(Saturday, Sept. 12) Our train arrived right on time at 4:40 pm, just under seven hours after we left Berlin.
Unlike Berlin’s modern and efficient main station, Munich’s is much older and chaotic.
Avoiding being run down and run into by others scurrying to catch trains is a problem.
We finally ran the gauntlet and emerged from the station at the taxi queue. We hopped into a cab driven by a somewhat scruffy looking character who (like cabbies in London, Dresden, and Berlin) didn’t seem to know our hotel, even though it is part of the large European chain, Mercure. From past trips to Europe we knew to have the hotel name and address written down on a piece of paper, so once the driver saw that, he knew where to go. But the streets in the old part of Munich where we are staying are narrows, jammed with traffic, and in places, undergoing sewer line replacement, so we went round, and round, and round until 15 Euros later we reached the hotel.
European hotels present interesting challenges for American travelers who are used to standard water, air condition, and lighting in any hotel or motel they stay in. Toilets flush with different controls. Electric outlets in the bath and the room may be hard to fine, hard to reach, and require different converter plugs. In our Munich hotel, none of the lights seemed to work until we discovered that the “key card” used to open the door to the room had to be inserted into a “card reader” device on the wall next to the door in order to activate the room lighting. (Not a bad idea, since removing the key card automatically turns off the lights and reduces the hotel’s electric bill).
Around 6:30 pm, we left the hotel to explore the surround neighborhood. Kaufingerstrasse and Neuhauser Strasse are main streets that converge in the center of the old town’s Marienplatz. On Saturday evening it was like San Francisco’s Market Street or Union Square on a Saturday, crowded with Munichers out shopping until they were dropping.
After taking in the scene for a short time, we walked in a circular route back towards our hotel, hoping that our failure to drop a trail of breadcrumbs behind us would not result in being lost for days without food, water or shelter in this big, big city. Dining karma was with us and as we walked down Sendlinger Strasse we came upon Altes Heckerhaus, one of Rick Steves’ recommended restaurants.
One or the other of the Hacker family has been involved with brewing beer or running a restaurant (the current one opened in 1985) since the 15th century. This is a meat-and-potatoes eatery with vaulted ceilings and dark wooden paneling, and waitresses (no men serving meals here) in traditional Bavarian costumes charging back and forth with plates and plates of pork, beef, sausages, dumplings, and glass after glass after glass of beer. I was swaying back and forth during dinner, a result of spending many hours in a swaying train car, or from guzzling a liter of beer, or both.
It’s not even 10:00 pm and Cindy (who got up at 5:30 am in Berlin) has thrown in the towel and gone to bed, and I’ll be calling it a day and hitting the hay soon, too. Tomorrow we go on a tour of Munich with one of Rick Steves’ recommended tour guides, Georg Reichelmayer
