Arrival

Well, here I am in Munich Germany. Hurray! Now this blog should get a little more interesting for anyone reading for fun. It was by far the longest trip I have ever been on. A total of 14 hours of flying time and an apparent shift of 22 hours (thanks to the eight hour time change). It was rough but defiantly not too difficult. I flew via Icelandair from Denver Colorado to Reykavik Iceland and then from Reykavik to Munich. I would highly recommend to anyone looking to travel to abroad. They cover a very wide range of countries across the globe, the panes were all punctual and comfortable, and most importantly (to me as a student anyway) they are incredibly cheap. When I was first doing research to estimate the cost of traveling to and from Germany, the cost averaged out around $1,500 one way. With Icelandair, it cost me $440 to get here and will only cost $900 to go home during the tourist session. While this was a wonderful deal, this is not everything that you need in order to get to the main part of the City.

The methods needed change depending upon where you are arriving and where you are staying (and possibly when). I am currently staying at the Hotel Royal which is a very nice Hotel that is located only a few blocks away from the Central Train Station in Munich. The extra steps that were involved in my case were to get to the Central Station, orient myself, and haul my over-packed self to the right building. While I was jumping into a mess, I did what planning I could. The best advice that I can possible give comes in two parts. First, get a good travel guide for where you will be going. I was, am, and will continue to use Rick Steves' Germany 2013. His book covers all of the most popular cities in Germany but does not catch the smaller ones; but if he covers the city you are interested in it is well worth the money. It is with this book that I found my hotel, knew (roughly) what I needed to do to get there from the airport, and how I picked my first meal in Germany. So get a travel guide. Second, once you know where you will be staying, go to google maps and search for the address of the hotel. Now here is the cool part, you can use google maps to get a street view of the address and do a virtual walk around of the local area. By virtually walking your route (train station to hotel for me) several times, it is second nature and familiar when you arrive  Just one less thing to make you panic

On to the fun part (for me anyway). Instead of just crashing like I so desperatly wanted to I took the advice of an experienced traveler. I walked around for several hours to keep me awake until I could comite to the new time zone. Munich is an incredibly beautiful town with both ancient designs and new architecture side by side. There will be plenty more pictures to come. I eat at a very nice beer garden called Park Cafe, got a feel for the town and the people, made note of some places to return to, and generaly burned away all of my energy. Here I am finishing the post so that you know I survived the ordeal and am ready for more.