Europe 2019 - Day 3

9 May 2019, Thursday 

What a long and tiring day!

Had to wake up at 2.30 a.m., shower and pack my stuff. By 3 a.m. I was eating sahur instead of breakfast because we had to leave for the airport pretty early. By 4.30 a.m. we were in the taxi headed to the main bus station, and from there we took the bus to the airport. Flight was at 9 a.m. About 6 hours later we arrived in Munich, Germany.

Munich is a big bustling city and I felt lost in the crowd of people. It’s pretty homogenous racially despite what the travel sites try and sell you. We took a long time figuring out the train, bus and tram routes because (a) nothing is in English and (b) the people here are not very friendly and helpful. 

But finally we managed to find our hostel. It’s a dorm with 6 beds, and because we arrived a bit late I had to sleep on the upstairs bed. It sucks. I feel like I have not enough space and not enough privacy. Travelling on a budget is fine but at my age, I honestly think that after this trip, I will not sleep in a dorm again. There are certain things that just cannot be compromised - like some private time and a warm bed to yourself after a long and tiring day out.

We then headed out to try and find the route to the bus station as we were leaving for Zurich the next day. That took us quite a while but in between we managed to see some parts of the city of Munich. We tried 2 brands of local beer which cannot be obtained in Malaysia - Munchner Hell and Franziskaner Weissbier. Both were good but I preferred the former as the latter was a bit bitter.

Overall I didn’t have a good feeling about Munich. The people are not warm and welcoming, and none (and I mean NONE) of the signs are in English. And here we are trying so hard to impress foreign tourists with our English. I feel like writing to the Malaysian government and telling them that henceforth all our signboards should be in Malay only. I’d then like to see how the (German) tourists get their panties in a knot trying to figure out what’s what.