Our fourth day of travelling was
when our organisation ended. We had booked the hostels for Krakow and Prague in advance but we
were heading to Nuremberg with absolutely nowhere for us to stay when we
arrived. We thought we would give ourselves room to be flexible and it would be
easy to find hostels when we got to the cities. I don’t think we could have
been more wrong.
Unsurprisingly we got lost again
on the way to the train station, we walked at least twice as far as we needed
to and my bag definitely got heavier as we walked. When we finally arrived we
booked onto a coach which would take us to Nuremberg and headed to the coach
section to wait to leave. We had about an hour to wait so I headed to the
toilet as I was worried that the coach wasn't going to have one on it. I spent
about twenty minutes getting lost in the train station, when I found the
toilets of course you had to pay to use them so I spent some Euros on a big
bottle of water, got the change in chezch money, which I no longer had a reason
to use and then finally made it to the toilet.
When I got back to the boys I
told them I had had an absolute nightmare, Dan asked if it was because I bought
fizzy water. They really need to make it more clear which water is which. Fizzy
water 2 us 0. Karl then took our left over money from Prague to buy some “treats” coming back with
some proper water, an assortment of chezch pastries and a bread roll with some
bacon stuck to it with cheese. The best way to spend our money.
The Infamous Water |
What an appetising snack |
The bus finally arrived and of course it had a toilet, so I
spent money on the toilet and fizzy water for no reason, I thought after the
pizza woman stole from me my money issues would end not get worse. But get
worse they did. The bus journey was actually really relaxing, there was plenty
of room and unlike the trains there were no delays so that’s always a plus!
Dan ate the weird roll. Apparently it was surprisingly nice. |
Here is where I’d like to write about all the crazy things
we got up to in Nuremburg but unfortunately our un-organisation left us
stranded. We walked around the whole city, went into a couple of hostels to
check for room and then asked a helpful woman in tourist information if she
knew if there were any other hostels we could try (she was not helpful with her
response, turned out that there was no room in any hostel or inn.)
The only place we really saw in Nuremberg |
We did however find the "Noris Bikes" which would have been fun. |
We made the decision to head straight to Munich ; there would definitely be free
hostels there? It also wasn’t too late, so if we set off straight away we could
find a hostel in decent time. The train to Munich was an interesting one, the man
opposite Dan declared “I aint got no time for squeezing ma legs.” When he saw
his bag and we had to attempt to move it so the man would have enough room,
luckily he didn’t say anything else during the train journey so I think he got
over it.
As soon as we arrived in Munich we saw a banner a we left the station
for an A and O hostel which according to the sign was fifteen minutes from the
train station, we left and headed to where we hoped the hostel was. After
walking for about twenty minutes we decided we were going in the wrong
direction and turned around towards the town centre to see if we could find
anything there. The first thing we found was a “Pension” similar to a B&B,
we went in to find out it was run by an elderly woman who spoke very little
English. She showed us round hectically and spoke to us in very broken English
telling us about all of the things that were broken. It was a really homely
place but for some reason we decided to find a cheaper
hostel somewhere else. We spent hours walking around with absolutely no luck.
Eventually we tried a travel agent who was helpful and rang around a few
people, she printed off a map and we attempted to follow that to find
somewhere.
Taking a break by the little fountain. |
The first but not only fountain to cause as great amusement. More of that to come in Genoa. |
After a little more walking I noticed a notification on my
Ipod which only happens when I have internet, I looked at it and saw that we
had been saved by Eduroam, we were walking past Munich University and connected
to their internet. We quickly used it to find directions to the original hostel
we tried to get to. After about four hours of none stop walking and a day of barely
eating we finally made it to the hostel. Which was about five minutes past
where we originally decided to turn around from.
Never again will I complain about eduroam! |
Just when we thought things couldn't get much worse, we
walked into the hostel and were greeted by a large queue of people waiting to
check in. I asked the Australians behind us if they had prebooked for the
hostel or if they were like us and they replied saying they had and calling us “unorganised
bastards.” They also let us know that they couldn't be bothered with “bus s**t”
and had been flying everywhere. Lucky for some.
Eventually we made it to the checkout and managed to get
beds for the night, but we were going to have to find somewhere else to stay
the next day. With our day of aimlessly wandering around finally over we went
to bed, prepared to get up and book the hostels for the rest of our trip and
hoping that we would find somewhere to stay the next night without repeating the
days events.
Weird Sign of The Day
For more information on A and O hostels click here
Information on saviours Eduroam here
Follow me on Twitter here
Credit for the better photos goes to @dan_magid
@KarlTaylor7 was there too.