Tuesday 12/11/2007- Wednesday 12/12/2007:
After our 3 hour red-eye flight filled with crying babies taking up the legroom in the bulk head seats, we landed in Munich. We hopped on the S-Bahn into town, hoping that our hostel had a room available so we could catch some Zzz’s. Our luck had apparently run short, as they were sold out, and after working on several different options, we had to keep on truckin until we could check in at 12pm.
We had five hours to kill and were working on basically no sleep. We decided to head into Munich and check out the Deuches Museum, dedicated to technology and science. Needless to say, this museum was the only thing that could have kept Dermot awake….he was in hog heaven. They had a big section dedicated to metal and metallurgy, and Katie actually fell asleep sitting up watching how steel is made.
After a couple of hours of wandering we were seriously low on energy, so we stopped in the café for a snack. After 3 hours we had only seen about ¼ of the museum…. But we were ready to go, so we stopped at a McCafe for a hot chocolate and coffee and the free internet connection until our room was ready. We caught up on e-mail (Dermot found out his fantasy football team made it into the playoffs) and then received a phone call from the hostel (thanks again Italian cell phone!)-- Our room was finally ready!
Dermot hit the bed with a heavy thud and didn’t move again until the alarm went off 5 hours later. We started some laundry and then headed out to dinner at the Augustiner beer house across the street. It was filled with locals, so we blended in (with our English Menus) and ordered our last German meal: potato pancakes, schnitzel and steak. The beer and food was very tasty; Katie had a shandy (1/2 beer, ½ lemonade) and Dermot had a liter of the house beer. After dinner, we finished our laundry and were asleep within 20 minutes.
Well rested, we woke up around 8:30am and headed back to the airport on the S-bahn. The ticket machine wouldn’t accept our credit card, so we took the train without tickets (don’t tell anyone…). We arrived at the airport with plenty of time to spare. We checked in and got a brunch-snack in the departures lounge. Our pizza, French fries and schnitzel brunch was both good and diverse…as we waited to board our flight back to Ireland!