

I stopped for dinner at a beer-hall (Bierhalle) - the German version of the Irish pub, where whole families or just people after work are sitting and sipping beer. It’s a pretty place, looking very oldish, and you see a lot of people just sitting, a beer in their hands - looking around. I’ve ordered a (pork) sausage, which came with mashed potatoes and steamed vegetables, and also a pretzel with half a liter of beer. Bavaria (the county Munich is in) calls itself the beer capital of the world (with which, I’m sure, many cities would disagree - Dublin, Prague and so on) - beer is probably the most popular beverage in it. The beer I’ve ordered is called “Augusten” - it was pretty good. By the way, the beer named “Bavaria” we have back home must be an Israeli invention (like “Turkish salad”) - the Germans haven’t heard of it.

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