And I Think I Had Problems!
I had now not eaten anything, except for the fruit salad and an EatNakd bar since lunchtime on Wednesday, over twenty four hours ago. It hadn’t been helped on the train from Nuremberg, as the well-upholstered fraulein, ate a supersize baguette stuffed with sausage. So I booked into the Excelsior Hotel by the station and got connected to the wi-fi. I knew that usually good hotels can do a good gluten-free meal, if pushed. But this one probably couldn’t tonight, as they had a function on and cooking was limited.
But no matter, as I found this WordPress blog called Gluten Free In Munich. And with a bit of help from one of the receptionists in traditional Bavarian costume, with her frontage in full sail, I was able to get directions to a gluten free restaurant.
But my problems were really quite small compared to those of this guy here.
Starbucks Don’t Do Gluten-Free In Germany
One of my standbys in the UK is Starbucks, where at a pinch, you can usually get something that is gluten-free.
But not in Germany! The manager of this Starbucks in Munich, said they might be getting something later in the year.
Water At A Price
Or not as the case may be!
Water At A Price
It says €1.85 on the display, but they added twenty-five cents for recycling.
Why can’t the price be displayed as €2.10?
A Disastrous Attempt At A Meal
I tried to eat in Nuremberg and found it difficult. Eventually, I was served a meal, but as you can see it was cooked in flour.
A Disastrous Attempt At A Meal
I’ll say this though, they didn’t charge me.
What seemed lacking in all my searching was a restaurant that was serving something like a salad Nicoise.
Eventually, I bought a good fruit salad from a stall.
it Salad From Nuremberg
At least I got a fork with it.
German Rail Ticket Machines
These were excellent and worked in most common languages.
German Rail Ticket Machines
There were also lots of them and the queues were fairly minimal.
Rail Europe And Deutsche Bahn
In my trip, that i outlined in this post, i needed to book a sleeper from Munich to Paris on the night of the 12th of April. The oracle of all things rail, Seat61.com, recommended Rail Europe, so I tried that last night.
I don’t think I’ll be using that site again.
The main problem was that after choosing my ticket, the site seemed to get into a loop with Verified by Visa and in the end, the time limit to buy the ticket expired, with me not sure, if I’d actually bought a ticket or not. I haven’t had a debit on my account, so hopefully everything is alright,
Then, this morning, I tried to phone them to find out what had happened. After hanging on for several minutes, I got through and they couldn’t even find the account I’d created.
Another think about Rail Europe is they don’t take American Express, the card of choice for my travel.
I also wasn’t sure how they got the tickets to me. I think they are posted, which is not the best way to receive rail tickets if you might have left for Budapest.
So after trying to talk to the monkey for a few hours, I decided I had better talk to the organ grinder; Deutsche Bahn.
I chose the same ticket, at perhaps a few more euros, but at least I was able to get the ticket to my Inbox for printing easily.
Although, why you have to print seven pages for one ticket, I do not know. The British system of little orange cards is so more economical with forests. Incidentally, Easyjet did my flight out in one page.
So if you need to buy a train ticket to, from or inside Germany, I’d use the Deutsche Bahn web site. But isn’t this just the same as buying a ticket to Derby on the East Midlands Trains web site, as I did this morning?
Rail Europe may have failed to sell me a ticket, but they didn’t deduct money from my credit card account.
It was
Dark Skies Over Germany
I met a German visitor from Bremen on the top of One New Change.
She said that the winter there had been the darkest since 1951.
Educating The Germans
I’ve just read this piece on the BBC’s web site called “Affection for Britain brews in Germany”. Part is about the Germans new-found love of tea and the author, Stephen Evans, says this.
The office of one of the Green MPs in the Bundestag, you see, has made a collective decision to switch from coffee to tea.
So when I was there the other day, I was relentlessly quizzed about brewing times – they seemed to want the correct answer to the very second – and which tea to use.
I was not much help, except to say, “Make sure it’s a strong, black tea, probably Indian.”
They had made a bad start, offering me a cup of insipid weak Darjeeling, which would have shamed a gnat. They had not made sure the water was boiling.
It is definitely a piece worth reading.
What everybody forgets is that the Great British Breakfast is actually the Great German Breakfast, as in the Victorian age, everywhere had their German delicatessen which introduced bacon and sausage to many in the UK. The Germans had to leave, when there was a bit of trouble with the Kaiser in 1914.
Another Urban Fox Attack
There is a report of another fox attack on a baby. Happily, it doesn’t seem to be too serious and not outside the capabilities of the NHS.
One of my friends is Korean and I asked him, if they get these sort of problems in Seoul. he said that they don’t and he felt, there was many wild animals in the city except for rats and mice. This is confirmed by this post from a blog.
But how many other cities in other countries have urban animals, that aren’t always cuddly?
This is a story about wildlife in Berlin.
So it’s not just a British problem!
The German Jihadist
This cautionary tale is in the Daily Mail and a few other papers.
let’s hope his story deters others from joining.
The Anonymous Widower 