Munich!

Arrival. Mind you this is the first time I have ever traveled by myself, let alone to another country. So I woke up early that morning after trying to pack my entire life for a nine day adventure the night before. My mom and dad took me to the airport where I tried to assure them I could get a refund on my trip if they just let me stay. I could spend the whole week home hanging out, helping clean, cook, redo the pool screens, paint the outside AND inside of the house, whatever they needed me for. Oh, and I was missing Thanksgiving, one of my favorite holidays. And I was missing the UF vs FSU(cks) football game! But my pleading didnt get me anywhere besides on the plane. A short flight to Chicago and then a long flight in the middle of the middle section on my way to Munich! (I have since realized that I do this before every trip... try to get out of it but then go and have an amazing adventure.)

Once I was on the plane, my stomach butterflies and apprehension left and in came the excitement of it all. I was traveling by myself to another country where I did not know the language and was supposed to meet the rest of the group, who coordinated plane flights. I was excited, nay ecstatic! I was ready. And then we land. (I have been born and raised in Florida. I have never seen snow. My mom grew up in Michigan and never felt that it was important that we be exposed to snow. I had been checking the weather of Munich for the last month to see if there would be snow. There was a chance, a really good chance.) So, the plane lands. If you have ever been to the Munich airport, you know that a lot of the building is made of glass. You can see right outside and what I saw was pure white beauty! Snow, glorious snow! I must have looked like the biggest idiot. I was walking around aimlessly with a goofy smile on my face looking out the window and seeing snow, for the first time in my life. I will truly never forget that moment. And then walking around, there is this open space in the airport. I walked out there and it was snowing. I just stood there in the middle of it looking up at the snow.

So back to the trip. We were supposed to meet at a ticketbooth for the train into town. Well, that didnt quite work out the way people planned because I arrived in a terminal completely opposite of where they arrived. And therefore we did not meet up, but instead I traveled to the hotel/hostel we were staying at.

My first adventure! I was given some directions about where I needed to go. I was confident with that. What I was not so confident about was the ticketing process. I had to buy a ticket out of a machine. A machine that was in German. I, a person who had a crappy German language book which does not translate what is on the machine, was buying a ticket from a machine only written in German. So I closed my eyes and pushed a couple of buttons and out popped a ticket for the train, the S-bahn. A train came and I jumped on. After obsessively checking my information about the stop I was supposed to get on, I snuggled into the fourty minute or so ride. I stared out of the window the entire time just looking at the snow that had accumulated on the ground. It was beautiful, so white and clean looking. And the cars are so much different in other countries. It seems everyone has the tiniest car they can find.

So once the train came to the station, Hauptbahnhof (Central Station), I took out my directions from this station to the hotel. It was super easy and I was so happy that I made it. It's such a wonderful feeling to be able to travel through a country or place that you are unfamiliar with. It gives you this incredible boost of confidence, its weird.

So I get to the hotel, check in, put my stuff in the room and then head downstairs where most of the group is waiting. We are given some time to go to our rooms, introduce ourselves to our roomates and then head back down to go to lunch. As we are walking to lunch, our amazing professor is listing off buildings that we are walking by and a short description of why they are important. We make it to lunch where he wants us to have a traditional bavarian lunch, sausages! We go to a place that is famous for its Weisswurst veal sausage. To be honest with you, and dont tell anyone, but they were okay. Other people really liked them, I think I was expecting something different. I would try them again though.
Oh- and something I kept forgetting is to ask for water without gas, otherwise its seltzer water and I'm not a fan.

Then we walked around the town some more, saw more amazing sights, and then had a couple of hours off to relax. I took a nap. That night we went to dinner and had spatzle, which is a typical German food that is kinda like a noodle but tastes more like a dumpling. Hard to explain but it was okay. (Please dont think I am this incredibly picky eater, its just not that good.) The sauces that came with it were delicious and the meat was really good, its just the spatzle. After that we went to a pastery place where we had dessert which was delicious! We also tried some wine!

While walking between dinner and dessert, we had a mini snowball fight. I explained to people that this was my first time in snow and really wanted to have a snowball fight. So they were nice enough to oblige and we had one. Pretty cool!

That was just the first day and we already tried different food, saw a lot of Munich through a walking tour, and I met some pretty cool people.