Arrival

Well, I made it to Munich safe and sound, no thanks to the two stops I had to make in London and Zurich. After the initial confusion of figuring out Munich's train system (not much english instruction), I made it to the hostel and got a bed. After a little what-the-heck-am-I-doing-here panic, I set about trying to get both a SIM card for my cell phone and a train ticket to Madrid, my next destination. Those plans failed catastrophically.

It turns out today happens to be a holiday in Munich, so most all stores were closed. The ticket reservation counters were open, however. I planned out how I was going to get to Spain weeks in advance. I knew what trains I was going to use, I knew what exact time I wanted to go, and I had hostels booked to stay in for when I got there. But fate had other ideas. Every single train going into Spain was completely full. The poor ticketing assistant was searching through the database for over half an hour looking for SOME WAY to get to Spain in the next few days. Unfortunately there were none. So...uh oh. All the hostels I had booked for later this week are in Spain, and I can't get to any of them. I have to cut Spain completely out of my schedule for now, and add it back again later.

Perhaps it was the folly of overplanning that made my needs so rigid, or perhaps it was the benefit that enabled me to quickly organize a new plan on the spot, and book a train ticket to southern France instead. I'll go to Spain towards the end of the trip, I hope.

I walked through most of the city tonight, but I'll talk about it later. Right now I'm so tired my eyes feel hot. Like starting to sting/burn from staying awake too much. An-zzzzzz..