Goodbye Amsterdam, Hello Munich

Day 5 (Friday 29th June 2007) continued

Most of Friday was spent just riding the trams and walking around Amsterdam. The weather did not improve, so sitting outside by the canal was a no-go, but I did find the wireless cafe next to the Anne Frank House, which is where I posted all the earlier comments from. I am going to keep writing my blogs as I go along, but may have to post them in bunches as I find an internet connection to use. Mid-afternoon I found a terrific cheese shop, so I bought some cheese and added a few more items from a nearby deli.

I found another shop called the Beer King that sold over 200 varieties of beer from all over the world, and bought 4 dutch beers to try.

Friday night I made up an antipasto plate, and had it and my beers sitting in the front dining room of my hotel reading a book and looking out over the Singel.

Day 6 (Saturday 30th June 2007)

Saturday was spent travelling - first a 10am flight from Amsterdam to Berlin, then onto the ICE (Inter-City Express) for the trip to Munich.

The train was terrific. It was far and away the quietest train I've ever been on while rocketing along at 180km/h. I still had some cheese and smoked salmon left over from Friday night, so I bought a German beer and had a train picnic while I read The Diary of Anne Frank.

I tend to get emotionally attached to characters in well written books anyway, and this one makes it very easy to do, so i had to keep reminiding myself that I knew how this one was going to turn out and that there was no happy ending. Even so there were a few passages where I just had to stop and think quietly for a while. It's funny but sitting alone in a quiet, nearly empty train carriage may be the ideal way to read any book, but particularly this one, and the occassional anouncements in German seemed to add to the mood as well.

Once I arrived in Munich I went and checked into my hotel, which was only a few hundred metres from the train station.

Having dumped my gear I grabbed the camera and went for a walk around town. My immediate impression was just how massive and imposing the buildings are here. It's often deceptive from a distance - they will look just like the old buildings in Sydney until you come closer and realise the scale has been decieiving you and they are three times the size you thought they were.

I found the Rathouse, which is where the famous Glockenspiel is, but it wasn't doing it's thing so I grabbed some dinner - two different kinds of wurst - and headed back to the hotel.