Date: 24 October 2015, Weather: Sunny
First time on Qatar Airways, connecting at Doha Airport to Munich Recently, when I take a long vacation (*only in Japan, in the rest of the world it’s called a short vacation), I usually take a Friday night flight. I can make good use of the time. I flew Qatar Airways for the first time this time. Recently, I have been using Middle Eastern airlines more and more because of the price (surcharge is cheap) and the fact that they have many late night flights. If you are not in a major city in Europe, there is basically no direct flight. On October 23, after finishing work, I took the Narita Express from Tokyo Station to Narita as usual. This time I went to Terminal 2 for the first time in a long time. As usual, the Narita Express in the evening stopped at Yotsukaido and Narita (not the airport) in addition to the airport, which may have been for commuters. I met up with my wife here. Then, I picked up my trunk which I had sent earlier, took a shower, completed various procedures and passed through the security gate. Normally I go to take a shower in the airport before this, but Terminal 2 is located after the security gate, so I had to finish there first. And after that, we boarded. I had a light meal and went to bed on the plane as usual. I sleep well on night flights. The Qatar Airways flight was very comfortable, even in economy class. The flight went very smoothly and we arrived at 4:00 a.m. local time. It was my first time to visit Doha airport and I thought it was quite comfortable. Souvenir shops are also well stocked. I think it was less than Dubai and more than Abu Dhabi. By the way, I was surprised that the PC that can be used for free that often exists in the airport was Mac. However, since there are smart phones these days, I guess many people use the free WiFi at the airport and use their smart phones for email and internet. The connecting time is about 4 hours, so I had a light meal and coffee, and waited while playing games (Dracula 8 on 3DS) and playing with my iPhone. From here, I fly to Munich. The flight time is about 5 hours. The long journey started again. Arrival in Munich
Arrive in Munich after 6 hours of Francs. We arrived after 1pm local time. I think this is the first time for me to arrive at Munich airport since my trip to Germany in 2008. As soon as I got off the plane, I thought it was small and cramped, but after thinking about it, it might be my first time to arrive here. I only used it for departure. That’s why I didn’t remember the facilities of the arrival system.
We will pick up our luggage safely and head for the city. We will stay in Munich this day. We are going to have a dinner with my parents who are in Munich. We will take a train to Munich city by S-Bahn. The fare is about 10 euro. I tried to buy a ticket from a vending machine, but I had no idea how to buy a ticket for two people. Fortunately, a kind German helped me to buy a ticket. It was so crowded and confusing that I didn’t have time to take a picture, so I can’t tell you how it was, but it was really difficult to understand. I don’t know why it’s so strange.
I got on the S-Bahn at the right time and arrived at Munich Central Station after 40 minutes of shaking. It’s quite a distance from the airport, isn’t it?
If you use Gmail or Google Calendar, the location of the hotel you’re staying at will be recorded in My Maps as soon as you receive a confirmation email, which is really convenient. By the way, the hotel schedule is automatically recorded in Google Calendar too.
We arranged the hotel in front of the station. Hotels in Munich are very expensive. I thought it was in front of the station, but it was quite far from the station when I went there. I think it took 7 or 8 minutes on foot.
Such a hotel is a modern type of hotel that seems to be located near the train station. It’s a little bit downtown area with Arab street nearby, but it was clean and good atmosphere. The photo is a card key. In the case of card key, sometimes I forget the room number, so I often take a picture like this.
Buy a prepaid SIM from O2
部屋に荷物を置き一休みしてから、ミュンヘンの街へと繰り出しました。しかし、目的は観光ではなく[highlight]プリペイドSIM購入[/highlight]です。ミュンヘンの駅からマリエン広場へと続く繁華街まで移動。そこにはVodafone、DeutschTelecomなど馴染みの通信会社のお店がありました。
These are major telecommunication companies in Germany, DeutschTelecom is like NTTDocomo in Japan. The SIMs of these companies are easy to communicate throughout Germany, but the price may be expensive. However, I decided to buy a SIM from DeutschTelecom because it is a prepaid SIM and it is easy to communicate. I went to Vodafone because they were out of stock. However, the clerk was too busy to deal with the customers, and I had no idea what type of SIM they sell even if I looked at the display in the store, so I decided not to go there either.
さて、どうするか。そこで見つけたのが「O2」というキャリア。
O2 | Mobile Phones, Mobile Broadband and Sim Only Deals on O2 http://www.o2.co.uk
I don’t know if I’ve heard of it before…. However, I decided to buy a prepaid SIM here, although I don’t know about the ease of connection, because there were a lot of clerks and the price system of the prepaid SIM was easy to understand. I bought it here.
データ通信専用、1ヶ月間有効で5GBまで使えるもの。料金はSIMカード代金込みでジャスト30ユーロでした。
The procedure is very smooth. At the support counter, you tell them what type of prepaid SIM you want, show your ID (passport), register your personal information, wait for about 5 minutes, and then you get a receipt. After waiting for about five minutes, the receipt was issued, and I took it to the cashier counter, where they processed the payment and activation. After the activation, I was told that it might take 5 or 10 minutes to be able to use the phone depending on the case, so I should try using it after a while, and if it still doesn’t work, I should come back.
Apparently, it took about 10 minutes for our SIM to be activated. I was worried that the connection speed was too slow; it was 3G, not LTE. twitter and GoogleMap are fine, but internet browsing seems to be quite difficult. This is a problem….
ところが、後ほど判明しましたが、どうやらミュンヘンの繁華街でのつながりが悪かっただけのようで、ホテルへ戻ってきてから、そしてその後ドイツの各地へ行ってからは、一切問題なくとても快適に使うことができました。
Right after I bought it, I gave up thinking that I had no choice but to buy it and use it even if it was slow, but as it turned out, it was comfortable all the time and a great decision to buy it.
Met up with my parents for dinner, enjoyed the beer and meat.
Then we met up with my parents who came back from the Deutsches Museum just after sunset, just after 6:30 pm. They have been in Munich for about three days. We hadn’t eaten since the flight from Doha, so we were starving. As soon as we met up, we headed out to eat. It was difficult to choose a restaurant because all restaurants in Munich were crowded on Saturday, but somehow we could find a restaurant called « Augustina » behind Frauenkirche, which was owned by a microbrewery.
Here’s a classic Weisswier.
And pretzels, of course. Once you get used to them, though, these are delicious.
And the Bavarian-style meat dishes on parade. It’s fun to order a variety of food for a large group. My parents thought it was too much rock salt, so they ate it without it. I think they were right.
It was cold, so we had soup (zuppe). I forgot what kind of zuppe it was.
We had a great time talking about my parents’ trip, which they had arrived 3 days earlier, and our journey so far. After a great time, good food and beer, we left my parents (their hotel is around here) and walked 15 minutes back to the hotel. We went to bed around 10pm.
我々の本格的な観光は明日から。どうやら暫くの間天気は良さそうなので期待大です。（続く）
