Return to Russia

I flew out of Boston Thursday evening and got maybe 4 hours sleep on the way to Munich. I was feeling a little rugged when I arrived but decided to keep with my plan to not stay at the airport for the next 14 hours. I ditched my backpack at storage and then hopped on the S-bahn into the city, armed with a list of places in the old city. I arrived at the Marienplatz, site of the famed Glockenspiel, shortly before noon. The Marienplatz is beautiful. You walk up the steps out of the S-bahn into the middle of a stone plaza, surrounded by gothic buildings and clocktowers. The Glockenspiel is pretty cool. It's a big mechanical clock with a bunch of mideviel wooden figures that dance and march around, accompanied by bells and chimes. The show lasts almost 10 minutes.

After the Glockenspiel I caught lunch at a German restaurant. I had pork medallions and mashed potatoes with a really good German beer. Yum. It was a beautiful sunny day, so I grabbed a latte at Starbucks and walked around for a while. Near the Residenz (former home of the Wittleberg princes) is Englischer park, a gorgeous area. While walking around, I noticed several people sleeping on benches in the sun. I took the hint and claimed a bench for myself and slept for 30 min next to a fountain while a man was playing a cello nearby. It was nice. After my nap, I got another latte and walked around some more. I dropped into an Ancient Egypt exibit for a little while. Most of the plaques were in German, but it was still interesting. In the early evening I passed by a biergarten near a market and dropped in to investigate. I grabbed a whopper on the way out and made my way back to the airport.

When I checked in at the Aeroflot desk, I learned that when Luftansa transferred my baggage to Aeroflot they had written down the wrong flight number on the baggage tags. Fortunately, my bags ended up being loaded on the same flight as me to Moscow. That would have been a real mess to sort out in Moscow... God was looking out for me there. I think I got 3 hours sleep on the overnight flight to Moscow and was feeling even more rugged when I landed at 4:30 am. I made the transfer to Sheremetevo terminal 1 OK and caught the 9:05 am flight to Anapa. My friend Roman from church picked me up at the airport. ~36 hours later, I made it back to the house in Anapa and finally got some sleep.