4/7 & 8/2010

Nächster Halt, München!

So, as so often happens on these trips, at some point, the fast forward button was hit and BOOM! I’m on warp speed into several days later into this journal. In this case, it was both a case of work getting rather hectic as well as Munich being a blast!

But I get ahead of myself…

First came Dubai!

OK, so I didn’t actually SEE Dubai. I mean, I didn’t actually leave the airport in Dubai. But I did hang out in said airport for 4 and half hours or so… which brings me to another point… there was a slight cheating factor. After all, I collect 2 primary things on this trip: photos of the places I visit and magnets for my big sheet o’ steel I have hanging up (now in the extra bedroom for lack of anyplace better). My sheer WANT to see Dubai had me take some photos of the airport itself (it was a cool airport) and the tallest building in the world (hey! You could see it from the airport, after all! That counts, right?) and I bought my magnet and counted it amongst my ‘places visited’. Sort of a cheat, right? I mean, I flew through the Hong Kong airport and didn’t buy a magnet there… although it would have been cool to see Hong Kong as well…

Ah well… Dubai would have been awesome to actually visit. There are, after all, so many amazing things there now. I suppose, in the end, it’s probably just some hyped up Vegas, with buildings on steroids and it really wouldn’t take long to see everything and be done with it… but hey! It has a really cool name, too, right?

Oh! That reminds me! It occurred to me around this time that, on this trip, I will have successfully circled the entire world in 3 weeks… think about it… Flying west to Shanghai (and crossing the international date line to tomorrow… that was weird, have I mentioned that?), then on to Hong Kong. Further west to Dubai and then Bangalore. Yet further west on to Munich, then on to London (Reading). Finally, we’ll jump back east for just a second to Paris, then fly all the way back home to the starting point… thus completing the around the globe circle… crazy, eh?

Anyway, from there, it was off to Munich! Now, how could one not be excited about Munich, right? The first city on this tour that was bound to have something IN it. Not that I’m upset about having seen Shanghai and Bangalore, mind you, but (had I choice), I would have picked more exciting cities in those countries.

Ah well… Munich! We arrived late at night, took a taxi on to the hotel… and wow… though Munich was to prove amazing, the hotel…

Let’s just say, if you’re ever in Munich, avoid Victor’s, eh?

So I get my room… a room with as much personality as Motel 6 by the way… only discover no one has bothered cleaning it. Oh, they made the bed, so I suppose that was nice of them, but dirty beer glasses litter the bedside table and the bathroom is full of used towels and washcloths… Uh, ew!

So off I go back to the desk, only to find that Chuck, too, is there, with the same complaint. To their credit, when they did get it straightened out, they gave us each a suite with a kitchenette… but the personality factor still hovered around ‘ick’ and ‘bleh’.

Not that this mattered, however… after all, I wasn’t to spend much time in the hotel room… it was Munich!! I slept a scant 6 hours or so and was then off to work. The offices in Munich, as have been the case in every city thus far, were far more gorgeous than the ones in Charlotte… what’s up with that, anyway? They are located about 20KM outside of downtown Munich, but you can easily reach downtown via the train… sigh… mass transit… how awesome is that?

The days were packed with meetings; quite literally booked back to back. Once complete, however, it was off to downtown! The first night, we toured Marienplatz, the original town square of Munich, which hosts many of the most famous things therein: the Glockenspiel of Munich, the New City Hall, and the Mariensäule, along with a host of shopping and restaurant type things. A huge number of people pass through or simply congregate here. You can spend all kinds of time here just admiring New City Hall.

From there, however, it was off to Haufbrauhaus! This is a famous brewery known world wide, both for the beer and the history. Apparently, as I learned, Hitler held many of his councils here and made some of his most heinous edicts against Jews right there in the Haufbrauhaus… a place he had, in fact, painted with watercolors before he got into politics… crazy, eh? Anyway, aside from all of that, the food was delicious and (of course I can’t drink beer for the migraines) the wine divine. A little creepy about the history, but then again Dachau is right outside of town, right?

Regardless, it’s now this amazingly festive place that quickly becomes overflowing with people. So much so that we eventually had to share our table with 2 guys from Austria who were there for a concert. In typical European fashion, they quickly engaged us in conversation. Amazing, really, how much more social Europeans seem to be. I’ve never really had much trouble striking up conversations with complete strangers in Europe. Americans, on the other hand, are far more wary of people who strike up conversations with you. I think the opinion of an American is always, “what do you want from me?” We are a suspicious people and are raised to be. If someone approaches us, we believe they want to sell us something, steal something from us, flirt with us, or gather some form of information… simple social interaction to pass the time doesn’t really fit into our perception. Sigh… c’est la vie… Either way, Chuck and Craig were exhausted, so we weren’t to chat long before it was off and back to the hotel… thus ending Day One…