土曜日, 4月 30, 2005
Hello From Romantic Munich!
Whew~ Finally I found time to face my PC on a non-business related activity. What do you know, I'm almost a week in Munich and in a couple of hours, I'll be flying back to Tokyo where my connecting flight to Manila will be.
My Munich experience has been a whirlwind of wonder, awe, confusion, lost as in"lost in translation", lost as in couldn't find my way to the office and discovering a whole new world that is called Europe.
For starters I bonded with some of the Core Team through lots and lots of Weiss beers, pretzels, and huge servings of steak, roast pig, roast beef, meatloaf and of course the very famous German sausages. This is a pretty interesting team, different personalities, different nationalities, different areas of specialties, gathered together for one purpose ~ to define a global standard for our Sales Process. Most of the way, it was pretty cool, some other times (and I mean off the session rooms) these guys could be such bullies. I don't know it's probably a cultural thing, but I find English humor too below the belt. The Irish ladies though are so engaging and surprisingly too supersticious.
Next things I learned, tank ka is for thank you, ausgang is for exit, toiletten is obviously for restrooms, and this is very important, damen is for woman/lady, herren is for gentleman. Why the emphasis? Simply because there are restrooms that barely write the intials, yes you read it right, just the initials, without even drawing the girl and the boy logo. How dangerously weird.
It's encouraging though that some of the German words sound like American English words. I had this fascinating lost in translation experience with Mc Donalds. I was taking a long walk, figuring out how to go to the train station (and buying the ticket in trains and subways is another interesting story) when I passed by McDo. I decided why not try how's it like in McDo Munich. So I ordered a McRib Set Meal. The cute crew asked my order I thought it was my lucky day hehehe. But it turned out he couldn't speak a single English word. And so we ended up with sign language, hahaha. It was a pretty interesting experience. Now I appreciate how Johnny feels when he was in Tokyo, hahaha.
Speaking of food, I completely fell in love with Pretzels. And what's interesting about the Pretzels is they usually go with the Weiss Beers, which I happen to like too. But I learned one important lesson here. Never take more than 2 German mugs of Weiss beer if you're totally spent on walking and with empty stomach. I learned my lesson the hard way. Last night, I thought I'd celebrate my 'single blessedness' by the streets of Munich. And I got too much of a drink I could barely get back to my hotel. I remember the last time I got so drunk like this, like I literally crawled into my house was like 6 years ago. Of course I have decency left with my 1% conscious mind, so I mustered all my strength as I walked through Victor Residenz' lobby. But I puked! Worse, I puked on my newly bought bag good thing it's just a Gerbaud. I'm one stupid girl. No amount of justification could prove otherwise....but I did have a great time!
I learned from the sightseeing tour I found myself joining is that beer gargen in Germany is a store where you can bring all the food you wanna bring, and all that is required of you is to buy beer there. Cool, isn't it? I also realized that Germany is one country that is so passionate about arts, with all those huge and old museums. They are people who make great use of their time by cultivating their artistic talents. Even in modern Germany, I think this still remain true. We passed by the English Garden, the biggest public garden in the world, and there were young musicians playing classical music. By young I mean early 20s and their audience are young couples, lying lazily on the grass in a beautiful Thursday afternoon. That is so romantic! Young and old German couples are so expressive of their passion, which is I must admit a little bit envious.
Munich has over old 150 castles, cathedrals. Looks like King Ludwig I & II were so enchanted by fairy tales that they build huge castles, great streets with great architecture to pair with, and of course for every castle, be it a royal castle or university, there's always gorgeous churches. As I sit on the little parks looking at all these wonderful medieval buildings, I can't help but daydream of the past, where Kings and Queens and Prince and Princesses rule the land, I can think of romance and war and art, and theaters. I could have perfectly fit in that kind of world, where I'd meet my Prince and we'll share passion for theater, for arts, for music and travel and books and we'll fall in love and retreat into the country side where we'll build a beautiful castle on top of a hill overlooking a peaceful lake and there we will live happily ever after. Ahhh ~ I could speak of love for the rest of my life!
So much for day dreaming, get over yourself! Hehehe.
But if you think about it, in Munich it is easy to meet people. I learned one trick. There are great walking paths here where there are tree sheds and benches. I ate my McDo in one of the benches, and then all of a sudden there was this golden retriever that approached me, seeking for attention. And then after a couple of minutes out came the dog's master. He apologized for the inconvenience and started to talk. Smooth. Thank you for the interest, but no thank you. Another thing that could work with you here is the ignorance of the German culture and language. German guys find it cute that I'm completely clueless about their traditions. Oh well, it surely boosts my self-confidence high up in the sky, hahaha. But this is the smoothest approach, Victor Residenz' room keys are a little bit too old fashion and there's a special trick that you need to master before you could skillfully open the door. I suck at it. One morning, I was completely frustrated for failing to open my room. Then there's this cute guy who approached me and said something wrong? I said I couldn't open my room. And then he tried it, and walla~ But being the tame and oh-so-uptight me, these chance encounters are really not my cup of tea.
# posted by Unknown : 5:24 午後
Thanks for visiting!