Wilkommen in München!

Well. I’ve been here three days now, and am gradually getting settled in. First day was ok – got safely to Munich, and then to Thalkirchen. Nearly killed ourselves dragging the suitcases to the hostel, but got there eventually. I was *so* glad it wasn’t snowy, although the village didn’t look quite so enchanting without the snow… We had pizza in the Holzofen place, yummy! A guy followed us back to the hostel, and scared the life out of us by saying “Hallo”, while walking about 6cm behind us. We started talking in Irish, and just hurried back to our room – the same one as we’d had before

Tuesday morning was up bright & early, to go to Olympiadorf. It took a while to find where I had to go, and the suitcases certainly didn’t help. We made it in the end tho, got my papers and keys, found the apartment, and started to unpack. I was just spaced out, with everything I had to learn & remember! Mum got me sorted, and we went for a walk locally, bought some food etc. Then I headed off to classes at about lunchtime. With my second set of keys (yay!), mum went off shopping.

The orientation course was grand – various people welcomed us, then we queued and queued to sort out the students’ union contribution, health insurance, and the course registration. After a quick break, it was in for a Kloze-test, filling in the blanks. Then it was back home, where I was greeted with cheese on toast! (And honey on toast for dessert.) My new microwave rocks – it can grill stuff too! Later, we had some veggies & sausages.

This morning it was out again, to my classes. The class I’m in all seem lovely, and it was about as much as my over-full brain could handle. Got the Vorlesungsverzeichnis (list of lectures etc available) before class, then met mum briefly during the break. During the first class we introduced each other – after the break, we chatted a bit about Munich & Bavaria, and tried to figure out the MVV (local transport system) ticket thingy.

Went for a lovely lunch with mum, in a little Italian place around the corner from my classes, and then went wandering, to find where I had to register. More wandering brought us to the tourist office in the city centre, and I gathered bits of paper (map, and various info about the different mobile-phone operators). At that stage, it was pretty much time for me to go to register. One very tearful parting later, I did so Sad panda

Registration was pretty easy – I got a temporary, paper, student card, and signed up for the Erasmus students’ club. Then I headed off with two of the other Erasmus folk (Gordon, who I met while waiting to get my apartment, and Andreas, who I met on the course), to get our transport passes. We went to Poccistraße, got the passes without any bother, and got on the U-Bahn back to Marienplatz to get tickets (you need a free pass to get a student-priced ticket). Minor panic ensued – someone had bashed up against me on the way out of the tram, and the pass wasn’t in my (open, outside) jacket pocket, where I thought I had put it

Gordon sagely told me not to panic, and we sat down to look through my stuff for it. Just when I’d given up, and was going to go back to Poccistraße to try and get another, I found it, in my jeans pocket! Yay Total cost for one month of travel in the “Innenraum” (covers most of Munich) – 39EUR.

Back at my apartment, I found a lovely little card from home. I miss you guys, lots and lots. iChatted with Colm – complete with really nice, decent-res video – for a while, then headed over to the computer room, to get an account with the local netsoc. Just getting used to a German keyboard – oh what fun… Time to head back and see if I can make sense of the Vorlesungsverzeichnis now! Wish me luck