I honestly didn’t think I’d be blogging about this trip.\u00a0 I figured it’d be like a trip to Orlando, where there were nothing more than the usual complaints about fellow humans being human.\u00a0 Despite my interest in writing, I generally don’t think of myself as someone who’s good at documenting travel.<\/p>\n
Then, the trip happened.\u00a0 Even though I don’t feel the need to get the angst off my chest by subjecting my dear reader(s), it was enough to motivate me to set fingers to keyboard.<\/p>\n
Up front, I’d like to say that I’ve managed to mostly not be an asshole.\u00a0 So far, at least.\u00a0 My wife was even prompted to mention how ‘mild’ mannered I’ve been.\u00a0 This not to say, of course, I haven’t made my thoughts known, but I’ve managed to do so in such a way that minimizes the raised voice and cursing.\u00a0 \u00a0But the trip is young…<\/p>\n
We left the house at 10 AM for a flight that was set to leave at 5 PM at an airport that was 40 minutes away.\u00a0 I did express my… displeasure at the early liftoff, but was assured we’d spend _most_ of that time at the gathering place in Vienna.\u00a0 Which turned out to largely be the case.\u00a0 I believe it was about 2:30 when we left for the airport (after a quick cram of some Chinese food, because, of course, the decision on what type of lunch to get was left for so long there was little time to eat it) on a small charter bus barely large enough to carry the 14 of us (with two more meeting us at the airport).<\/p>\n
Dulles hasn’t seem to change in all these years.\u00a0 They managed to double (or more) the size of the terminal while keeping the same look and feel.\u00a0 It’s a rather iconic look, though it’s hard to say if it’s really a good one.\u00a0 I was going to put some pictures and links in the post as I wrote it, but the wifi at the hotel we’re staying at sucks, to be most generous, and I lack the patience to do so.\u00a0 Perhaps in later posts conditions will be better.\u00a0 Anyway, we all managed to link up without any problems (with a couple of glaring exceptions, this has been the case so far).\u00a0 Naturally the airlines have found a way to make travel even more sucky and PITA and we have to manually check in at a kiosk, then drag our bags to actually, you know, check in.\u00a0 But I was only an observer, and we were indoors.<\/p>\n
My family and one of our nieces has TSA Precheck, so we strolled through the idiotic security theater.\u00a0 One wrinkle, though: my wife choose to bring a small hammer for the wheelchair that occasionally locks up.\u00a0 The hammer was slightly longer than the allowed, so that bag got pulled aside for manual examination.\u00a0 When the screener pulled it out, my wife was surprised, evidently she ‘lost’ it during packing.\u00a0 She was going to discard it when she remembered it screwed in half (thus making it smaller) and asked if that would be OK.\u00a0 The guy was unsure, so called someone more experienced.\u00a0 Who studied the situation for a few moments before waving is through.\u00a0 More on the hammer later…<\/p>\n
Honestly, I can’t remember the hours sitting around at Dulles.\u00a0 Which, I guess is good.\u00a0 But I remember the next part: sitting around on the plane at Dulles.\u00a0 And sitting.\u00a0 And more sitting.\u00a0 An hour and a half sitting.\u00a0 Funny, the _exact_ length of time we had to catch out connecting flight in Geneva.\u00a0 Screwed before we even left the ground.<\/p>\n
Other than knowing the connecting flight was FUBARed, the 7.5 hour trip itself was rather uneventful.\u00a0 I was tired enough that I didn’t read, didn’t even open the computer or my sketch book.\u00a0 I have exactly three things I’m trying to accomplish on this trip (well, four, if you count not being an asshole as something to accomplish): 1) write the first draft of the feature-length script for the short I’m filming in August (Domestique<\/a>), 2) get a basic budget for the same (based on a book I have) and 3) sketch out the design for my latest million-dollar idea.\u00a0 An idea that’s languished for months, with no explanation for why my brain is so lackadaisical about it.\u00a0 A couple of hundred bucks for the proof-of-concept and a grand or so for a working prototype (assuming the POC works, of course), historically I’d have done it in a week.\u00a0 But for no reason I can elucidate, my brain would rather invest it’s energy in silly movie ideas with statistically zero chance of making money.\u00a0 So, anyway, zip done on the three projects.\u00a0 I listened to music and kinda dozed.\u00a0 I watched a bit of the flick my wife was watching: Captain Marvel.\u00a0 It looks interesting enough I’ll get the disk.\u00a0 Someone else was watching Bumblebee, and I doubt what I saw was enough to lure me into getting that disk.<\/p>\n As predicted, we got to Geneva (Geneve, as they call it locally, assuming my memory can be trusted (it took several minutes to validate the spelling of Munich for the title, so I’m too lazy to do the same here)) and had missed our flight.\u00a0 They told us they were going to put us on a flight to Vienna Austria, then back to Munich.\u00a0 No problem.<\/p>\n Of course not.\u00a0 We had another hour and a half to make this new flight that, as far as I could tell, was mathematically the furthest point from where we entered the terminal.\u00a0 And had to go through immigration.\u00a0 And then get screened again.\u00a0 With 16 people, two in wheelchairs.\u00a0 What where they thinking?<\/p>\n So Eliz, Don and I elected to blaze the trail, as it were, and now we get to discuss the reality that, at least Geneva’s airport security, is at least as much theater as is the US.\u00a0 Maybe they’re used to people knowing what not to pack in their carry on, but there was exactly one person doing the manual screening and there was probably at least a 20 minute backup before we could get that damn, disassembled, hammer through.\u00a0 Once the XRay person (a rather attractive Asian-looking woman) set eyes on it, she waved it through, but we had to wait for the half dozen people in front of us first.\u00a0 Then we walk.\u00a0 And walk.\u00a0 Then\u00a0 walk more.\u00a0 And _finally_ get to the gate where we’re to leave.<\/p>\n And where the plane was set to begin boarding in some 10-15 minutes and leave the ground shortly thereafter.\u00a0 My wife asked if they’d wait for the troop to arrive and a woman there said absolutely not.\u00a0 Her male companion, though, said they would.\u00a0 My theory is because the next two flights were booked, and they might have to put us all up in a hotel for the night, the guy was going to get us all on the plane no matter what it was going to take.<\/p>\n So, some 10-15 minutes AFTER the plane was supposed to leave, and, let it be said, after I started to whine about how we should be planning to get hotels, etc. instead of fruitlessly waiting in the airport all the damn day (I was getting a bit salty, I’ll admit) and AFTER my wife decided to hunt for the lost souls, they arrive.\u00a0 They get their boarding passes and start to load on the plane.\u00a0 Wrinkle?\u00a0 No wheelchair-bound companions.\u00a0 Or wife.\u00a0 I and my son weren’t going anywhere without my wife, she had all our travel documents and IDs even – if we were tempted.\u00a0 The gate agents start to call out our names on a regular basis, still no wife.\u00a0 Some 45 minutes after the plane was supposed to leave and we find out that somehow our wheelchair travelers had been escorted directly to the leaving plane and had been waiting for us all this time.\u00a0 Sure woulda been nice to know this was going to happen earlier, eh?<\/p>\n Finally my wife decides to check to see what’s going on and we bundle her onto the plane where we expected them to immediately take off.\u00a0 But no, instead we sit around and they lazily give the pre-flight briefing (which is the same everywhere, just in French and English).\u00a0 Eventually we push off and trundle our way across the entire airport and take off.<\/p>\n A note here: the decision to have an hour and a half layover in Geneva (as opposed, for example, a direct flight) was made by the travel agent, not my wife.\u00a0 What where they thinking, to get 16 people (two in wheelchairs) through immigration, across the airport, and into another plane in 90 minutes?\u00a0 That seems absurd.\u00a0 For anyone else thinking of doing something like this, go with direct flights.<\/p>\n Thankfully, the connecting flight in Vienna (you know, it’s true: as my wife commented, all airports look the same) didn’t require the mad dash and we got there with plenty of time.\u00a0 I was amused by the beer kiosk in the middle of the concourse (and, of course, bier gardens) and, as expected, our wheelchair travelers arrived separately, though I guess we saw it this time.\u00a0 But this flight was an hour and a half late leaving.\u00a0 Not our fault this time, evidently something had FUBARed the schedule early in the morning and it just carried along all day.\u00a0 Since Munich was our final destination the delay didn’t matter (much) to us, but it screwed a lot of other people.\u00a0 Some were repurposed at Vienna, others were told to ride to Munich and gamble on the repurposing there.\u00a0 Glad I wasn’t part of that angst.<\/p>\n We _finally_ made it to Munich.\u00a0 Then we had this long delay while we waited for buses to take us from plane to the terminal (evidently, this airline doesn’t rate a direct connection), which would make a sane person think the luggage would already be there waiting for us.\u00a0 Well, we don’t live in a sane world, so we had another 20 minutes or so to wait for our luggage.\u00a0 Interestingly, they were the first off the plane, so at least that small benefit to being jerked around all day.\u00a0 Then we traveled through Customs.\u00a0 Note I didn’t say we spent any time.\u00a0 No, we had nothing to declare, so just walked out of customs.\u00a0 Weird.\u00a0 But, it seems, Germans expect people to behave properly.\u00a0 Certainly not the American Way.<\/p>\n Outside we me two who would be joining our party for the first couple of days: Mara and Tom.\u00a0 Mara is our cousin by way of my mother-in-law’s brother, one of the reasons we were in Munich in the first place.\u00a0 Tom is her husband.\u00a0 And they have a young daughter and an even younger son.\u00a0 I don’t miss that age.\u00a0 I managed to keep my composure when they had their meltdowns, even getting a mild congratulation from my wife for not engaging in a meltdown of my own, but it did require effort.\u00a0 Our bus to take us to the hotel, of course, was an hour away or something like that.\u00a0 So we sat around waiting, then finally managed to arrive at our destination, a Holiday Inn Express, right along the landing path to the airport.\u00a0 Really.\u00a0 As I type this I see plane after plane descend in my window as I look out.<\/p>\n The others went out that night, didn’t get back until after midnight, but my son and I needed naps, so slept instead.\u00a0 Surprisingly, to me, anyway, most of the celebrants were up fairly early the next day (this’d be Saturday; we left the US on Thursday).\u00a0 The hotel has a small breakfast, something our son turned his nose up on in favor of even more sleep (he claims he didn’t sleep that night because of my snoring, which I can understand, except, once he’s asleep nothing will wake him up, so all he had to do the night before was stop playing with his phone before I was asleep and all would have been good).<\/p>\n Eliz and I went for a walk, a mile one-way, according to her Fitbit.\u00a0 Then we all decided to head to a mall in Munich, to meet with Tito Eddy, Mama’s brother.\u00a0 Mara is our guide for all this, knowing the bus and train schedules and how to herd us all in the right direction.\u00a0 It was a long bus ride, packed to the gills with 20 of us (16 plus Mara, Tom and their two kids), a double-wide stroller and two wheelchairs.\u00a0 We managed to get to the train on-time and had an uneventful trip.\u00a0 The farms here are tiny.\u00a0 Like a couple of acres tiny.\u00a0 It makes the patchwork of 50 to several hundred acre farms on the East Coast look palatial.\u00a0 Tom seemed at least a little impressed when I told him about the farms in the midwest that are supposedly so large that the harvesting equipment will start at the morning at one end and have only reached the end that evening, where they turn around and return the next day.<\/p>\n Other than the elevators being one-person (really!), the bus\/rail system seems very nice. Not sure why they treat handicap people so badly, having to make three trips up and down each elevator was rather tedious.\u00a0 The mall was, rather remarkably, just like every other mall I’ve ever seen.\u00a0 The only real comment I have is on the surprising lack of eye candy.\u00a0 I wasn’t too surprised to find people in the airports to be… full-bodied and Rubenesque, they were fellow travelers and could be from any country.\u00a0 But at the mall I expected the European reputation of walking everywhere to have the average fitness level being much higher than in the US.\u00a0 I’m sad to report that they all looked like Americans.\u00a0 As I like to say, there was very little competition for my my wife.<\/p>\n One thing that was interesting to me was the varied cultures.\u00a0 Some more obvious than others, as there were quite a few Burka-wearing women.\u00a0 But others less eye drawing, as there were Asians a plenty and a goodly number of (other) Middle Eastern, African and Indian people.\u00a0 At least what I saw, everyone was getting along well and even the Burka wearers seemed to draw no extraordinary attention.\u00a0 I don’t think that’d be the case in the US.\u00a0 No.\u00a0 Not at all.<\/p>\n After we got back from the mall, we rested a bit, then decided to a ‘Burgerfest’ literally right around the corner from the hotel.\u00a0 Eliz and I had walked back and forth past it that morning so once we mentioned it, along with the ease of access, it was an easy decision (so rare; so very rare).\u00a0 Eliz and I were relatively late, as we (I) pushed Mama’s wheelchair and she was, as usual, lagging behind.\u00a0 We were joined by Papa, as well as Mara, Tom and their kids.\u00a0 It turns out it’s slightly up hill to the ‘fest, so I was a bit winded and sweating by the time I got Mama there.\u00a0 The rest had already been knocking back the liter-sized beers already, so were very happy.\u00a0 I tasted a couple of the beers (at least I think they were different, they were all in the same sort of glass), but they all were the typical nasty bitter taste I remember from my youth, so that was the end of that.\u00a0 We had some of the food and observed the singing and the patrons.\u00a0 It was interesting and I have took a couple of pictures I hope to upload at some point.<\/p>\n We left relatively early.\u00a0 Don was happy with his 3\/4 of a beer and boosted one of the big mugs.\u00a0 He went right to sleep, so no complaints about my snoring this morning (Sunday).\u00a0 The rest of the group wanted to go to Munich again, to see the monuments, etc. , since the mall was closed on Sundays (everything seems to be closed on Sundays; evidently the ‘blue laws’ never got repealed in Europe).\u00a0 Since I got nothing done on any of my projects, and, frankly, don’t care that much about monuments, etc., I waved them goodbye and stayed to write this, to start to read my directing book and to actually start writing my screenplay (about 5.5 pages).\u00a0 And jogged almost 3 miles (out of four total; assuming Eliz’ fitbit is accurate in the distance reported yesterday).<\/p>\n OK, half our group is back and we’re heading out for dinner, so I’ll wrap this up.\u00a0 I’m sure I’ll write at least one more, for bookends, but it’ll likely depend on the wifi connection, as I feel more like talking about the pictures I’ve taken than about the trip.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I honestly didn’t think I’d be blogging about this trip.\u00a0 I figured it’d be like a trip to Orlando, where there were nothing more than the usual complaints about fellow humans being human.\u00a0 Despite my interest in writing, I generally don’t think of myself as someone who’s good at documenting travel. Then, the trip happened.\u00a0 … Continue reading “Three Days in M\u00fcnchen”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gertrip19"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sol-biotech.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sol-biotech.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sol-biotech.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sol-biotech.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sol-biotech.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2531"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sol-biotech.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2531\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2536,"href":"https:\/\/sol-biotech.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2531\/revisions\/2536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sol-biotech.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sol-biotech.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sol-biotech.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}