three nights in munich

Emmelle and I have been talking quite a bit recently about honeymooning in France next May. We've fantasized about splitting a 10 day trip between Paris and the south of the country, bouncing from one idyllic French location to the next. Amazingly, that excursion was supposed to be the first visit to Europe for either of us. No longer.

This past Monday (exactly one week ago), I received word from my German counterparts at work that it would be ideal for me to spend Friday in the Munich office to have a face-to-face meeting for an upcoming project. There were too many moving parts to cover on multiple hour-long phone calls, and it was decided that an in-person meeting would be the most efficient way to tackle the project's unanswered questions and unresolved processes. So that's how my Monday morning began; a scramble to find a plane ticket, hotel room and reorganization of my week to condense it into three days.

The only way to travel to Munich to be on time for an early Friday morning meeting is to fly out of SFO on Wednesday evening. I flew 11.5 hours to Zurich, Switzerland and another hour to Munich in Bavaria (a region in the southern most part of Germany). Along the way, the world skipped nine hours ahead, and the island displaced me across time and space from the comforts of familiar San Francisco to a Munich hotel room on Thursday evening (sorry too many Lost DVDs recently).

Friday - spend the day at work and realize that another trip may be necessary fairly soon, sparkling water in glass bottles is the only drinking water option, everyone wants to make me an espresso, we eat lunch at a traditional German restaurant that has been in the same location for 500 years, we walk around the downtown area - it is really a beautiful and charming city, we have beers at the end of the day at a nearby bar, one of my German counterparts recently came to this bar three weeks in a row "Prost!", the same dude comes out with me to multiple drinking spots during the night, we eat at the original Hofbrauhaus, I flee my co-workers in a cab.

Saturday - drunkenness and jetlag, I oversleep and miss a promised breakfast with a co-worker, he takes me sightseeing anyway throughout the downtown area, I go back to my hotel room and sleep throughout the day, I am not craving any German food and find some takeout Japanese that I pathetically take back to my hotel room, I elect not to sleep and watch an online stream of the Giants-Phillies game for the epic Lincecum-Halladay match up, I think about how I am holed away in my hotel room as Europe stares invitingly back at me through my window, I don't budge and pack.

Sunday - I'm back in Zurich waiting to fly back to SF. I want to come back to Switzerland; I am drawn to it but am not entirely sure why. At this point, splitting time between France and Switzerland for our honeymoon sounds like a great idea. Emmelle picks me up from the airport, it's time to sleep, and then go back to work...

I'm happy for the experience; I don't think I'll ever complain about having to make last minute international travel arrangements when it's all expensed to someone else's bank account. And Munich is a breathtaking international city with friendly faces and an enriching history. It was a great appetizer for our grand sojourn next summer.

But it never ceases to amaze me how frivolous corporate spending can be. I was in flight for roughly 27 hours to be in the office for eight. I spent another seven or eight hours just hanging out in airports. Just the cost of resource hours alone is quite significant, not to mention all of the last minute travel costs.

Additionally, I found it extremely difficult to coax my inquisitive and curious tourist sensibilities to come out and play during this business trip. Even with a full Saturday to explore on my own, I couldn't rally myself to do a little online research and explore a bit further than where my legs could comfortably and conveniently take me. With all of the interesting faces and architecture that I encountered, I didn't take one inspired photo or make one personal, meaningful observation. Maybe it was the booze, the hurried nature of my trip, the jetlag or the simple fact that Emmelle wasn't there.

I'm pretty sure it was actually everything, including the fact that I'll probably be going back fairly soon. It felt like a safety net; I wasn't worried about missing out because I can try it again next time (and do it better). It's a dangerous way to travel probably - you never know when a visit will be your last. And just writing that almost makes me feel like I've jinxed myself.

No, that can't be. As one great Austrian once said, "I'll be back."

Danke schoen.

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