Christmas 2002: December 29

Our big project for Munich was doing laundry. The hotel receptionist told us there was a laundromat just a few blocks away, so we set out to find it. No luck. We went back and asked for better directions. The receptionist pointed it out on a map, but also remembered that it was Sunday so it wouldn't be open anyway. We went out to look for it so we would know where it was for Monday. We found a place that sells second-hand washing machines, but that was it. We went back to our room and looked for laundromats which might be nearby. This was a bit tricky since the page of the map of the area in the phone book was torn out, and the map that we did have didn't have an index to tell where the streets were. We eventually found a couple of possibilities and went out to find them. One of them was apparently just for washing rugs and things. The other one looked like it might be okay, but it was kind of expensive and might have been for somebody else to do the laundry for you. But we decided that would work if we didn't find anything better.

Next we looked for somewhere to eat. The first couple places we tried were closed. We found a German pub that had pretty good food. Sara picked a sampler plate that said it came with vegetables -- Sara enjoyed the vegetables, but also had three kinds of meat to eat with them. (German food seems to be pretty focused on meat -- unlike in Sweden).

The tourist brochures indicated that there was a circus that night, and also a movie theatre which showed movies in their original language. (In Sweden they show the movies in English with Swedish subtitles. In Germany they dub them. Same with TV, which was rather frustrating -- most hotels had 30-35 channels (compared to the 3 channels we have at home in Sweden). They frequently had English shows or movies, but they were all dubbed so we couldn't understand them. So all we really got to watch was CNN or BBC news.) Anyway, either of these sounded okay to us, but they were way over by the train station. We tried to figure out the subway, but you have to buy your ticket from a machine and all of the information is in German and we weren't able to figure it out. (I think by the end of the trip we knew enough that we probably could have.)

So we ended up heading back to the hotel. It had a fitness area which had, among other things, a whirlpool. That sounded good to me. So we headed down there and changed into our bathing suits. There weren't any towels down there, so Sara went back to our room to get some. In the mean time I was about to get in when another guy started getting in. Rather than a bathing suit, he was wearing his birthday suit. I decided that Sara and I didn't need time in the hot tub after all.