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Saturday, Mar 28, 2009
I spent the next few hours on the train. It was Saturday, but there were still many passengers traveling. At this point I was pretty worn out. The days had been cold, long, and tiring. And when I reached the Munich train station, I inquired about reaching the airport and found out that one of the Metro trains did indeed travel to the airport. I could avoid taking the bus again. Leaving the train station, I headed north to the hostel. Trouble was the hostel was to the south. I corrected my mistake by heading back to the train station, and to the south. Minutes later I was at the hostel. I had already made a reservation, which was good since they were booked now. I got my room key and my free beer--turns out they offer you a free beer when you stay there. Sweet! I then sat in the common room and used the Internet. I would not ever be checking into my room. My reservation there was just to have a warm place to stay and Internet access for about six hours. It also turns out that it would only be five hours since daylight savings time was now occurring in Germany. That was nice. It was also good to know before arriving at the airport an hour later than I had expected.
Time passed quickly at the hostel. I chatted with person from France and another person who went to the Cal State, Berkeley. Around 2 a.m., I packed my computer and departed the hostel. I suppose it was a little wasteful, but it only cost me about $18, and it didn't guarantee me some warm shelter for the evening. Remember what we learned 12 days ago? That's right. Train stations are cold.
The Metro ticket was difficult to purchase since the machines were only in German, and there wasn't any ticket office open to help me. But I managed. I also spent my very last euro purchasing the ticket. My budgeting had turned out rather nicely. I came home with less than one dollar in foreign currency.
The train took about an hour to reach the airport. I still had a couple hours to kill. I found the right terminal and sat down and waited. To stay awake, I watched some more 24, but after about 45 minutes, the battery died. Notebook computer batteries just plain suck. In 15 years, they've improved very little. It was quite disappointing. Still, I had to stay awake. If I dozed off, I might miss the plane. So I played a small game on my iPhone for a while, but then wondered why the terminal desks when not staffed since it was now about 6:30 a.m. I decided to do some exploring.
Turns out I was at the wrong floor of the terminal. The active floor was one flight up. Good thing I checked. I got my tickets and went to the boarding area. There was still long wait, but at least I was closer. Eventually we got to board. The flight was quick. I dozed off a little, but was soon awake again, as we were landing at Heathrow Airport in London. We got off the plane using the rear exit. Apparently, we were not parked close enough to the exit ramp.
At Heathrow, I had to wait for my next plane. It would be a couple hours. It was also there that I ran into the only unfriendly or rude person on the trip. She was an "unhealthy" lady working at a gate. The poor thing just seemed very alone and unhappy. But one person wasn't going to ruin my trip and the next agent I met was very friendly. I was also told that I was seated in economy plus. This was a nice surprise. Sure it wasn't business-class, but there was more leg room-- something I came to appreciate.
The flight to SFO would be 10 hours. We didn’t seem to save any time by heading to London first, but it was all part of the special deal. Seated next to me was a nice German lady named Vivian. She was coming to San Francisco for a few weeks or months. Her English was limited, but we managed to talk about a lot over the long flight. I told her about things to do in San Francisco and the Bay Area and throughout California. It was sort of the opposite of when I was going to Germany and the passenger next to me explained the things to do in Central Europe. I also watched one movie—Doubt, which was rather good. Overall, the entertainment system on the United flight wasn't as good as the one on the Lufthansa flight two weeks prior. This one lacked any real controls and the monitor was only about 4 inches. Thus, one movie was enough. I also got some rest, but not a lot, considering I had been up for about 24 hours.
Landing in San Francisco was nice. I got to skip the baggage claim since I only had carry-on and headed straight for the exits. Terry and Lesly soon arrived and gave me a ride home.
Ah, home. The first thing I really appreciated was the nice weather. The skies were blue and the sun was shining. The rain was gone and I wasn't freezing anymore.