Trip Report -- Day 2

Tuesday morning we arrived in Amsterdam. After clearing passport control and customs I checked into my Lufthansa flight to Munich. On my way out to the gate, I turned on my cell and called Debbie. To my surprise she had done the same and was about 200 feet behind me on her way out to the gate. I waited for her to catch up.

Our flight to Munich was running late so we wandered around Schiphol Airport and found some food. After that we sat out at the gate and stared off into the spot where our commuter jet should be.


Eventually our Lufthansa Avro-RJ arrived. The Avro-RJ is small short range 4 engine jet. This little jet was designed back in 1973 by Hawker Siddeley. With the nationalization of Hawker into British Aerospace, the plane was named the BAe-146. The early version was plagued with in-flight engine failures. Pilots and others in the know joked that BAe stood for bring another engine. British Aerospace changed to more reliable engines and wisely renamed the re-engined design the Avro-RJ. Avro's are quite rare in the USA. Anyone old enough to remember PSA might have seen one of their BAe-146s. US Air retired the PSA 146's shortly after they took over.


Once we were finally on the way, the short flight to Munich was fine. The LH flight safety demonstration was very Teutonic and too darn serious. I had a hard time not laughing. LH served us a light snack. Food was fine and very welcome.

Rather than taking an expensive taxi to our hotel, I decided to use the Lufthansa Airport Bus. The bus saved us about 50 Euros. We highly recommend using the Lufthansa bus and then walking or a taxi once you are in central Munich. The bus driver didn't speak English. Somehow the correct German for "2 one-way tickets to Schwabing, please." found its way out of my mouth. Even now if I try to think about it, I have trouble remember exactly how to say it.

The Munich hotel was fine although nothing special. Typical large corporate 3 star hotel. No personality, clean and comfortable if a little sterile and unfriendly. It just changed ownership and is now the Tulip Inn Muenchen Schwabing. The area is changing from low density industrial to mixed-use residential. There are some new shops located immediately behind the hotel. Useful if you forgot bar soap like we did. Many of the 3 star hotels in Europe have miserable liquid soap dispensers in the showers. This particular Tulip Inn also features killer shower curtains. Do be careful they attack without warning. Here is the view out the room's window:



The hotel is within walking distance of the now closed BMW Freiman customer center and the Englisher Garten. There is a U-Bahn station nearby that makes it easy to reach Central Munich. We'd stay here again, but now that deliveries have moved to a different part of town there may be better hotel options. We had dinner in a nearby bar / cafe. Food was fine. Waiter spoke zero English. Once again my miserable German saved us.