FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - Germany: Driving the Romantic Road and Rhine Valley
Old May 17, 2009, 11:34 pm
  #3  
Flying Buccaneer
 
Join Date: Oct 2003
Location: TPA
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Posts: 2,207
Sunday in Munich

Sunday, May 17

Lufthansa 4603
BRU-MUC
Scheduled Departure/Arrival 11:10 a.m./12:30 p.m.
Actual Departure/Arrival 11:05 a.m./12:12 p.m.
CRJ-100
Seats 3A and 2D


It only took a few minutes to walk from the Brussels Airlines lounge, and boarding started a soon after we arrived. We took our seats – only 5 pairs of seats had been blocked for the business cabin, and we were half of the pax in C. After boarding and before push back, the FAs explained, very apologetically, that no meals had been boarded for me or Mr. FB. We told them we understood. I guess if we had been hungry, it would have made a difference. Looking back, isn’t 2+ hours enough time to load a couple more meals?

I was quite happy with the cheese sandwich that the Y pax were served, and I really enjoyed looking out the window once we escaped the cloud cover of Belgium. We crossed the Rhine at Karlsruhe and flew over Stuttgart. The lack of cloud cover over Germany made for great views.

We landed at 12:07 p.m., less than an hour after we took off from BRU, and taxied to our stopping point for the next five minutes. A bus took us the rest of the way to the terminal. Because the plane was so small, the wait for our bags was brief, and we walked through customs. After figuring out the machines, we bought tickets into the city. The S-8 was waiting for us, and a half-hour later, we were at our hotel – the Hilton Munich City.

That’s not entirely true. We were at the Rosenheimer Platz Station, which, according to the directions on Hilton’s website:

Get off the train at the Rosenheimer Platz station
and follow the signs for the hotel, which is situated directly
above the station.


meant that the hotel was just above us. All we had to do was follow the signs. However, there were no signs for the hotel. And “directly above the station” meant going outside, looking for Rosenheimerstrasse, and finding the hotel about a block away.

The check-in was fast, and we had been upgraded to an executive floor room. We took our bags upstairs, showered, looked longingly at the bed, and took the short train ride into central Munich for an afternoon of exploration. We arrived at Marienplatz and oriented ourselves. That wasn’t too difficult, because the Old City Hall was the first thing we saw when we ascended the escalator. Then we saw the New City Hall.

The first order of business was to find a place to eat lunch. It was a beautiful day, so we wanted to eat outside. We also wanted our first meal to be German. We went to a place called Nurnburger Bratwurst Glockl am Dom. We didn’t know the name of the place until we sat down, but the tables looked inviting under the trees and in the shadow of Frauenkirch.

I ordered 6 of the Nurnburgers (small pork sausages) with horseradish, and Mr. FB had the beer soup. We also ordered a side of spaetzle. Of course, we each had a beer, and we enjoyed pretzels from the bread basket while we waited for our food to arrive. The spicy-sweet mustard on the table was delicious with the pretzels, and the Nurnburgers. I dipped pieces of the sausage into the mustard and then into the shredded horseradish. It was a great combination of flavors.

We ate our food, drank our beers, paid our bill, and realized we were exhausted. We didn’t want to return to the room, but we had about four hours to explore Munich before we were supposed to rendezvous with someone from Tampa whom we accidentally discovered was headed to Munich for business on Saturday. Small world! Our plan was to meet at the Hofbrauhaus at 7:00 p.m. We decided to go to the Residenz Museum, but when we got there, we realized we didn’t really want to spend an hour or two in a museum. I was afraid that if I saw a bed in there, I might be tempted to climb into it. Not a good way to start a trip. Instead, we walked around for a bit longer.

Around 5:30 p.m., Mr. FB suggested that he call our fellow Tampanian to see if we could get together before 7. Incredibly, we ran into him, his son, and his mother about 5 minutes later! Really small world! They were tired too, so it was easy to convince them to go to the Hofbrauhaus then instead of later.

The inside of the Hofbrauhaus was deserted, but there was only one free table in the courtyard. We grabbed it and Mr. FB and I ordered more beer. These were one liter mugs! I was not hungry, but my spouse wanted to try the weiswurst or “white sausages.” Because he does not eat pork, these veal sausages are probably the only type of sausage he can have in Germany. When the waitress came a little later with what looked like a soup tureen, we thought she had made a mistake. It was no mistake; there were two white links in hot water. She showed him how to eat them; who knew there was work involved? He gave them the “thumbs up.”

Around 7:00 p.m., our original planned meeting time, the music started playing. But all of us were exhausted from our travels. (Mr. FB and I had also had 1.5 liters of beer in the past five hours!) We paid our bill and wished our friends a great stay in Munich. We headed back to the hotel, and as soon as our bodies hit the bed, we were asleep.
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