Snowy Munich
Despite the fact that we successfully checked in online for our flight to Munich, we still had to get up at 4am 
4am on a Saturday morning in December is not a pleasant sort of time, all the more so because it was literally tipping it down with rain. The world’s most talkative taxi driver refused to drop us right outside the terminal building, so we had to walk quite a distance in it and ended up very wet indeed Feeling rather tired after a week at work I was desperate for a coffee, and as soon as we got through security, the plan was to head to Costas. Security was unfortunately rather a nightmare on account of it being a Saturday, and by the time we made it to the departure lounge there were only twenty minutes until boarding. That ought to have been long enough to get a drink, but sadly the queue in Costa was so long and the staff so inefficient that my sister and I were literally just in the process of paying for our lattes when my mother arrived to tell us the flight had been called As you can imagine, I wasn’t a happy bunny and it’s made me question the whole value of ever checking in online.
The flight across was pleasant enough, although cloudy so there wasn’t much of a view. Lufthansa provided the obligatory cheese sandwich, although it was far too early for it to seem an appetizing prospect. By ten we were hovering above Munich, and it was with extreme astonishment that I noticed as we came in to land that the ground beneath us was covered in a beautiful blanket of white 
Snow was indeed what was needed to make it a perfect wintry weekend, but I don’t think any of us had reasonably expected it, especially as it hasn’t been particularly cold in England of late.
The journey from the airport into Munich proper takes about fifty minutes on the S-bahn. The journey is normally a bit dull, the surrounding countryside being utterly flat, but the snow made the fields quite delightful and it passed in no time at all 
The airport itself was very Christmassy, having it’s own little market, but we were there so early in the morning that it hadn’t actually opened for business yet. It struck me at this point that I had managed to get all the way to Munich in the time it would normally take me just to get out of bed and have a bath on a Saturday morning 
There was something comfortingly familiar about arriving into Munich Hauptbahnhof, despite the fact that it’s been the scene of many of our past railway-travelling disasters. At least we know where the baggage lockers are, although the very existence of baggage lockers in a station which is far, far bigger than even London Euston never ceases to be a source of amazement to me. We were starving hungry by this stage, and struck out into Munich to see what sort of exciting food the markets had to offer.
It was absolutely delightful to see Munich, a city which I have only ever visited on bright sunny days, covered in Christmas decorations. Everything was so much more tasteful and discreet than in Britain, the decorations plainer and less colourful but still attractive. The Christmas markets started at Stachus, where an enormous ice rink had been built on the site of what is in summer a striking fountain, and stretched all the way down the main street, into the famous Marienplatz and beyond. It was interesting to look at the stalls and assess how different they are to those which come to the UK purporting to be authentic German markets. There was far less food than there typically is in the UK, and more craftwork. I was also surprised by the number of stalls which were simply selling fruit
Anyways, we found a man who was selling delicious little Nürnberger sausages in rolls and treated ourselves to a few before heading down to the Schrannenhalle. If you’ve never been to the Schrannenhalle, I’m not really sure how to describe it. I believe that in a former life, the building used to be an undercover grain market. It’s certainly a big hall which had some sort of industrial usage in days gone by, and has recently been converted into an attraction for the people of Munich. There are a few shops of a crafty sort of nature inside it, but the main draw is the food. There are countless numbers of little restaurant outlets dotted around the edges of the building, with large open seating areas in between. It’s a good place to go on a date with someone whose taste in food is totally dissimilar to your own, because you can sit at any of the tables and order off any of the menus. So if you want to eat Italian whilst the person next to you wants to eat Chinese, it’s perfectly possible. Actually I ought to take Babel there!
This time we weren’t going for a full meal, of course, but rather just for coffee and I was very excited to be served my first latte macchiatto of the weekend. It may be that no one who reads this is entirely sure what a latte macchiatto is, because England seems to be peculiarly devoid of them. It’s not the same thing as a normal latte… I think the difference is something to do with the fact that the milk is steamed and then a small shot of espresso added to the top, and less espresso is used than in a typical latte so it would probably be good for strange people like Babel who don’t actually like coffee. The key feature for me is that you get it served in a beaker type glass without a handle and drink it out of a black straw. Some people are not a fan of drinking hot, vaguely coffee-like milk via a straw, but I find it quite addictive and sincerely lament the fact that it is not possible to such a think in Costas, or even my adored Caffe Nero Happily, latte macchiato is commonplace all over Germany, and so I have to make the most of my weekends abroad to drink as much as I can
Suitably fortified with caffeine, we walked back up to the vicinity of the Hauptbahnhof in order to find our hotel. I hadn’t been involved at all in the choosing of this, but I know my family had put a lot of thought into it because whilst the area around the station is certainly home to the cheaper hotels, there are a few dodgy streets and we once stayed in a hotel which contained artwork that would have been better suited to a brothel. Not that it bothered me, but some people have standards 
The Hotel Mark turned out to be the best hotel I have ever stayed in. The rooms were an adequate size, the bathrooms were clean, and the breakfast the next morning was plentiful. I have, however, stayed in many hotels with an adequately sized bedroom, a clean bathroom and plentiful breakfast, and that is not the reason this turned out to be my dream hotel. Oh no! You will have to wait to find out the reason later when I have got round to taking a photo of it
Having dumped our stuff at the hotel, we headed out once more to make the most of the rapidly diminishing daylight hours. Munich is fortunate enough to have an enormous public park called the Englischer Garten within easy walking distance of the city centre, and we were keen to see it in the snow. To call the Englischer Garten a park actually seems a travesty if you consider the scrubby bits of grass which go by the same name in this country. It’s a huge landscape garden, bigger than Central Park in New York, which has a river, waterfalls, areas for nude sunbathing and all kinds of weird and wonderful monuments including a Chinese Tower which in summer is home to a public beer garden. The most striking thing about the place in summer is the atmosphere; that is to say, it’s generally full of hundreds of very drunk Germans sitting in close proximity… and not glassing each other.
In winter it was something else entirely. The Germans don’t seem to share our paranoia about gritting pavements, so the walkways were all rather slippery, but it was worth the little frissons of tension when you thought you were going to fall flat on your face in a patch of ice for the excitement of seeing the garden covered in snow. Once we finally got to the centre we found a delighted Christmas market, very family orientated and nowhere near as hectic as the main market in the city centre. We managed to buy some authentic Lebkuchen which were thoroughly delicious and not at all like the things they flog in Aldi
By now darkness was falling. My mother was loathe to walk the whole way we had come back across the park, so my sister devised a clever route out the other side and round the outskirts. It was somewhat longer than the direct route though, and by this time I was really starting to feel the cold. Seriously, I don’t think I’ve ever been so cold in my life as I was this weekend, and that includes time I’ve spent in Switzerland walking in the snow! It was mostly definitely subzero, by virtue of the fact that the snow wasn’t melting, and despite the fact that I was not only wearing a jumper and two coats, but also a hat and gloves, I spent most of the weekend shaking in a somewhat uncontrollable manner. So it was that we decided we needed to go inside somewhere to get a proper meal and a blast of central heating
Fortunately we remembered an Italian restaurant which we’d eaten in during a prior visit to Munich and which does very good pizza. The waitress there was very friendly and complimented us all on our German We lingered as long as we could in the warmth before setting out once more; this time our mission was to visit a Mediaeval market which my mother had read about on the internet. It took a bit of finding but we got there in the end and it was worth it because it was so totally different to any of the other markets we had seen. I wasn’t so interested in the various crafty things which were on display, but there was a really cool atmosphere; in one corner there was a hog roast, in another there was a gluehwein tent selling the drink in mugs which wouldn’t have looked amiss during a banquet at the Round Table, and right at the end were a couple who put on a spectacular display of dancing with and eating fire
We took the opportunity to drink some gluehwein while we were there, and that definitely helped to warm me up. The markets actually don’t stay open too late, so we were back in the hotel and thinking about going to bed by ten. It wasn’t the best night’s sleep we’d ever had because there seemed to be a coach party of tourists making a lot of noise in the hotel bar until the early hours, but I was so tired after the early start that I was able to doze through most of it and felt almost refreshed when the alarm started going off at 7 am the next morning…