Michelangelo sibyl from the Sistine Chapel

 

day three

Matt from Melbourne was our onboard guide from Paris to Munich and I have to say that he kept things lively. It was from him that we first heard what my brother and I came to think of as Australian expressions. For some reason unknown to us, he had a habit of either saying "good stuff" or "good value" whenever he liked something.

Beside the new catch phrases, he also shared his German conspiracy theory with us. Quite simply he is convinced that Germany will rule Europe again in the next ten years, except that this time it won't be done by force. According to him Germany will take over Europe economically and we could see proof of this in the way that they were building Berlin back up to its former glory.

I had no way to prove or disprove his theory, but it certainly sounded interesting and I kept it in the back of my mind.

...

It was another long day on the bus with a brief stop in Heidelberg, where we managed to get some deutsche marks out of an ATM. Then to continue the weather pattern from yesterday it was raining when we finally arrived in Munich at ten-thirty at night. This time, however, we weren't going to be staying in a hotel. This time it was a campground, Camp Thalkirchen to be exact.

Instead of a warm double room with a private bathroom, we had a small caravan with two beds and a heater. Then to make it even more interesting, showers cost two deutsche marks for six minutes of hot water. Somehow I should have known that things were going to be a little less comfortable in Munich than they were in Paris.

...

Matt had told us that we may not be able to get any Italian lire before we got to Venice and suggested going to Marienplatz to use the ATM there. Apparently it not only distributed German deutsche marks, but Italian lire as well. So working under this impression we made our way to the nearest underground station where our next mini adventure occurred.

We could tell where we needed to go from the map, but we weren't sure what kind of ticket that we needed to buy to make the trip. What followed next was about thirty to forty-five minutes of my brother and I walking from the map to the ticket machine and back. Deciphering German does not come easy for two good old American boys and we still don't know if we bought the right ticket or not. Trevor suspected that we probably bought a one way ticket when in fact we needed a round trip ticket, but we'll probably never know.

What I do know is that we made it to Marienplatz and found the ATM that spat out lire.

 
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