Munich # 3

THE ROADS AND THE SHOPPING
Date: 12th May, 2006 4:12pm

We spent some time in the nice room which was really above our expectations. There was a hotplate to cook and we were lucky to find a good caretaker (he was very friendly) of the house. Even all the utensils were provided by them. (Later, in the evening I found out that the pressure cooker and the non-stick pan that I had brought with me will not work on that hotplate as it was an Induction hotplate which runs on electromagnetic induction)

Makku took a shower in the bathtub ;) and I just washed my face and we were ready with Karn for our round 2 of Munich. The roads, as is the title of the post are a very fascinating place. First of all there are pavements everywhere for walking (you can not just start walking on the road). Now the tricky part.. pavements are divided into two as you can see in the picture. the portion towards the road is where you can not walk (as it is dedicated for cycle travellers) and if you do you may find someone on cycle behind you waiting for you to step aside so that he can go...

Yes people here don't shout. They have got lots and lots of patience. Even if somebody is getting late and he is in the car and he sees you crossing the road (small roads with no roadsigns), It is sure that he will stop for you to cross the road and wait till you are safe. Even on the roads you will never hear a horn. (yes.. NEVER. This thing we realised on the 4th day that we hadn't heard a horn sound since we had come) Everything is so well organized that you feel good to be a part of it and feel guilty if you break the rules.

There are so many cars that the cars are parked just aside the road and one thing that I noticed is that lots of people make two tyres of the car come up on the pavement and then park it (don't know why. till now). Everybody follows the lane system here and in normal city roads there are no dividers, yet there are no accidents.

So next we went to the University where Karn showed us our department and here itself we met another Indian guy Gaurav (from IITK) who is also in our department but had arrived on Monday. Karn invited us to dinner at his place and next we went to a cheap supermarket (Lidl) nearby and brought stuff of 10€ including juice, bread, butter, roti.... etc. etc.

LIDL supermarkt [Date:12th May, 2006 Time:6:45pm]

Lidl or cheap supermarkets like Aldi Süd, Plus, Penny Markt etc are the source of all daily requirements that one can imaginge. You really get cheap stuff as these are the people who do manufacturing and packaging of the stuff they sell. So this way, there are no middlemen and you get good stuff for cheap (which is very important if you are living in a costly city like Munich). First of all I really liked the availability of juice here, 100% fresh natural juice was available in packaged form for decent price of 1.69€ per 1.5L. If this looks costly then you can get 50% juices for as low as 0.69€. All the items here are marked with the expiry date only (there is no manufacturing date mentioned, nehow what's the need). The curd (joghurt in german) was usable till next 20 days, packaged milk till next 2 months, refrigerated mix veg till next year (:D). Potatoes and onions were available in packed quantities of 1kg. and 2.5 kg (with expiry mentioned).

So we took a cart and got all the stuff to the counter and again one more technical advancement that we saw. Everything was automatic through bar code readers. The person sitting at the desk just takes the item over the small glass window and yo....... it is added in your bill. As soon as we gave 20€ note she entered the amount given (20€) and as soon as she pressed ENTER the money box opened and she gave remaining amount to us and locked it again.

We also came to know that nothing can be taken granted here. The plastic bags (given free after the purchasing for carrying stuff) costs 0.06€ per bag. That people can live in a city where there is no drinking water supply (it is another fact that the water supplied at everybody's home is drinkable). We also considered it a good option to drink water from tap (which is what almost every student and some people do here) than to buy drinking water for another 1.89€ for 1.5 L (gosh..!! the juice is cheaper than the water.. , waise beer bhi cheaper hai ;) ).

So after this buying we went to Karn's room. Enjoyed the dinner made by him (it was really gud). Drank the Ice Tea (which is even cheaper than the 50% juice ;) and which Siva could not drink at that time) and at around 10pm left for our room. Reached there and slept till next morning 10am.

P.S. All the photographs are not taken by me but they resemble to the things we saw very much.. hehe

Munich # 2

THE S-BAHN and THE U-BAHN
Date: 12th May, 2006 2:15pm (sharp)

Just as we left the airport with Karn we saw a staircase (and escalator also) which took us to the underground station. Learnt how to take tickets (8.50€ for one day in metro) for the metro transport system of Munich from the automatic ticket vending machine. The S-Bahn or the suburban trains (commuter trains which run on overhead electrical wires) and the U-Bahn or the Underground metro (which run on electricity through railway tracks) trains form the main transportation system of the whole city. Here is a view of what we saw. The display boards constitutes of a clock, a platform board and the destination towards which the coming train is going (Richtung Hauptbahnhof means Towards Central Station). Everybody stands behind the blue line which is made for the safety region.

So we travelled to the central station in around 30 minutes with continuous inputs about variety of things from Karn. The central station is in 3 floors (all underground) and 2 are being added (also underground). All the international and national trains leave from the ground floor. One amazing thing is that whether the train is international or national or metro, the departure time can be any value (7.42 or 8.57) not like in India where we are used to time in intervals of minimum 5 minutes.

From Cental station we took U2 (U1-U8 are the metro lines here) to reach Harthof (station near our home) and searched for the room. Here the language problem came and also that nobody knew where the street was (of our room). Anyhow, Karn was really helpful, he talked in german and asked for the address and without him it would have been really impossible for us to reach to our room.

Finally we reached our room.

First Impression

THE MUNICH AIRPORT - Terminal 2
Date: 12th May, 2006 Time: 2:04pm

Here I come after reducing 3 kgs. of my luggage at Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport, after getting 146€ in coins and also 32$ for my 20K Rs. (456Rs. of conversion charges at Thomas Cook) after taking off the ground for the first time in life, eating gud breakfast, sleeping 3 hrs. , watching Iqbal and having dreadful lunch [ask makku how was the non-veg that he tried ;)] and a landing that was tooo boring (kuch pataa hi nahi chalaa).

Enter the world of automatic doors, automatic lighting, escalators and a lots of space (as compared to IGI). A sardarji was waiting outside and told us that he can help in getting to the main munich station but we decided to move on and check out our luggage. Going down 3 floors, waited 15 mins. for the luggage. (My suitcase was the first to come out).

A surprise welcomed us when we saw Karn at the airport (Indian friend doing MS in TUM whom I was expecting at Munich main railway station) came to take us.

This photo shows what was our first impression of Munich. The train showed is a model for Fast mass rapid transport system being developed.
Will Go on adding my experiences as time permits. :D