Would You Like Fries With That?

It’s not often as an Australian you can leave at midday to fly internationally with time spare to be locked out of your hotel, check out a museum, eat a pizza and do your laundry and yet that’s what I did.

I have left Amsterdam (for now) to take the weekend in Munich, enjoying a short trip in disco taxi – it had glittering lights inside – to Schiphol for a much smoother transit experience. Apparently, my row companion did not agree as she clutched the seat and screwed her eyes closed for the duration of the flight and one of the smoothest landings I have ever experienced. Kudos KLM.

I guess now I’m in the EU I won’t get to compare the relative attractiveness of border security as I simply picked up my bag and walked out of the airport into another Mercedes taxi. This one was content with remaining a minimum 20 kilometres over the sign posted speed limit, something I wish taxis in Australia would kindly observe rather than the more common 20ks under. In no time at all I was at my accommodation – a kind of weird corporate air bnb that requires you to sign into an app to unlock your door. Which as you may have guessed, did not work.

A few passive aggressive message exchanges with a bot that had the audacity to ask me if I was trying the right door and it finally sent a human with a physical key which she let me keep. Sensing perhaps that I was not in the mood to be fucking around with Siri.

Once inside I dumped my luggage, turned and left to catch the BMW museum, mood immediately lifted by a video chat with my nearest and dearest. BMWs, once another personal icon, have a bad habit of letting me down. The two I have owned were both duds. After touring the museum I don’t think my opinion improved much. I knew already that the company had started in airplane engines manufacturing and probably shouldn’t have been surprised to learn that the old Bayerische Motoren Werke profited significantly from both World Wars. First by supplying engines for the Luftstreitkräfte and then by pivoting to add arms manufacturing in addition to motorbikes and cars. In World War 2 the key deliverable became the BMW 801 aircraft engine made possible by approximately 40,000 slave labourers from Dachau concentration camp.

You’ll be pleased to learn that the company was banned from trading in airplanes and automotives after the war, surviving by making pots and pans until resuming their production in 1948 for motorcycles and 1952 for cars. What can I say, the jokes write themselves.

Heading home to my current abode, unperturbed by me reading signs out loud flexing my now dead 45-day Duolingo streak, I was approached twice for directions. This can mean only one of two things, people are desperate or I am exceling at my long-term goal of being a chameleon. One person I was even able to help! Although anyone who knows me well is probably praying for the poor woman I sent across the park towards SeaLife.

With a bounce in my step, I wandered into a local restaurant and simply stared at the waitress, all English, German, and to my great dismay Swedish and Auslan (Australian Sign Language) (languages I have actually studied with some proficiency), gone from my mind. Eventually words returned and I shouted at her ‘I know what I want – Fungi and a coke!’ Blank stare. ‘Er, mushroom pizza and coca-cola, bitte?’. To which she responded to by saying, ‘Are you alone?’ presumably concerned other mad Australians might pop out of the woodwork and start demanding what in hindsight sounds like drugs. After reassuring her that there were indeed no others coming to accoster her, I had what was a rather home-made mushroom pizza accompanied by a glass of coke, the first reasonably priced meal of my time in Europe.

Somewhat sheepishly I paid and left to continue back knowing I should at least put some laundry on. Here at corporate BNB there is indeed a laundry but after learning I needed to download yet another app for the washing machine I stomped back upstairs (you need the app to call the lift) and did my unmentionables the old fashioned way – in the sink.

I would leave my day here but surrounded now by knickers on clothes hangers I thought I would have a shower and wind down for my evening. I’d managed a decent sweat out there in the balmy 26 degree heat and was looking forward to cooling off. Alas this too was not straight forward. There is underfloor heating in the bathroom turning what should be cool tiles into roughly the same feel as a sidewalk in the sun. No matter, I thought, the water will fix this but as I turned the faucet on the bloody head of the shower rotated from the pressure resulting in me following it around the bathroom like some kind of water dependant sunflower. Utterly miffed by this I soaped up and waited out a rotation opting for the less dizzying experience of bathing in a sprinkler.

At last, it’s time for Scotty and I to call it a day.