Day 2: Munich!

Up very early this morning. Don't expect the houseboat residents appreciated our luggage clattering along the cobblestones at 5 a.m. Took the Heathrow Express from Paddington, then the quick flight to Munich.

Navigating the ring road in our hire car was fun, particularly when we started hitting cul-de-sacs courtesy of metal barriers that our sat-nav knew nothing of. [Aside: we later learned that one of the 'avoidances' we always leave on -- toll roads -- was unnecessarily complicating our routes; apparently most of the autobahns are marked as toll roads on our 2009 maps.] Eventually we made it to the hotel, though, and then took the U-Bahn to Marienplatz.

As we emerged from the subway, raised voices and music could be heard. Initially, we laughed off Tea's guess of protests, only to have it confirmed by a local shortly thereafter. Hundreds, if not thousands, of folks carrying and wearing "Atomkraft? Nein danke!" lined streets and pathways. [Now that I'm connected again, I'll let this Deutsche Welle story tell the tale:

A focus of the protest was the formation of a human chain, about 10 kilometers long, through the center of the city... Organizers said that some 50,000 people in all took part in the day's events, while police put the number at around 25,000.

...

Social Democratic Party (SPD) leader Sigmar Gabriel said that the turnout revealed the level of opposition to a planned extension to the operating lifespans of Germany's nuclear power plants...]

Tea successfully navigated around that excitement, bringing us to the decidedly more jovial bustle of the Hofbräuhaus am Platzl.

Well, I have to say, the Hofbräuhaus franchise in Las Vegas is excellent. Much as there, music, laughter and the general buzz of good cheer washed over us as we explored the many rooms of the former royal brewery.

A friendly British couple who are living in Munich invited us to sit at a Stammtisch or local table, where we enjoyed pork knuckle, cabbage rolls and schnitzel, as well as the house original and dunkel (or dark beer) and radlers (or shandies). [Funnily enough, the direct translation of radler is cyclist; h'm...]

The whole atmosphere of the Hofbräuhaus is fantastic. That such a tourist attraction still reserves over a hundred tables for locals, and lets them lock up their steins in the entryway between visits, just strikes me as so... right.

From there, we made our way to the beautiful Neues Rathaus, or New Town Hall, where they seemed to be setting up for a concert of sorts. We stayed in the plaza for the hourly Rathaus-Glockenspiel show, and then made our way to a local grocery store. An hour or so later, ladened with many tasty biscuits, peanut-butter 'cheezies', and a jug of Neuschwansteiner beer -- literally, and a beautiful vessel it is -- we headed back to our rooms at the K+K hotel on the crowded subway.

Up next: Schloss Nymphenburg and Dachau

[Also, don't forget that all these pictures and more are available in my Picasa album.]

Athens: touring amidst protests

The Parthenon

It's amazing what a difference a few hours make: we were off the ship and on the metro early enough to have pictures of the Parthenon with no one else in them. A few hours later -- after 10 a.m., say -- the wait was hours, and the place, a madhouse. By then, however, we'd enjoyed a snack -- more baklava and another pastry, called kadaifi on the menu -- and taking in the Temple of Zeus.

There was some sort of protest going on outside the President's residence, which, unfortunately, closed the nearby national gardens, so we skipped ahead on our itinerary and, as luck would have it, happened upon the changing of the guard outside the palace. Our luck continued as we found a covered patio moments before the skies opened, raining down buckets. And just as we were finishing up our fantastic Greek salads, the sun broke through again. (Oh, I tried ouzo for the first time as well -- very similar to sambuca, which I love.)

The Odeon

The Erechtheum

If you're as confused by all buildings as I was, check out the site plan on the Acropolis' Wikipedia page -- I could've used it a bit sooner!

Hadrian's Arch -- the Acropolis in the distance

We decided to catch the metro back to the ship at that point, and it's a good thing we did: the combination of the port authority jamming all the cruise passengers into a single line -- one of the cruise lines was registering hundreds of passengers who were about to begin their cruise, no less -- and a massive failure of the body scanners had us waiting for an hour to board the ship. And the worst part was that no one could tell us anything: Royal Caribbean personnel didn't even appear until half an hour had passed. With everyone pushing and squeezing closer and closer together, no air conditioning, no water, many languages, military dogs barking savagely... Well, honestly, you felt the anxiety approaching riot levels.

However, the worst moment for me was when a Greek soldier near the defunct body scanners pointed at me from behind their barricade, shouting, "Hey! You! Stop!"

The Temple of Zeus

I'd been filming (and photographing) all this, since no one from Royal Caribbean was around (at least, initially), and I figured they wouldn't believe me without some sort of evidence. (Some of the staff don't speak English very well, so it can really help things along if you have something to point at.) As the soldier hopped the barricade and approached me, I had visions of him taking my camera and smashing it, or simply confiscating it. Instead, he stopped beside me, pointed at the camera, and said, "Delete it!", watching and repeating the instruction as I deleted each video and photo in succession, back to a picture of Nancy and Stephen that I'd clearly taken on the docks. Then he simply nodded and walked back to their line. The adrenaline didn't hit me for a few minutes, but when it did, I was shaking for some time.

Tuesday, June 29, 2:30 p.m.: Epilogue

Stephen has an interesting theory about yesterday -- courtesy of his dad's speculations prior to our sailing. The chances of all three scanners failing simultaneously are astronomically small -- Stephen managed to find someone in the industry who claimed they're never interconnected -- so it's likely that at least one of the machines was working correctly, and they simply claimed that all of them were broken.

Why? Well, Greek government employees have been protesting government cuts to their wages (and benefits, possibly -- I'm not up on the details) for some time now, and the fact that the cruise line that was registering people seemed to cater to locals means that we could have been caught up in an attempt by the government employees -- both port authority workers and the army -- to gum up the works just enough to garner public support for negotiations regarding those cuts (even if only to get Greece back to normal from the layman's point of view).

I like the theory. Especially when you consider that all the scanners started working again simultaneously. Oh well, time to catch a few rays. Tomorrow we're in Naples (and possibly Pompeii).

Have a look at my Athens album for more pictures of the Parthenon and the Temple of Zeus:

2010 06 - Athens

Up next: Naples (our last port of call), Sorrento and Capri.