Munich; Friday, 19 December, 2014

Last day in work before Christmas and it was either going to drag until lunch, or I was going to end up in a frantic rush to get everything done before disappearing off.

Thankfully, it turned out to be a dragging kind of morning so I was able to clear my desk, power down my PC and meander out of the building the moment my annual leave kicked in and make a break for the airport.

A slightly fraught journey across town, with every connection just failing and every traffic light appearing to be red got me to the airport with just 90 minutes before departure. Not good when the queues for security were approaching an hour. Thankfully I was able to go through the FastTrack route and skipped at least 50 minutes off the queue.

The plane left on time and it was an uneventful flight to Munich, but landing into some un-forecast drizzle suggested that the weather wasn’t looking good.

A quick journey through the airport, albeit with my bag being one of the last ones off the carousel, and down onto the S-Bahn, this time however the connection working with the train leaving a minute or so later.

I got off the S-Bahn at the Ostbahnhof and picked up the U-Bahn out to Neuperlach Zentrum to change onto the bus, by now the drizzle was down to a heavy downpour so I leapt on the first 197 bus I saw, just outside the station, without first checking whether it was a clockwise (Innenring) or anti-clockwise (Außenring) service. It turned out to be an Innenring service that took nearly 20 minutes to get round to the hotel, rather than the 5 the Außenring service would have taken.

However, by the time I got to the bus stop for the hotel the rain was back down to just a mild drizzle, so I was able to get over to the hotel in relative dryness and check-in.

By now it was nearly 9pm and I decided just to grab a quick bit to eat, and a drink in the bar before turning in for the night.