Back from Europe

Well, as some of you know I’m back from Europe. I was greeted by Lindsay and the big mean scary dog at 2am from the airport. It wasn’t suppose to be 2am but luckily I was able to delay my trip in Europe for a few extra hours. Unfortunately they were spent in the airports… And I do mean Airports, plural. Good old 26 hour trip home.

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I know that the last blog was from Austria. However, I just wanted to say one other quick thing about Innsbruck, Austria. Commuting on bikes. That’s a serious means of transport in this city. And why not? Check out the size of the bike lanes. It’s like this on both sides of the street and on most major streets.

You should see how many bikes there are in this city. This is a typical bike rack in Innsbruck.

From Austria I had no problem finding Germany but finding Jayanti’s house is another story….. So I arrived at the train station in Munich with directions from Jayanti to go to the passing train station. Which, is a major train station stop and looks like TONS of trains go there. How hard could that be? So I arrive and go and ask at the ticket booth which train to take … he tells me to go down 2 sets of stairs… left, right, platforms 5 and 6 or something like that. I get there and it says U1. I know that U1 does NOT take me where I want to go. So I go ask at a different ticket place. All he does is yell at me “out, out” … So now I’m thinking that I have to go out. Weird. So I get outside and as I’m stepping outside I see a c-train looking thing (called a tram) with the name ‘passing’ on it. Wow, how fortunate!

So I hop on this tram and we’re traveling for about 25 minutes … Suddenly the tram conductor comes on PA and says a whole bunch of stuff in German. Then everyone gets off of the tram. Hmmm. Weird.

I guess I have to get off too the tram too. So about 30 seconds later as I’m trying to decide my next move… A German guy comes running over and yells at all the people that got off the tram. Almost everyone who was on the tram head over to this other tram going in the other direction. I ask the guy to repeat it what he’s yelling in English and he just yells at me louder in German. Which was enough encouragement for me. So I get on this other tram. We start going and I notice that these were all the stops we just passed. I guess we’re going back to the main station. Weird.

I get to the main station and call Jayanti to tell her I’ll be late and get more directions. Ok. Now I need to take an ‘S-bahn’ (which sounds like s-bomb but not to mistaken for the f-bomb’s) and it’ll say ‘passing’ on it. I go back into the train station and see a train that says ‘Passing’. Perfect! I hop on that and arrive at the passing station in about 3 minutes. Wow, that was quick. Jayanti, later pointed out that I was taking an intercity-train. Which, you’re not suppose to do. oops! The best part of this whole story is that Heather ended up taking the same Tram to the ‘Passing’ train station.

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Munich, Germany. So I spent two days in Europe with Jayanti and her friend Jeff S. (no not me another Jeff S.). The friday night we headed to a Bavarian Beerhouse and I had Pig’s Knuckle and some potato thing that was SUPER tasty.

At this place we were seated literally right beside the men’s bathroom. In fact we could see the lady in the bathroom handing napkins to the guys after washing their hands. Anyway, it was definitely ‘the place to be’. The first drunk German guy to stop by was actually from Spain and called me a dog for eating too much food. Then started to go off with Jeff S. in Spanish. I thought it was hilarious and needed a picture. So, I handed my camera to Jayanti very secretly under the table. She very quickly and sneakily tried to take a picture by raising the camera for .05 second and taking a picture… Which, would have been very sneaky had the flash not gone off. Anyway, this is the pic…. I forget how good I look sometimes. Wow!Sorry ladies, I’m married.

Saturday we walked around Munich for quite a while exploring and seeing the town. It’s a really cool city. The best part is that I had a terrific tour guide. Jayanti was very knowledgeable or just really good at making stuff up about the buildings. Here’s a picture of city hall (I think) and the lady church in the background. The Lady church, Jayanti explained to me that those towers look like breasts. I know, she’s quite shocking that way.

We also went to the BMW showcase building. Looking back I think it’s kinda ironic that I didn’t really look at any cars but more at the building itself. Anyway, apparently you can pay an extra 750 euros (or something like that) and then you can pick your car up at this place. They bring your car up and put it on one of those car spinny things and show it off to all the onlookers. You then drive it right out of the building. Those people down their are driving away in those cars today!

Well, I’m back from my trip. I’ll give a highlights blog or other funny stories sometime soon. Oh and if you’ve seen a big green back pack with a Canadian flag, weighing approximately 19Kg’s with a final destination of YYC then that’s probably mine. And don’t worry I’ll write a good letter to Luftansa thanking them for the ‘extra’ time in Europe.