Germany and France and the Ridiculously Crappy Apartment

June 7th-June 11th

     And we’re back! Another post for another week. I promise that eventually I’ll be caught up to what I am actually doing at the time I post, but for now, I am posting about what I did two weeks ago. I’m in Spain posting about Germany. We haven’t even gotten to France yet. But we will in this post!!! At the moment, though, I am having trouble thinking in English. I’m not so sure if that’s good or bad… No se.

An old building.

     So leaving off from my last post: We awoke in Stuttgart and then took a train into Munich. The train ride was kinda long, so we were pretty much famished when we finally arrived. I had never been to Munich before, so we all just ambled out of the station and looked for ac  restaurant. My Mom HATES big cities and lucky us, we headed out of the train station to the worst possible area. Crazy traffic, many many people, and shady stores were everywhere we looked. Mom was not thrilled. We found a restaurant and ate amidst the chaos. 

I took a picture of Dad taking a picture.

     We decided it would be best if we stored our luggage in a locker and then took a bus tour around Munich rather than trying to fight our way through the crazy crowds. We had a few hours until we needed to meet our CS host in Dachau, so we did a one hour tour. It was nice I suppose. I REALLY felt touristy and I suppose I am, but I’m not used to such absolute tourism. But hey, we did get to see some cool stuff like, old buildings, trees, and more old buildings. I took a lot of pictures. Mostly of Dad taking pictures, though. Somehow he was more appealing as a subject.

     After the bus tour, we had a coffee, retrieved our baggage, and took a short train to Dachau where I promptly led my family 20 minutes in the wrong direction.  Then we walked twenty minutes back to the station and 10 more minutes to our actual destination. All of this with baggage. -__- My bad. 

Funny cup. Pahaha.

     When we finally did arrive, our hosts weren’t even home, so we ate pizza at a nearby (I’m talking literally next door) pizza place and waited until I saw them return. Our hosts this time were Fabian and Farah. Fabian was German and Farah was from Malaysia. Their cats were super cute too. Fabian’s birthday was the next day, so we watched them prepare some sort of weird looking cake with creamy berry Jell-o stuff on top. Fabian wanted to put more stuff on top, but Farah kept saying no because she was afraid it would over flow, so every time she looked away he would add a little more until finally he filled it a precarious amount. It was quite funny to watch. My family was tired though, so we all went to sleep before long.

     I’m sure for many of you, the name ‘Dachau’ rings a bell in your memory. Dachau is known for its concentration camp during WWII. Such a beautiful town with a horrible past. The next day, we went to the site of the camp and walked around for a few hours. I had visited Buchenwald before, so concentration camp stuff was nothing new to me, but it was new to Dad, Loni, and Mom. Needless to say, it was pretty sad regardless of whether I’ve seen it before. The movie was awful. Mom cried. Obviously.

Their Grumpy Cat.

     Enough sadness. After, we went to search for the palace in Dachau and ended up giving up in favor of lunch. The place I picked had a terrace with an amazing view, a funny waitress (who probably thought we were crazy), and tasty food. This lunch took nearly two hours. We did have a funny moment though, because when Dad asked the waitress something about beer, she responded and he said ‘Si.’ We all had a good laugh about that one (the next day, Mom said gracias, so Dad felt a little better). That was pretty much our second day completed.

     On third day, we convinced Mom to try Munich again and we set out for an open market we had seen on the bus tour. We found it, however, it was closed on Sundays. Great. New plan. Beer Garden for Dad. Garden for the ladies. Believe it or not, there was a beer garden inside of the English Garden which is basically just a really nice/big park. Dad got his beer, Mom got her park, Loni got her waterfall. We were content. And then we saw naked old men sunbathing. Eyes burning, we decided it was time to leave Munich. We had one last traditional German breakfast for dinner with Fabian and Farah and then the next morning we were on a train to France!

Dad loves his German beers.

     So we left Munich for Lyon. This is pronounced Lee-ON, not Lion as I had previously thought. I was quickly corrected by the French ticket man. Whoops. Anyway, we only wanted to stay in Lyon for one night, so I didn’t want to CouchSurf. I think it’s rude to only stay one night with a host unless it is an emergency simply because it really doesn’t allow enough time to get to know your host. So for this reason, I decided to book a little apartment for a night through Airbnb.com. This was my first time using it and I ended up picking a cute little apartment with a washing machine and WiFi. Both very important amenities.

     Let’s just say it didn’t start or end well. First, we couldn’t find the apartment and I had no internet to double check the address. After walking down the street about three times, I eventually found the place and lugged my baggage up three flights of narrow stairs. So okay. That’s not TOO bad right? Right. So then we walked into the apartment. At first glance it was okay. It looked much smaller than the pictures and way more dingy, but no big deal. Then we started looking a little closer. The apartment was NASTY. The couch looked as if it had never been cleaned. The living room was full of random things shoved into corners. This made it nearly impossible to climb the barely attached ladder up to the loft in which a large bed with unwashed, hairy sheets was situated. 

The English Garden's beer garden.

The light in the living room didn’t work, so I had to steal a light bulb from a broken lamp and put that in the ceiling fixture. I went to take a shower and there was no curtain on the window looking out into the street with more apartments and the shower was so small that if you closed the curtains, there was no room to move. Not only that, but the holder was broken so I had to hold the shower head above  me the whole time and that was only after I figured out how to use the broken knob to change the water from bath to shower. This isn’t all. Every time Mom opened the refrigerator, the apartment smelled like death mixed with the distinct aroma of rotten milk. The washing machine only soaked our clothes and never stopped, continuing all night long so we had to put our sopping clothes in plastic bags to pack them. All of this cost us over $150 for that one night. Seriously. WTF lady?! WHY ARE YOU RENTING OUT YOUR DISGUSTING APARTMENT?! NOT EVEN PRISONERS LIVE THIS BADLY!

     End of rant. End of post. The next one is much happier, I promise! Stay tuned folks! x

Rusty