Day 8- Munich

This bit of the trip is rather an anticlimax. Without the familiar and always entertaining characters of Rob and Troy, Munich loses some measure of amusement.

I woke up my temporary roommate as we arrived in Munich and we both staggered out the door, thoroughly sleep deprived by an evening spent on slabs of vinyl.

Munich’s train station is much like other major rail hubs in that there is a main part of the station in which the trains arrive and sit facing the entrance to the building. The ceiling is an arch about the size of a domed stadium. One end is closed off, with several shops and restaurants and such. The other side, well, the trains have to come in someplace and when it gets cold outside, the inside ain’t much different. We both exited and something odd happened, that being this other guy invited me to spend the day with him and his friends in Munich. At first I refused the offer, if for no other reason than maybe this guy was just trying to be friendly. However, he insisted, and I figured, "There are thousands of people across this continent doing just about the same thing every day, what the hell, why not?"

The other guy, whom we shall refer to as "Joe" for ease of use, had to call his friend to come pick him up at the train station. Apparently his friend had not gotten much sleep the night before and answered the phone babbling in German. I know this because I was listening to Joe talk into the phone, "Tomas, English! Tomas, wake up! This is Joe! Tomas, I don’t speak German! English, Tomas!"

Tomas arrived at the train station after I finally got some coffee in my body compliments of a Burger King. Tomas gave everybody (including himself) a ride back to his apartment whereupon Tomas and Joe began reminiscing about some party they both attended last summer and they showed me some pictures. I had to agree that there definitely appeared to be some sort of party going on in the pictures.

We headed off for breakfast, berliners as luck would have it. JFK certainly chose a tasty breakfast food with which to confuse himself (see -Berlin- in case you are confused). From what I saw, berliners are exactly like frosted jelly donuts, with a hole cut out of the top into the jelly portion. We also met up with some guy named Berndt who was rather striking for no other reason than he looked almost exactly like my Uncle Bob on my Dad’s side of the family. Well, he was younger and thinner, but aside from that he was an absolute spitting image.

From there, we want to go visit a couple other more of Joe’s friends. They apparently also had a long night previously as they were just waking up. Joe informed me that one of the guys was at the previously mentioned party and every girl there was trying to sleep with him.

Odd as it may be to say, I have to say that after meeting this guy, I’m glad I’m not his friend. He had the same sort of ebullient charm Rob possesses, though he seemed to be in significantly better shape (sorry Rob). Combine that with the fact he travels frequently (he was talking about spending another month in Caracas) and he has a non-Mexican foreign accent, I could never, ever, bring a girl to meet this guy. He certainly was likeable and extremely friendly (he gave me beer) and he seems like the sort of guy that would be a lot of fun to hang out with. However, supposing I have a girlfriend sometime during the period from now to the rest of my life, there is no way I could ever bring her to meet him without my getting dumped so that she could try to pick this guy up. It was a stunning and very disappointing revelation.

Let’s see, what else happened? We briefly visited the inside of a church (nice, but certainly not the most beautiful church I’ve ever seen). We passed by the BMW corporate headquarters and the Olympic Stadium. Then we visited the place where Tomas worked, which was the German equivalent of ESPN, a company by the name of DSF Deutsches SportFernsehen GmbH or something like that. That is the name I have on his card and I don’t know where to cut things off on either side.

We saw the studio for the German SportsCenter and the studio for the German RPM 2Night (only Formula One coverage, though) as well as the requisite soccer show. We hit another studio and saw the studio for the German Wheel of Fortune, which by the way, looks pretty cheesy in person.

See? Pretty dull stuff. After I finally figured out how to use a German keyboard (you try putting a bunch of letters with umlauts on a keyboard and see how well you type) I checked how the Buckeyes were doing in the NCAA basketball tournament on ESPN.com (they were playing in the Elite 8, I figured they were dead). Otherwise, nothing too remarkable about it until Tomas showed us a videotape of one of their shows, starring his girlfriend.

His girlfriend is pretty attractive. For as much as he comes across as dour, brooding type, he seemed to be dating one seriously free-spirited girl. I’d guess she was somewhere in her young-twenties, had long blonde hair, was appropriately perky and she was in great shape. The show itself was nominally about tennis (I have the feeling they do a different sport every show). The lip service they paid to tennis was pretty well shot when they showed this girl in a weight room wearing a sports bra and zoomed in on her breasts while she was working on the chest press machine. It was pretty clear who the two stars of the show really were. The production quality was approximately that of Fox Kids segments, though obviously the similarities smack into a brick wall from there.

I had no idea what she was talking about the entire time, as the show was, obviously, in German and the only things I can effectively in German are, "Bless you", "Thank you," and, "Three beers, please." Thus, the difference between me and the rest of the viewing public was that I had no way of knowing what she was saying and everybody else didn’t care.

I wish I could make this more exciting, but there simply wasn’t much excitement to be had. After hearing some Canadian tell us how he’d been stuck with several friends in the mountains for a week with no food, somehow the fact a New York mortgage reseller is playing the piano again after a bout with carpal tunnel pales by comparison. When you get right down to it, though, meeting up with those guys was actually pretty lucky, what with the fact I got a free tour of the city. These were likeable, very friendly people and if I’d had opportunity, it would have been fun to hang out with them longer. However, I had a flight to catch the next day in a different country, so I would have no opportunity.

I took a nap at Tomas’ apartment, grabbed a shower and got a ride to the train station. It was official, I was heading home.