Dylan Schiemann

On April 30th, I flew from Amsterdam to Munich. Unfortunately, This meant missing the bulk of the Queen’s Day festivities and the million or more people crowding in the city. That said, I’m part German and Irish, and I was excited to start exploring my ancestral roots!

The lounge in Amsterdam was pretty lacking in the food and service department, but provided a reasonably quiet place to hang out prior to my flight. Lufthansa’s (and perhaps other European carriers) definition of business class on a regional jet is: no one sits next to you, you get a meal, and a curtain and sign between your section and the rest of the plane. It was somewhat amusing when a passenger inquired about sitting in the empty row behind me. The flight attendant said no, and explained that it was for business class passengers only. Given that it looks identical to coach other than the divider curtain, it made me laugh because she stated it as if it was obvious that this section was somehow different and more extravagant.

I was disappointed that I did not get a passport stamp when arriving in Munich. For anyone traveling around Europe, if you want to collect passport stamps, you’ll need to connect through the UK or Ireland frequently, as they are not part of the EU customs region. I found the train into the hoptbahnhopf and was greeted by Tobias and Wolfram, the other two thirds of Uxebu. Tobias drove us to lunch where I has my first authentic German or Bavarian meal which consisted of a pretzel (of course) and a sort of ham steak. I received a bit of a driving tour of Munich on the way to Wolfram’s house. It’s a beautiful city with lots of parks and greenery and nice architecture.

At Wolfram’s house, we worked for a bit and then I met his wife and kids. His wife is from Spain, and their kids speak German and Spanish, but not English yet. After hanging out for a bit, Tobias went home to Augsburg, and Wolfram and I met a few other developers in the Kellar and had dinner inside a beer barrel. The waiter was initially impatient and kurt with me, so after I dished it back a bit, he was a lot more tolerable. According to Wolfram, waiters in Munich somehow think that people want to be treated poorly… I guess they want to be like New York.

The best part about the day was getting to see the German language spoken live, and to observe the culture of Germans. I see a lot of stubborn traits in me that I seem to share with other Deutschlanders. We seem to be picky and set in our ways, regardless of what that way is! I speak German like a preschooler… hopefully I can get up to kindergarten level by the time I leave Germany. My Deutsch vocabulary is reasonable, but my ability to construct sentences is long list since the days of Herr Parkhurst in high school back in the late 80s.