Muenchen! Ich bin hier!

I've arrived! I had an uneventful flight to Zurich, everything worked out quite well. I spent most of it sleeping with ear plugs in or listening to music. The flight landed at 8:40 and I cleared baggage, customs, and immigration by 9:00. The oddest thing about this was the "Nature noises" soundtrack playing in the tram car to the baggage claim area. What the heck Switzerland? I then picked up a train ticket to Munich that would leave at 10:50 and waited.

Unfortunately, I misplaced my ticket between the ticket booth and the Starbucks where I set up shop, which, if you're wondering, are approximately 10 yards apart. This I didn't realize until about 15 minutes before my flight left, so I scurried around the train station looking at every single place I went. I finally found it behind the counter at Starbucks (the guy who served me had put them in a drawer and his colleagues didn't look there when I asked if they saw them). I then rushed down to platform 1 just in time to see the train for Winterthur pull away (I'm not even exaggerating).

SO, I then went back to the ticket booth and bought another ticket, which was actually 11CHF or 5-ish Euros cheaper AND it was direct. So I waited a few more hours and then hopped on the train. It was also fairly uneventful despite my awkwardly huge suitcase (57 lbs (to my parent: sorry for the luggage charge)). The most remarkable thing was that the countryside looked like the quintessential Swiss and German countrysides that you always hear about.

The forests were dark, deep, and dense, with fog touching the tops of the trees and occasional wisps mingling in the lower branches. The meadows and farmlands were green, well kept and I saw quite a few livestock, including thousands of cows and a pack of baby goats (with mama and a herder). The shingles on the house were red and quite a few of them had ivy growing all over. Especially at the farm houses, I often thought "How old are these buildings? What are their stories?"

And now, at 9:30 PM (Munich time), I'm sitting in my hostel room with my 4 roommates, all of us on our computers. There's banging and shouts outside as only youth can produce. I would say I've had a good day, barring the small issue of finding the public restrooms at the train station and the snags I talked about earlier. Heck, I don't even feel all that tired.

Pictures will happen soon. I didn't take any in transit because I didn't want to be "That Tourist" and I also didn't want to misplace my camera or have it stolen. Ciao!