After my fiasco in Mainz, I was ready to head to my last stop of my German tour: Munich. The train ride from Mainz to Munich was about 4 hours, and I was very amused to see a candy store in the Mainz train station THAT several people attempted to go into, even though it was obviously closed at 9am in the morning. WHEN YOU NEED GUMMY BEARS, YOU NEED GUMMY BEARS. Needless to say, they were disappointed.
Bavaria is where I’ve always wanted to go in Germany, and I definitely want to go back. My most recent ancestors to immigrate to the US were German, from Bavaria, in the late-19th century. In my mind, what I wanted to see of Bavaria was not in cities like Munich, but instead smaller cities. I was pleasantly surprised by Munich—though of all of my German stops, it was the most touristy spot.
I didn’t have a lot of time in Munich and of all of the places I traveled on the trip, I had the hardest time finding acceptable lodging in the city. BUT I found a hostel by the train station that was okay. Not great. Not terrible, but okay. I took one of my strategic taxi rides to the Siegestor, which was decently far away. A modern rip off of the Arch of Constantine ordered by the Bavarian king Ludwig the I. It took a beating in World War II, but instead it was partially restored to remind viewers of the toll war.
Siegestor, 1852, Munich Germany, May 2018
After I finished exploring the Siegestor, I walked down Ludwigstraße until I got to the super touristy area of town with the Glockenspiel, Frauenkirche, and many many other things. I walked around a bit, grabbed some dinner, dessert, kept walking and taking in what I could of Munich’s historic center.
The next day was what I had been waiting for: my reasons for visiting Munich. The Glyptothek and catching up with a friend I hadn’t seen in years who was coming to see me from where she was currently living in Germany. I walked to the Glyptothek after enjoying breakfast and a coffee.
My so-called tour of colonialism continued. The Glyptothek was quiet, I had the place nearly entirely to myself, and I spent as much time as I could in each room. All in all, it wasn’t a terribly large museum, but every room had canonical works of sculpture.
While I was in the museum, it had started to rain, and not just little rain, but hard core pouring down rain. I met up with my friend for lunch, we caught up, walked around as much as we could in the rain, and had a swell time just shooting the breeze. It was fantastic seeing a familiar face attached to someone I hadn’t seen in a while.
Remembering to snap a selfie while momentarily stranded because of the rain!
Sometimes when traveling things go wrong. Sometimes it’s big. Sometimes it’s little. And sometimes it’s a series of things that just cause you to go mad.
The latter fits my trip to Mainz.
It started with confusing alerts about my trains being cancelled or me being unable to make my connection via the Deutschbahn app. This led me to be super nervous about making my connection in Frankfurt. Mainz is relatively close to Frankfurt so I assumed that it would simply be a matter of catching another local train.
My train left super early and with the confusing alerts, I decided to arrive well ahead of the scheduled time. Fortunately other travelers had decided to do the same. While I was waiting for the train, a man came up to me and asked me a question in broken English about his ticket, which he held out to me. For the life of me, I couldn’t understand his question, the ticket wasn’t for the same train as mine, and I found the German train system a little convoluted. I said, I’m sorry I don’t know. Apparently this response was NOT what they wanted to hear. He started to yell, but again, I couldn’t understand him. Thankfully, a man who was there with his family moved closer to me and stood behind me, gradually shying off the yelling man. This was the third uncomfortable/aggressive interaction I had had with a strange man since being in Germany (Portuguese man on the ferry, then one while I was at the Memorial to the Murder Jews of Europe, then this train guy).
Minutes before the encounter with an aggressive dude
Next, I ended up sitting in the wrong compartment on the train. The cars, instead of being labeled at the beginning of the car, are labeled at the end. I thought I was in car 12, but I was in car 14 (there was no car 13). After a few minutes I went to go get some food for breakfast, and when I came back there was someone in my seat. I said politely that I think there’s a mistake that I think that’s my seat, not in German of course. The lady of course spoke perfect English but her response was nearly hostile. Eventually, we figured out that I was wrong (it took too long b/c instead of just being like see this is car 14 she wanted to argue and refused to engage). When I finally said, okay but why doesn’t it have it labeled at the beginning of the car and it’s only labelled at the end after you’ve passed through the car, she softened a bit and chuckled and said that, yes, it was confusing.
The rest of the train ride was uneventful. My train arrived in Frankfurt and I was expelled into a mad mess of people. I feel as if I have to explain that I’ve traveled a lot by train. I love train travel. Most of my travel has been in Italy and France–both systems are easily navigable. Germany…I had my ticket, but I couldn’t figure out which number on the ticket my train to Mainz was the one on the departure board. I eventually figured it out and caught my train with no fuss.
I arrived in Mainz, excited to be outside of Berlin and in a different region of Germany. I was only staying in Mainz for one night and I chose a hotel right by the train station, or so I thought. Turns out, no, I kind of did, but it was up an incredibly steep incline that seemed ridiculous with my suitcase and backpack. I took a taxi because I really didn’t want to walk up the mountain and find out I had gone the wrong way.
After checking in at my hotel I rushed down the mountain to the museum I was there to visit and it was SLAMMED with people. I was so surprised to see it was full of people, but there was some exhibition that had a draw to kids. I wandered around the museum and kept expecting to see the stuff I was there for, but it wasn’t there. I was super confused and so I asked. It turns out, the stuff I wanted to see had been moved to another museum, several years ago. The collections still technically belonged to the museum I was visiting, and thus that’s how they were listed in the sources I found it in and nothing on the website indicated they were at another museum. The museum they were currently in, was closed the day I was in Mainz, and it opened after my train left the next day.
I was really mad at myself. I hadn’t considered the possibility that they’d be at a different museum than the one they were cited in. I had gone back and forth about keeping my trip to Mainz so short, and clearly I made the wrong decision. If I just stayed an extra day, there would have been no problem! But alas! This is the difficulty with planing a trip that moves so fast. Shit happens, literally.
So, I said to myself, “that’s okay! There are things OUTSIDE that I want to see. I will go see them.” I took a gander at google maps, assured myself of the coordinates, then walked in the direction of the first monument, and I began to see glimpses of the pretty part of Mainz. Just when I began to arrive near where the first monument, and most important, was there was a swirl of activity…barricades blocked the road, fences were blocking the park, and about 150 military vans and vehicles with their accompanying personnel. In the distance I saw the monument that I wanted to see, but between me and it, were the barricades, the humvees, the machine guns, and the personnel.
It was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I was exhausted and about a week into my trip (usually when the first round of tired hits) and I had been going non-stop. Things had not gone my way that day and I had a choice, Mainz wasn’t going to work research wise and all of my things to do in Mainz were for research. I had no plan for other things to do. The tired wore out. I decided to have an off afternoon, a thing I hadn’t had since arriving in Europe.
Ahhh yes, the best of all possible fast foods, ubiquitous in Europe, doner kebab.
Before hiking up to my hotel, I grabbed some doner kebab. The people in this small doner cafe were the warmest I had met in Germany thus far. A few families with small children were there and their antics cheered me. The prospect of doner also didn’t hurt. I ate my doner and headed up the mountain, and took a much-needed nap. I took the gift of a free afternoon, and I needed it sorely.
Fittingly, I only took 2 pictures from my day in Mainz, one in the train station before I got yelled at and then my doner before I ate it. The before and after of the worst day of my trip.
Chronicles of a Homebody Adventurer 
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