The few words that i have come to learn in my couple of days stay in germany are mentioned above in the title for this blog. They mean, Good day and thankyou.
The german friend of mine at my university told me that Munich is a very modern and rich city with strong western influence and that i will have no trouble getting around knowing zilch german.
How wrong was he. Today I made my first visit to main place in Munich called Martinplatz. Thank god, they had travellers info on the web at www.munich.de and thankfully they had an english version too.
So that helped. I got a vague idea of where the happening place in munich was and how to get there from the country town I was located in at MPI.
Few striking things to mention, Mercedes Benz E class is the taxi in the city. One sees only mercs and BMWs, well every one know that the heed quarters of Beamer is in munich and for sure on roads one glimpse at all the running cars and the fact is confirmed.
The main center Town Hall resembles somewhat like Gate way of India, upscaled like 100 times.
There are all these, wonderful prehistoric structures intermingled with modern. Walk a few blocks down the town hall and one gets to see the very familiar Mcdonalds and nearby a Burger King.
Actually it brings a sensse of relief to see something familiar, knowing I will know exactly what I order and what i get. Neways being in a bavarian capital, the motivation to eat authentic bavarian food was much much stronger and I strawl along the malls and all the posh shops that reminded me so much of down town La Jolla, the richness of place is enough to deter a person from entering any shop and window shopping is the only option remainning. That with the current slump in dollar value against Euro makes things look much more on the expensive side.
Neways Munich is also a ciy known for its Museums and today i vistied my first museum in Munich. Compared to others that i have heard, this one, 'The Toy Museum ' was much smaller. But come on a Toy museum ..whats that??? I did manage to shell out 3€ for the ticket and entered the museum. In some sense it was a disappointment. Majority of toys belonged to the category of soft toys and in that almost all were bear. Small bear old bear child bear, bear from early 19th century bear from a guy donated to the museum who had it for 80 years and was worried, his death woud also mark the end of his favourite toy of yester years....
Walking around the city I managed to find a lot of bavarian restaurants, but how different is it from America, wherein as you enter you yre ushered to seating place. Here a person entery and finds himself a place to sit. The menu is kept on the bench. Unfortunatley it is in german. It happened to me like four times. I entered a restaurant, waited a while for a waiter, no one turns up, i go to one of them and he starts speaking in german. I try to tell him ''I dont know no german' but he just keeps on going. Disaapointed I leave.
Finally Mcdonalds it was, I had the known McChiken Burger, a HeigenDaas Ice cream from near by Heigen Daas store and decide am done for the day.
Well thats that for my first trip alone to downtown Munich...If i am say so.
-s
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2 comments:
Cool man, so the Euro trip is underway. It is almost impossible to imagine that countries make do without English. They just hold their own. Their software is in their language, the movies are dubbed to suit them, their linguistic pride is in tact. Of course, they should be a little more accomodative of tourists :-)
Interesting day in Munich eh? Dont forget to visit the beer-hall where Hitler launched his abortive coup which rocketed him to national fame and eventually......well u know the history. And get to learn a few german phrases at least. Your trip to McDs was gut-wrenching, at least for me. It wud be a pity if u visited Germany and left without tasting authentic sauerkraut, bockwurst, bratwurst etc. And it wud be a positive disaster if u dont sample a few good german beers and ales. A suggestion from me wud be to hang a camera around ur neck and get one of those hats which cry out "tourist" to anyone who looks. Then u might have a easier time at the restaurants. Plow on my friend. And get the most out of this trip, apart from a research paper I mean. :-)
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