THURSDAY, 23 July. The plane left around one o'clock, and oh my god, I swear my ears have never popped so badly before. Prior to leaving England, the five of us contemplated getting a German phrase book, and I'm not going to lie... I really wanted one. They decided against it, and then we entered the war without shields. Stepping out of the plane and walking through the airport was the first culture shock that I've experienced this entire time. After walking a good five minutes, I noticed something was really strange. We all decided to hush for a moment, and we realized what the strange thing was: it was silent-everything, everyone was SILENT. ZIP. ZAP. NADA. Not a single peep, let alone the roars of laughter that we were all naturally producing. It was the first time I've felt out of place over here. So we shuffled our way through the airport, and while we were sitting and waiting for the train to come and take us to the main plaza in Munich, we see a man collecting plastic bottles and cans. Tiffany hands him her plastic bottle and the conversation starts like this:
Man: Now that's a good woman!
We all laughed and noticed that he had an American accent.
Man: But you know what? You can't recycle this one.
He approached us with the bottle in hand, pointing to a symbol on another bottle...
Man: You need this symbol on it.
Tiffany: Oh, we didn't know, sorry about that!
Man: Aw now, don't worry about it. Hey! You guys speak American English! Where are you all from?
All of us: California...
Man: Well, where in California?
All of us: L.A.! Orange County! San Diego! San Francisco!
Man: I went to UCLA! Let me tell you guys something... this is what happens when you get a B.A. in liberal arts. I was an English major...
Everyone turns their heads and immediately looks at me. He came onto the same train as us, and it turns out that he's been in Germany since 1983 when he graduated from UCLA. We sat there and talked to him throughout the entire train ride about black talk, roadie work, tennis and life since he left the States. We parted with him at our stop and headed off on our own journey towards the hotel, when it started to hail out of no where.
Our hotel ended up being smack dab in the center of Munich's red light district; that explained all the weird looks I got when I asked how to get to Schillister St. We finally made it safely to the hotel, promptly dropped our bags and headed out for some food. After five minutes of walking past cabarets and strip clubs, we saw VIET-THAI GARDEN. It was fate. I couldn't even remember the last time I used chopsticks, let alone eat Vietnamese food... it was amazing. We walked back to our hotel room, our blood flowing with MSG. Ah... heaven. Halo, Germany.
