I managed to make it to Munich for a business trip. As it turned out it was on a Thursday to Friday so I stayed the Saturday as well.
I landed on the Thursday afternoon and got a hire car. This is not normally the case but as I know the city so well its much easier and quicker for me to do this. This time I got a free upgrade to a Vauxhall Signum (Opel). I don’t know why but it seems that every other time I go I get a free upgrade in Munich. This time I had a navigation system. All in German though as you would expect! So after some fiddling I got the address of the office in the system and followed the rather stern German instructions. After even more fiddling I got the voice into heavily German American accented English but still German text.
The meeting went well and then we went into the city centre at about 6pm to see the Christmas Market. As I said earlier in the blog it’s a wonderful experience and I spent a happy couple of hours with my German colleagues before going to pick up my Boss and the Director. By now I had fiddled some more with the navigation system and was able to get the text in English. This worked like clockwork and I arrived just minutes before they came through. Having loaded them up we set off for the hotel and a few beers and a cheeseburger and chips!. Eventually getting into bed at some thing past 2am German time.
The second day was mainly meetings which went so well we were back in the city centre by 2:30 where I showed them the Christmas market and a favourite restaurant the Rathaus im Kellar. Which as the name suggests is the cellar under the town hall. Having had our fill we then popped into the best delicatessen ive ever seen, Dalmayrs! I then dropped them off at the airport and returned to the hotel.
The next morning I drove to the village where we had lived for 5 years. On the way I passed a village where we had once visited their Christmas market and I was surprised to realise it was on this weekend. Unfortunately it was not on until later in the day but I did take a picture of them building it.
The building behind is a huge barn or stable and full of small stalls selling hand made decorations and food. When we visited it was a very cold evening of something like minus 7 degrees and the building had no heating at all. So we were very glad to get the Gluhwein.
When I reached our house I was comforted to see it was exactly the same nothing seemed to have changed. I then drove on the Wolfratshausen and visited our favourite Konditorei/Coffee shop. The first person I saw was the waitress who had served us regularly for the 5 years we were there. She didn’t recognise me though as she was busy and I didn’t want to disturb her. I bought some Lebkuchen and chocolate lolly’s for the kids before travelling back to Munich.
Munich was absolutely heaving with people. Saturday’s were always busy but in the run up to Christmas its even worse. So I took some more pictures and bought some perfume and advent calendars for the kids and another gluhwein just to warm me up.
I also bought a beer mug from this years Oktoberfest. One of our previous directors who was responsible for me going to Munich had died last Christmas and I know he collected the beer mugs every year as do I now. So I bought the mug to give to his family. I hope it’s the right thing to do.
I was originally going to go skiing on the Saturday but there wasn’t enough snow unless we went up to the Zugezpitze glacier but this can take a long time to get up and down and the risk of missing my flight was too high so my old boss who had just retired this week invited me to dinner. However, we also visited a local Christmas market. This time Schloss Blutenburg Which was held inside the grounds of this mini castle. Where I just had to have another Gluhwein and a rot Bratwurst in semmel. Lovely! At his house he cooked pork in mushroom sauce with Spaetzle which went down a treat. It was good to see him again and It was an easy trip back to the airport.
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