Deutschland, endlich! Germany, finally!

Hallo aus Deutschland!

Ok, so today I've finally decided to start writing about my time so far in Germany. There are really so many things that I wanna write about. But for now I'll just be writing what has been going on. I'll delve into certain topics later.

This is not my first time in Germany though; in Dec 2003 I arrived in Frankfurt am Main with the TJ choir. We went on to Austria and we performed at a Festival in Budapest, Hungary. In Germany we visited Würzburg, Nürnberg and München. However, at that time I saw everything from a tourist point of view. Now... it's more in depth--staying as a resident, travelling in public transport, opening a bank account etc...

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We arrived in Munich at night. After getting my luggage I saw this huge BMW advertisement and I just had to take a photo with it:


We then went thru the customs where they randomly pick people to check on and I kena (was picked). The person in charge didn't bother checking though, after he asked me what I am here for. I tried to speak everything in German but my spoken German isn't very good. By the way, no photos for this post after the BMW one so it'll be a bit boring below.

Anyway we went out of the gates and someone was supposed to meet us. We loitered for some time before we saw a black lady walk towards us. Somehow we missed her earlier on. Anyway her name is Caroline and she's actually from Cameroon, Africa. She spoke English to us (well, now that she knows I'm in the 3rd class she insists on speaking German to me. More on that next time) but her mother tongue is French. We had to take 2 trains to reach the station near our residence area, Klinikum Großhadern. Caroline gave us a ziplock-type bag that contained lots of material about Munich, a Cafeteria card, monthly travel card, keys etc.

On one of the trains a conductor came to check on our tickets. Here in Munich (not sure about other places in Germany), unlike in Singapore and Malaysia, there are no "gates" to enter, you don't tap anything with EZ-link cards. They trust that you will buy your tickets or monthly passes. Well, they have a penalty of €40 though, if you are found out. They also have signs in the trains urging people not to travel without paying (Schwarzfahren).

So anyway, we had to spend some time locating a restaurant to have dinner at. I'll skip the details. We found an Italien restaurant and we had Pizza and Spezi, which is a mix between orange juice and Coke. After that I went to my new "room" in a block along Heiglhofstraße.

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More updates later... need some shut eye now. Going to Nürnberg tomorrow!