A Short Stop in Munich

We arrived at Motel One where we discovered mistake 2 of 3. Instead of being booked for April 29th, we were booked for May 29th. Luckily, they still had a room for us, but this got us thinking and we didcovered mistake 3 of 3. We were scheduled to arrive in Schladming right now! OOPS. After some frantic searching for a phone (they didn't have a phone we could use in the hotel), we headed to the Ost Bahnhof and called Katherina Haus to change our reservation.

Having cleared up the blunders we were able to relax. Out small but cute and modern room was very nice. It had a fireplace channel on the tv, and the comfiest beds yet! So we layed down for a nap. The shower was amazing too, with the showerhead being about as big as a head...Mmmmmm.



Then off to HofBrauhaus for supper. We looked at a map and saw that this restaurant was near Marienplatz and assumed we could find it from there...but we had to ask a guy for directions. He walked us part way there, and we enjoyed a conversation with him.

On the trainride from our hotel to Marianplatz, one stop into our route, an enormous african american man came and sat across from me. He quite deliberately put his grocery bag on the seat beside him. Another man, drunk and trying to have a conversation with the large black man, forced his way onto the seat with the grcery bag, which was across from Troy. The large man moved his bag, and tried to end the conversation with the drunk guy. The drunk guy then, noticed me. He was saying I was super woman, like Madonna, but those were about the only English words he knew. He was almost yelling, trying to get someone to interpret to me, what he was saying, but the black man, was silently discouraging people from doing this. Finally the big guy, got up to leave. I didn't know whether it was our stop or not, turned it out was, but I figured we should get off too...I figured it we stuck close to him, we'd be safe.

When the drunk guy noticed we were getting off, he too got off, and tried to keep us with us, while yelling, "Madonna!", but we were trying to keep up to the black guy. Anyways, we got away. And with a funny story no less.


We were seated with an older gentleman, and started our fantastic dinner. The man was Australlian/Austrian, and was very well travelled and he had actually just visited Calgary about 4 weeks before! When we sat down, he was just finishing up his beer and must have enjoyed our company, because he stayed and talked to us for quite some time. We enjoyed his company as well.

Our dinner started with 2 beers. Troy ordered a pork steak and I bad the bone-in pork knuckle, on the reccommendation of the older man. Both dinners were very very tasty! Then we had some coffee, Kaiserschmarn, my favorite, and some cake thing, covered in vanilla cream sause for Troy.

Along the way we got talking to our waiter Alex. He is Yugoslavian, and speaks 6 languages. We talked about everything from him, to languages, travel, sport, motivation (for him to learn Greek, it was girls), and how it is easy to make anyone an enemy no matter who or what they are but few people choose to make friends. I think he liked us, because he frequently came to our table, but never offered us a bill. We were there about 3 hours.

The next morning, I was so excited about going to Schladming, that I could hardly sleep. We had a Motel One Breakfast buffet, which was cleverly hidden behind a secret wall.

To save some effort, we decided to see if we could find a train to salzburg from Munich Ostbahnhof instead of going back to the HBF. To our delight, we found one and got on!

After 1 1/2 hours the train was stopped longer than normal. We heard loud bangs, like trash cans being emptied, which is not normal for an in-use train. It turns out, this train was about to go back to Munich, and a bus ws required to continue on to Salzburg. But it was so weird, because the train was marked for Salzburg.

We got out in this place where we didn't know where we were, and asked the DB guy to help us get to Salzburg. We had a 1 hour delay, so trekked into the weird little town in the middle of no where, to get some eats.

When we finished our lunch, we turned back to the train station, and went to the platform, where we were told by the DB guy, and where the signs indicated the train would be arriving. It was very confusing, because first of all the train was very late, I think about 40 minutes, and it ended up coming in on a different track. Everyone was very confused, and no one knew what to do. anyway, after some confusion, we did find the right place to get one, and we were on or way to Salzburg.

We switched trains in Salzburg, and were finally on our way. The train car we were in to Schladming, has windows you could open, so I did the entire way, and took lots of photo's. What a great feeling, going to somewhere you love so much. It was so cool as we rode I was thinking about God...and I thought...the God was the same when I first rode this train to this wonderful town, as He is right now... for some reason, that was very cool to me at that time. I couldn't stop smiling.