This is a map of the Munich subway system, which pretty much describes our morning on Thursday.
We technically had about 4 hours in the morning free for sightseeing, but about 20 of us decided to go see Dachau concentration camp, which should have been about 20 minutes by train, then a bus ride. Should have been simple...obviously, it wasn't. We started out on the right train, but going the wrong direction. We figured out our mistake within a couple minutes, but then we had to wait 15 minutes for the correct train. We finally got to the correct stop and waited for the bus. The bus did come, but the driver informed us that there was too much ice on the road (it was sort of drizzling out, but we hadn't thought anything of it) and therefore he would not be going. We walked back down to the train station, just in time to see our train pull out...had to wait 20 minutes for the next one. After that fiasco, some of the group went back to the hostel, some went to the BMW museum, and a group of us went back to the Old City where we were yesterday, intending to look through some of the shops.
Inexplicably, when we got there, virtually all the shops were closed. Some had notes posted...but obviously, they were all in German.
Found a cute little ice rink...future Olympians for Munich 2018? (Note the Munchen 2018 ad on the side of the rink.)
Eventually, we found a nice little cafe that was open, and had a fantastic (and cheap) lunch.
Part 2: Planes
After lunch, the entire class group went to the Lufthansa Flight Operations Center for a presentation from Sebastian Reidle, the director of marketing expenditures (or something like that). He also solved the mystery of the closed shops...it turns out that in the state of Bavaria, Epiphany is a state holiday...who knew!
Sebastian's presentation was fantastic. He covered a bit of background on Lufthansa, one of the largest airlines in the world. Then he moved into our class's topic, the Munchen 2018 Olympic bid. Lufthansa is one of the top 3 corporate sponsors of the city candidacy, so he discussed the choice by Lufthansa to sponsor the candidacy, potential benefits of hosting the Olympics, and how Lufthansa chooses what to sponsor. Some of the interesting notes to me were that Lufthansa is only sponsoring the bid, not the Olympic Games themselves, so their rights to logos, etc. end when the host city is announced. Also, they only have rights to the official candidate city logo within Germany, so the IOC forbids them from placing the logo on their airplanes, since those obviously travel internationally. Lufthansa will be placing a large gate over the highway outside the airport for 2 months, and placing many advertisements within the airport itself. The bridge pictured here will cost approximately 400,000 euros.
They also provided us with some nice scarves and hats supporting the Munchen 2018 campaign.
Following a class discussion at the hostel, we ended our day at the Hofbrauhaus, the most famous beer hall in Munich, and easily the largest restaurant I've been to in my life.
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