Germany Day 21 – Last day in Germany

This morning we had the fun job of packing up all our stuff ready to depart Germany later tonight. We had breakfast and took our luggage downstairs to be stored. After waiting for everyone to be ready we finally set off for the day at 10am.

Todays destination, after a tram and train ride, the largest Technology museum in the world.

That was the good news, the bad news was we only had one hour to explore!!!! As you can imagine Kevin was quite beside himself with the time of the visit.

So Amy, Harriet and I raced around, following Kevin. He mainly wanted to see historical stuff and was quite pleased with some of his finds.

I loved seeing these models, especially since the largest one is the Saturn V, that we saw in real life at the Kennedy Space Center last year.

I also loved the early printing presses, probably because I saw how they worked in a documentary earlier this year..

Alas we hardly had time to scratch the surface of this museum before we had to leave, allowing a small amount of time to check out the gift shop. Kevin fell in love with this engine (which actually works).. but sleep deprived as I am I can’t recall the name of it. I convinced him to buy it, as he hardly ever buys any trip souvenirs.

We then had to catch a train back into town to have lunch at Munich’s largest beer hall. This was a special last German meal experience.

The meal started with some yummy soup – I think potato and leek.

What, besides the setting, was so special about this meal, you might ask?

Mind you I’m not sure I would have considered it special even when I ate meat – I always hated pigs on spits, so I’ll spare you the close up photos Kevin took. It was flambéed at the table in front of us and gravy served from the big pots. Kevin was in heaven, as he rarely eats pork (in Australia anyway).
I was excited because I finally got the try the white asparagus I’ve been seeing at the markets.

It was pretty good but I think I prefer green asparagus more. The hollandaise sauce and potatoes were really good. Amy enjoyed her meal as well. We were going to share but pretty much stuck with our own.

And there was more apple strudel for desert. Very delicious but didn’t quite have the atmosphere of our first one (outside in the Bavarian countryside).

Do you think I’d make a good bar wench?

After lunch we had a few hours free time to do some more shopping – provided we could fit it in our bags, of course.

So I got to visit a great homestore we’d kept passing (and I’d not yet had a chance to visit).

There was also a third visit to Beluga chocolates and this time we stayed for afternoon tea.

I just had a tea (with some chocolate, of course) but the girls had these amazing hot chocolates.

There was some last minute souvenir shopping by Harriet. Unfortunately, besides for Christy and my parents, we had no room to bring back souvenirs for anyone else. I feel really bad but you saw the size of our suitcases and I didn’t want to waste money on cheap, junky (little) souvenirs (which is mostly what we found).
But do you think we should have bought this hat?

I did however manage to find a necklace (by a German brand I’d first seen back in Rothenberg – all those weeks ago) for myself. Be sure to check out my haul video when it’s posted – or you might be able to spot it in tomorrows photos.

We saw this cute little dog, which looked like a miniture Golden, that we’d seen earlier.

Turns out it belongs to a homeless woman so we went back to give them 5 euro. We have homeless people in Australia but not beggers as such – people kneeling holding out hats for donations of money – quite a few of which we’ve seen around Germany (esp. in Salzburg and Munich).
Of course, I was allowed to pat the puppy. She must have been happy with her money because we saw her headed off elsewhere shortly afterwards.

We met and caught the train & tram back to the youth hostel for the last time, then collected our luggage and helped the kids weigh and re-sort their luggage (some of them were very overweight). Then it was onto the coach for the trip to Munich airport. We were here 45mins before check in even opened and had fun trying to hold our groups spot in the line.

We roused on one lady who pushed through some suitcases, and claimed she was travelling alone with her kids and just putting the suitcases there (in front of us). So we felt bad. She ended up JUST behind our group (having queue jumped quite a few other people). Any guesses how old her kids turned out to be? They were adults!!! I really could not believe the nerve of her. So rude. And I’d even apologised to her for how we reacted to her jumping the line.

After check in opened and we finally got through the line (without any further incident) we had time to go get some dinner. Amy, Kevin and I ended up at a lovely restaurant, where we had the most beautiful meal.

We shared two dishes, which was a good choice as they were rather big serves.

We gathered together again and went through security. Some more shopping time and finally to our gate, where unfortunately our plane was delayed due to some technical issues….

It didn’t really matter to us as we had a long wait ahead at Bangkok airport anyway.

Eventually we boarded and left 2 hours behind schedule, just before midnight. As you can imagine, it had been a rather long day.

Tomorrow : The long journey home