On the morning of the 7th of January 2011 I was very hungover. I was in the 4you Hostel in central Munich, with my brother, Murray. After a fantastic holiday in the wonderful city I decided that my final night there should be a drunken one. Munich’s a great place to do just that. I’d bought a few beers at the local underground supermarket for about 60p a bottle, and insane price for such quality beer, and started drinking them in the hostel room at around 4PM. Murray and I were bored, so we went downstairs to the well-equipped lounge of the hostel. We, just as we had the previous couple of nights, played an hour of pool. Murray won. We went downstairs to the bar for a couple of dranks. Murray asked me to order him a rum and Coke.
“Do you want it strong?”, the clearly bored bartender asked. It’s early January, and I think Murray and I are the only people staying in the whole, rather large, hostel. The bar was empty. “Uh, yeah please”, I replied. Here in Glasgow, you order a rum and Coke and you get a standard 25ml measure of rum. Apparently in the 4you Hostel bar in Munich, you get about 4 shots worth, and the coke from a 1L plastic bottle. I was impressed. I myself ordered the special “Hofbrau Taster Pack”, which was €9.00 for 3 pints of each of Hofbrau’s beers on tap, and 2 shots of Jägermeister. An odd combination, sure, but one that went down a treat.
Bearing in mind I’d already had 2 or 3 pints, the 3 more and the 2 shots had me more than slightly tipsy. We went back to our room. I decided that this wasn’t enough for me, and went out for a walk to the marvellous Hauptbahnhof, where there were 2 branches of Yorma’s, which I guess is basically Gregg’s but it sells cheap but excellent beer. On our first day here, I saw a one litre can of something that I can’t remember the name of. I’d never seen a 1L can of beer before, especially not a 1L can of 10% lager. €3. I had to have it.
I can only describe the taste as “not great”. I was to be tasting it again soon, though.
I was absolutely smashed. I drank my classy Special Brew outside the train station, whilst talking to a Frenchman who didn’t speak English. There was a good 15-20 people having beers. I assume it’s the norm. Here you’d be arrested and sent to jail forever.
Back to the hostel I went. I don’t really remember any interaction with Murray. I did go back to the room, but felt the need to vomit build up rather quickly. Off to the toilet I go.
Long story short: I threw up on my balls that day.
So there I was, the morning of our departure from Germany. I was hungover, a tad. Murray’s flight left quite a bit before mine, so we decided I’d spend an extra couple of hours wandering around the city before I went to the airport and Murray would just get the bus now. Off he went, not to be seen for 3 months. Off I went, to the supermarket for beer and chocolate and Stroopwafels to bring back.
I filled my suitcase with beer and Jägermeister. It came to something like £23. Shopping for beer when you’re hungover isn’t great, you end up just taking as much random crap as you can. Not that any of it was crap, but I’d rather have gotten more hefeweissen than helles. O well.
I got on the bus to the airport. €10.50 from the city centre right to your terminal. I was flying easyJet to EDI, so my first port of call was to ask someone where I was to check in. “Desk Z”, the lady said. Finding desk Z when you’re as hungover as I was in such a large airport, alone, with no real experience of airports is a daunting task. I spent maybe 30 minutes finding it. Before I checked in, I made sure to wrap all of my glass bottles in newspaper and clothes. My case came to 17.5Kg. I could’ve fit another couple o’ beers in there afterall.
After checkin, as you would expect, I went to find my plane. The queue for security was insane. There was a plane for Moscow that had about 7 families where they all had a member leaving or something. They were all emotional and crying and frankly holding me up like a bunch of dicks. I got through eventually, security was quick.
I was disappointed to find I wasn’t allowed to use the duty free shops, since I was flying within the EU. I had some Euros left that I didn’t want to convert back into GBP, so I bought an unreasonable amount of Mezzo Mix for the plane, which is Coca Cola and Fanta mixed together. It’s excellent.
After a reasonably short wait, my plane’s boarding was announced. easyJet don’t like using airbridges, so I had to get on a 10 minute, packed bus ride to the plane. I tactically placed myself near the door so I could get out first and get a decent window seat. Getting to Munich was an entirely different affair. Murray had spent some airmiles on getting us BA Club Europe tickets from GLA->LHR->MUC. He’s already written about this trip here, but I will say that I loved the lounge access for the booze, the seat 1A I got, and just how generally nice the cabin crew were.
Now, in contrast I was flying easyJet this time round. I’ve seen enough Airline to have heard some horror stories.
I got in pretty quickly and found this window seat just behind the wing.
We took off, as advertised at 14:00 on the dot by my watch. As someone who doesn’t fly often, in fact the aforementioned BA flights were my first since easyJetting EDI->STN in January 2006, I was excited that this would be my first daytime flight. I had hoped that the weather would be good enough to see cities and the sea, but alas it was cloudy the whole way there. The sun was rather annoying, since I was on the east side, but I didn’t close my blind in case the clouds disappeared over the UK.
Contrary to my expectations, the whole easyJet experience was actually great, considering that it had cost me just £27 to fly around 1,000 miles. ScotRail’s £9.05 with a railcard for 60 miles ain’t got shit on this. That said, don’t forget that I was somewhat hungover. The turbulence got pretty hefty at times, though I enjoyed it quite a bit. The gentleman sitting next to me didn’t. He was sweating and gripping his seat tightly, I liked to imagine that he peed a little also.
The captain, in a thick Scottish accent, announced that we would be landing 5 minutes ahead of our 15:25 expected landing. We landed at EDI at 15:20.
We used an airbridge this time round. I went to the passport checky man after what felt like a 3 mile walk from the plane. He was angry and shouted at me, because my 2 week old passport was slightly bent from having been in my back pocket.
The baggage claim took an eternity. I got my bag and walked out of the airport, about 40 minutes after landing, with no concrete plans as to how I would get back to Glasgow. There was a taxi steward at the rank so I thought I’d ask him. He told me the best option would be to take the bus to the train station. So I queued for a further 30 minutes as countless busses filled up before it was my time. Getting my 17.5Kg suitcase into the provided rack is a difficult task. I got off and went into Waverly station, and caught a train to Glasgow. Followed by a quick stop by Burger King, I then walked home.
I passed out in the hallway for a few minutes, until my flatmate’s parents came in and gave me a look of judgement I’ll never forget. “I just got back from Munich, I’m pretty hungover”. His mother still judged. His father gave me a look of “Ah yes, been there, done that, brother”.
