Trip / First Day

Alright, I've been so busy getting settled in that I neglected to make another post. I wanted to talk about my flight over and my first day or two here in Deutschland.

Flight
My flight was in the late afternoon (~4 PM) on a Wednesday, and I had one connection in Chicago. I had never flown international before and I expected it to be a bit different, but honestly it wasn't. The only difference between flights I have had before was that the plane was HUGE. It was a Boeing 777 or something crazy like that. Each seat had a little TV screen in front of it that let us watch a bunch of stuff for free, which was awesome. The flight was about 9 hours so I had a lot of time to kill. I watched several episodes of Big Bang Theory, an episode of How I Met Your Mother, and the entire new Muppets movie, all for free! I was surprised we could do all of it for free. They also served us dinner (General Tso's Chicken) and breakfast (an apple strudel thing) complimentary. I suppose they kind of owe it to you considering the tickets all cost around $500 one way.

I also thought it was kind of awesome that they had both German and English speaking flight attendants. They would say everything once in English, and then this old German lady would get on and repeat it. I would try to listen to what she was saying, but damn they sure speak fast.

Once I landed in Munich, I had to go trade in my US Dollars for Euros! I brought a lot of money with me, and I advise anyone to do the same. My first day there I probably spent close to 200 euro on things I needed, and I feel as if that was low. Maybe you could wait and get money from the ATM, but I didn't want to run the risk of it only being in German. However, though I haven't tried it yet, I believe that if your bank debit card in the US uses Visa or MasterCard, it should work over here too. You'll just be charged some fee for the currency difference.


First Day
I arrived in Munich at about 9:15 AM. On my way out of the airport, I had to go through Customs. Now, I expected this to be some big deal where they ask you what you are doing there and then go through all of your stuff -- nope. It was a young Polizei officer who basically said "Why are you staying in Freising?"   "I am working there, I'm a student."    "Oh OK, here's your stamp, see ya!"  And that was it. Much better than I had anticipated. Next time I'll remember to smuggle in some illegal goods.

I took a taxi to my new home, and waiting for me was the guy who's room I am renting, Metan. Honestly I don't think I would've gotten through the first day without him. He took me to a second hand shop and we bought a bed, took me to the grocery store to get my initial supplies, took me to the electronics store to buy mein Handy, and even gave me his old table and chair so I would have somewhere to sit.

After meeting my new roommates, I was ready to go to bed. I went to sleep at what was 5 PM in Germany, which was 10 AM in the Ohio (Germany hadn't yet had Daylights Savings Time), so I had been up for about 26 hours. I think I slept for 14 hours...jet lag is a pain in the ass.



Well, that's it. I went to Munich that weekend and took a lot of pictures, so I will make another post about that in a few days, and then catch you up on my initial experiences at TI in another post.

Ciao!