Get Out Of The Way, Bin

So, a very different day.  Up early (after sleeping horribly), and made my way over to Mainz for 9 to meet 2 colleagues. 

They'd hired a car and would drive us down for a conference/presentation thing in München on the Wednesday.  It was an uninteresting drive down.  I sat in the back of the car, and when you're on the autobahn and the people in front are talking, you hear virtually nothing.

We found our hotel quite quickly. It was, as they say in German, Jot Vay Day*.

We had a bit of time and so deceided to have a bit of a walk.  They let me lead the way.

This was a mistake. 

I love nothing more than walking around München, even the bits where I'm not sure where I am.   I found the Englischer Garten relatively quickly (OK it was 45 minutes from our hotel to the start at the very North End of it), and then we proceeded to walk from there all the way though to the Hof Garten.  And from there in to Marienplatz.

They knew they'd been for a walk.

I took them somewhere for a blether and restorative brew, where we proceeded to talk shop for about 2 hours.

It was great fun getting to know them a bit.

We then headed to the restaurant to meet our hosts, who were paying for us to have a meal and to chat for an evening.

There was, as ever in Bayern, way too much to eat.  We managed to get through until 10:30, and then we really needed to get back to the hotel (the walk was quite long).  Cue comedy taxi driver, who told us that our address didn't exist and neither did our hotel.  He insisted he was right, just up until the point where we said "turn left here, there it is".

The hotel was not a luxury hotel.  No heating in the rooms at all.  Really narrow beds - I think mine was 80cm, and the quilts were as thick as hankies.

I spent most of the night waking up cold.

I am not a happy man when I am cold.  Esecially when I felt the first symptoms of the lurgy reappearing...

I love München but only when I'm well.

*Jot is the German pronunciation of the letter 'J', Vay is 'W' and Day is 'D'.  Taken together this stands for "Janz Weit Draußen".  The expression comes from Berlin.  Where they do mangle Gs and Js, you'll hear "Jut" there instead of "Gut"a lot.