Further journal entries

More random journal scribbles from my recent trip to Munich and Liechtenstein...

"The hum of tens of different languages drifts by on the re-circulated air, broken occasionally by hearty laughter from a seemingly disproportionate number of stag party hoards marching past."

"A phalanx of fire emergency vehicles just whizzed past the end of this set of gates with blue lights and sirens wailing. Yikes, I’m about to board a flight in the next few minutes… Where the hell were they going?"

"The Olympic Park was packed full of people on a bright spring day; strolling, eating hot dogs and walking actual dogs too."

"A supposedly Greek temple in supposedly English gardens then, but beautiful and serene it is. Or at least it was until some little devil spawn decided to shatter the peace."

"And on to one of Munich’s numerous beer-halls for the Starkbierfest – literally ‘Strong Beer Festival’ – for a couple of tankards of bloody strong ale, all to the tune of a Bavarian band playing traditional drinking songs and random covers of American oldies."

"Seems like I’ve caught a travel bug. Quite literally. The last 36 hours I’ve been running a temperature, getting aches in all sorts of funny places and generally sniffling like Niagra. I blame the Aussie couple coughing behind me on the flight like they had a case of SARS, or the fantastically obese German guy to the front who also coughed, spluttered and generally occupied my airspace. This means that my usual ambles around the city have been reduced to a zombie-like shuffle."

"Two observations about Germans and Munich:
1. Germans don’t really observe queues as religiously as your average Brit
2. You’re never more than a few blocks from a bakery in this town"

"Packed and caught the train in plenty of time. So, all to plan so far. Worryingly so."

"Packs-on-backs we walked over the bridge into Liechtenstein from Switzerland crossing quite probably one of the most low-key borders you’re likely to find. Country number 23 it is then. And a very small one at that."

"Realising quite quickly that not very much was going to be open, we made priority #1 getting a ‘souvenir passport stamp’ – interestingly from the Art Museum in town as the Tourist Office was shut. How does that work?"

"Not being a keen skier or having ever skied before full-stop I was unfamiliar with the chair lift operations generally. When the safety bar swung back up instead of clicking into place I was left grasping at thin air, tens of meters off the ground, halfway up the peak. I quickly figured out the mechanism whilst gulping down alungful of air and vowing that I should really figure this Ski-lark out some day soon."

"Pizza is on the menu in this town, and the owner of the place has a quite brilliant mullet..."

"Having practically ‘done’ the country in one fell swoop, we shrugged and popped over to Austria for a quick coffee."

"This being Liechtenstein you could bank on the national art gallery being open, but little else at that."

"The trolley guy on the train entered our carriage singing. Nobody really batted an eyelid. That is until the guy, who was clearly an African immigrant, started joking to passengers in a mix of German and English with some spectacularly borderline comments about slavery and-the-like. Being British I treated this with a raised eyebrow or two, and said nothing, but my liberal American friend across the table could not stop her jaw from quite literally hitting the floor."

"Compared to many cities, Munich doesn’t exactly make it straight-forward to get from the city to the airport. On a wing and a fare-dodge I got here having realised halfway into the journey that I’d bought the wrong ticket at the station. No wonder they want to build a highly expensive and controversial Maglev train line to the airport then. Amen to that. The confusion that began in the city continued at the airport where rather than going for gates 1-99 say, Munich goes for alphabet soup, with various stages before your flight liberally sprinkled around all four corners of the airport."