A Very Pleasant Journey
Monday was a quiet day - went to college, sorted out a Schein (didn’t get it, but it’ll be posted out to me, and I know the mark). Only one more Schein to collect, and that’s due next week sometime. We wandered around all the places we hadn’t yet been - the English Gardens, the university (both in Oettingenstr and the Hauptgebaude). Dad was most impressed with the Hauptgebaude - it’s a pretty stunning place!
We saw the memorial to the White Rose group, the church in the Olympic village, and the place where the Israeli team lived during the 1972 Olympics. We went up to the terrace and saw Munich by night - the Allianz stadium looked just weird.
Tuesday was quieter - tidied my room, bought a good sweeping brush & dad swept the carpet… We just generally pottered around until it was time to go out to the airport. The U-Bahn was late, but it ended up working out for us, because when we got to Marienplatz, we only had a four (instead of 16) minute wait for the S-Bahn. At the airport, we checked in with 39.4kg luggage (from an allowance of 40kg, between us) - I was most impressed! The check-in guy was really nice, and I was able to help out when he was telling the man in front of us “Follow the Set signs - for Zentral Bereich”, translating “Set” to “Z”
It still amuses me that the Germans don’t distinguish [s] and [z], and are quite happy to make voiced sounds voiceless at the end of words
Anyway, we got through the check-in just fine - and dad asked about the lounge, wondering whether he’d be able to bring a guest… The guy paused just for a second, but decided that yes, that’d be ok, and filled out a voucher thingie for dad. We headed off to the supermarket first, and dad reckoned the voucher was actually only good for him, but never mind.
Going through security broought a little bit of fuss - they wanted to look at the walkie-talkies in dad’s rucksack. Trying to get them out of the box (these were new ones, bought for one of dad’s friends) was a bit of a nightmare - but the tension was broken when I suggested to the guards “If only we had a knife…”
We went up to the lounge, and sure enough, the voucher was only for dad - but the check-in guy had called ahead, and sorted it all out
Wow, was it cool. Comfy leather armchairs, free bar, nibblies, newspapers, and (as I discovered at the last minute) a bank of computers down the end with free internet access… Man, I could get used to that!
The flight went fine - we landed about half an hour early, and were nearly the first off the plane (my first piece of airport German is “as far forward as possible, please” :)). The baggage carousel started moving just as we got to it, and our (2) bags were (within) the first (3) to come out. Yay!
Colm picked us up, and drove us home in his very swish new car (’04 Nissan Micra - navy blue). It was a lovely comfy car - with the only complaint being the scent of Toilet Duck from the no-smoking-sign air freshener
I’m assured this has since been removed, and I’m looking forward to playing with the buttons soon (I’m officially in charge of the radio/mp3 player :)). He came in for a bit, and fixed up dad’s Ubuntu install - dad’s new computer is well shiny.
He gave me my Valentine’s present - a pretty Swarovski vase of red roses.

He also helped me unpack the dictionary - twenty volumes of wordy goodness
Despite the size, the print is still quite small - smaller than I had imagined. The books are larger but slimmer than I had expected, and they’re Oh-so crispy new
Bookie Five!
Now I’ve unpacked (in record time, for me), had some sleep, and am looking forward to the week ahead
I’m so glad to be home!