A (almost) perfect Birthday weekend

Photos at: http://www.globalregulators.com/gallery2/v/lisa_and_al/ourtrip/munich

June 16th, and it was an early 5am start as we headed off to Munich - this weekend trip was one that we had been looking forward to for some time. What better way to celebrate Lisa's birthday then to spend 4 days in Munich with several thousand other aussies celebrating the world cup and a possible win on sunday against Brazil.

Team Munchen in the beer garden of the Hofbrauhaus (Matty, Di, Lisa, Chico and me)

Although a great fighting display from the aussies, it wasn't to be, and a 2-0 result to Brazil meant that we will still need to play extremely well and get a draw or a win against Croatia to get through to the next round. It's always heartbreaking when your team gets scored against - and then have a whole heap of opposing fans (and Brazilian supporters are not shy to show their joy) celebrate right next to you.

As soon as we arrived in Munich at about 10.30am, you could sense the vibe even at the airport. Plenty of green and gold everywhere you look, and of course, the Brazilians were out in force as well.

We checked into our hotel, which turned out to be a decent location, only 10 min on tram from the main central station, and also a 15 min walk to the olympic park. From there, it was off to the Viktualienmarkt, which is a large outdoor food market to get us some much needed lunch and quench our thirst with some German beer (even Lisa had some!).
It was a gorgeous day, so we thought it best to do some outdoor walking rather then check out any indoor museums - so caught the U-Bahn a few stations north to Leopoldstrasse, and then spent a few hours walking through the Englisch gardens. The gardens were full of people - some sunbaking, some riding their bikes, while others enjoying a beer in one of the many beer gardens within the park. The lure of enjoying a litre stein out in the open, while watching the football (Argentina was playing Serbia at the time) was to great, and I got stuck into my pretzel and beer.

One of several beer gardens to watch the football within the Englisch Gardens

We spent the remaining hours before dinner hanging out at Marienplatz (the main town square), just being entertained by the drums and singing that was going on by the fans. Matt and Di, who have just started their 1 month European holiday, met us for dinner to celebrate Lisa's birthday. With saturday planned to be a big sightseeing day, we all called it quits at a reasonable hour (it had been a long day for us being up since 5am anyway).

Saturday, we managed to walk around a fair amount and see a lot of the key sights of Munich - started running into other aussies and the discussions always entailed around whether they had tickets to the game, and if not, did they know what the current market price was from scalpers. Chico arrived around lunchtime - just in time to head to Hofbräuhaus for another beer (and a pretzel). It was quite loud inside with a load of football fans all in their team colours celebrating, singing and drinking.

Making use of the munich welcome card (Lisa and me managed to pay 48 euros, while Matt & Di managed to pay 20 euros, and Chico 24 euros - with all of them supposedly doing the same thing???) we got a small discount to get into the Residenz, which was the old home of the Bavarian royalty.

We got our first taste of olympic park on saturday night - we basically decided we wanted somewhere to watch the game, and what better place than the designated fan fest arena at olympic park. This place was great with it fairly packed, and plenty of food stalls to choose from.

Token "where are we" shot outside Alienz Stadium

But, this was all a pre-cursor for the big game on sunday with the Brazilians taking on the aussies. Chico, Lisa and me decided to head to Allianz stadium to see what the possibility of getting tickets off scalpers. I had a mate who had managed to pay 50 euros more then face value for the Aus/Jap game so it was worth a try. We arrived at just after midday (the actual game was scheduled to start at 6pm) and there were already plenty of fans starting to hang outside the stadium. Along with that, plenty of ticketless fans with cardboard signs walking around with "buy 1 ticket", or the more humourous "will sell sister/mother for ticket". Cheapest ticket (and it was only 1, were we would have needed 5 tickets) was going for 500 euros!!! The dream to enter the stadium was then put to rest - and we decided it was time to head back to olympic park.

GUTTED!! The dream for tickets is over so it's back to Fan Fest at Olympiapark

And lucky that we did, as we arrived an hour and a half before the 1st game, and it was already filling up very quickly. We laid down our blanket and soaked in the awesome weather and entertainment that was put in front of us. 10 min before the CRO/JAP game finished, I made the unfortunate mistake of trying to leave the hill area (which is fenced off) to go and get some food for Lisa and me. big mistake! The security guards had started to implement a ticket system - ie 1 person out, 1 person in. Cool, i thought - no worries, I've got my ticket as I head out. Spend about 30 min out amongst the food vendors working out what to get and dealing with the lengthy queues. I then try to head back in, and get stopped by a reasonably large german security guard. He spoke a little english, but based on his body language, he wasn't letting anyone through. For about 10-15 min I stood there right in front of him - so frustrated as I was being given the line "no more room on the hill", yet I knew that there was a space saved for me on our blanket - make matters worse, I didn't have my phone so no way to get in touch with Lis or Chico! Using my ever evasive skills, I waited for a distraction - a loud drunk who was starting to cause a ruckus to the right of me - and i was off! didn't look back (you always get a bit nervous when their are security guards and police with guns - and german at that. so you never know with the language barrier what might happen). But after ducking amongst a few people, I knew I was home free and so relieved to see Lis and Chico again!

A packed Fanfest at the Olympic Park in Munich

We also got a bit of a water show just before the match started, and it was much needed - as the heat had made it a little bit uncomfortable just sitting down all afternoon - esp with no option to go and get drinks with the whole 'full' saga. A giant water hose appeared and sprayed down the crowd. and with that, the game shortly followed. I won't bother with the details, as there are plenty of news articles that have already analysed every last minute of the match.

With Matt and Di spending the morning in Dachau, they arrived too late to enter the hill area, but still had a good view of the big screen from behind the gate - it was probably just as lively there, as there were plenty of Brazilians with drums out amongst the food stands. We finished off the day heading to the Augustiner Biergarten, which is near the central station. Apparently it holds 5000 people, and I'd believe it as it was massive - an awesome way to spend a summer evening, as you are seated underneath all these massive trees. As we hoped, there was a massive screen there, and so got to watch a bit of the France/S.Korea match.

Lisa and Chico outside Feldeherrnhalle - the Bavarain army's hall of fame and site of Hitler's failed putsch attempt in 1923

Monday, the plan had always been to head to the Neuschwanstein castle - the one that the Disney castle is based on. Alas, with Chico and us having flights leaving at around 6pm, a 2 hour train ride each way to get there would have cut things quite fine. We made use of the day to check out the Deutsches Museum and just do some more walking around the streets of Munich.

Then... the hassles at the airport. First, just need to have a bit of a shout out to the footy show - saw Eddie McGuire, Matty Johns and a few other entourage walking around the airport.. they headed to the business class lounge as you'd expect. Things got a bit nervous for us waiting for our flight - it ended up being delayed by about 40-50 min. The problem being we only had a 1 hour stop over in Amsterdam to catch our connecting flight.

Luckily, BMI/Lufthansa had things (reasonably) organised, and we had airport staff waiting for us to take us via airport buggy from one end of the airport to the other. There was no way we would have made it by walking, and was kind of cool to be driven straight through passport control - the downside being our luggage was not so fortunate, and we eventually got that delivered to our house the following day.

It turns out getting out of Munich was difficult for all of us, with Matt and Di having a delayed flight of several hours; and Chico, probably the worst affected - he had a flight set for Amalfi coast early the following morning, only to find himself stuck in Germany as he also missed a connecting flight! Haven't heard the latest, but sounds like he made it into London the following morning, and will catch a flight to Italy in the afternoon.

I guess we do take for advantage the ease of flying these days - but everynow and again, a little reminder that things can, and will go wrong, and there ain't much you can do about it.

and thats a wrap. Go the socceroos on thursday!

Pest and Buda

Photos can be found at: http://www.globalregulators.com/gallery2/v/lisa_and_al/ourtrip/Budapest2006

Another UK bank holiday. Another chance to get out of London and check out more of Europe. Destination: Budapest. We flew out of Heathrow with the Hungarian airline Malev. Our first experience with them wasn't the greatest with their computers down so we had to be checked in manually. This also then meant that fuel calculations, etc caused the flight to be delayed about 45 min. We were already in the plane, so wasn't too bad, as it just meant a little extra rest time.

Photo taken from Buda side of the Danube, with the Parliament building in the background

We arrived at around 4pm, with the sun out - we knew we would want to get to the hostel/apartment and head out as soon as we could. After a little bit of discussion as to how to get to the hostel with Lisa, we eventually went for the airport mini-bus. It was a airport-to-door service, so worked out quite well - the drive into town was kind of interesting.

First thoughts of the city and its surroundings was that we really couldn't tell which country we were in.Maybe it was because Hungary/Budapest aren't on the world map too much - and maybe because it really has its own vibe and feel, and can't really be compared to other cities in Europe (although the Paris of Eastern Europe does fit the bill fairly closely).

We had tried to learn a few (key) phrases during the week up to when we arrived, however, both Lisa and my attention span was a bit lacking. So we settled for hoping that people we would speak to would know some english. That, and being able to point at things seemed to work pretty much everywhere we went. Lisa got asked by locals several times during our stay there for directions/etc - she was convinced that she looked like a local, and I guess the fact that they asked her and not me would prove her at least a bit right.

Al in the front of Heroes Square

We quickly got accustomed to the very easy to use public transport. A 3 day unlimited travel pass got us to pretty much everywhere we wanted to - the train/buses would often be colour co-ordinated or have nice large numbers making it quite easy to work out which one to get on.

Getting into a quick list of highlights then:

1. the baths - I think I enjoyed these more than Lisa did. I was hoping to go and visit them more than once, but time was the enemy - We ended up visiting the Szechenyi Baths in the City Park. On a monday morning, it seems it is a bit of an old persons hangout. Nevertheless, extremely relaxing and a 2 hour visit there went extremely quickly.

2. the Danube - having this beautiful river go straight through the middle of Budapest makes for some great photos. We spent a fair bit of time walking along the water and admiring the views.

3. the food - with my chief restuarant guide by my side, we did quite well in the restaurant department. Unfortunately, it seems Budapest is hit with being a prime tourist destination, so there were a lot of 'tourist friendly' restaurants on offer (we fell for one on our last day there). It seems they are not authentic unless they have a gypsy band and dancers to accompany.

They certainly love their meat in Hungary!

4. Varhegy Palace - up on the Buda hills, plenty of things to see and do. Not to mention, an amazing view of Pest and the Danube. We did manage to get a bit lost jumping on a tram, which turned out to be heading in the wrong direction. When you only have those tourist maps, and you suddenly find yourself on a street that isn't on your map, it can make it a bit hard to find your way. A quick chat with a local got us back on our way, so it was all good!

On a side note, the return flight home went very smoothly, and Malev airlines turned out to be half decent. Arriving at 8pm with plenty of daylight around, our pilot seemed to decide on doing a bit of a tour of the london skyline. It was very cool (and I guess a bit google earth like) to fly over all the landmarks. Especially cool to actually see the Picadilly circus lights blazing out through our little window.

The countdown to Lisa's birthday and football fun in Munich is on its way - 14 days to go!