Arrival in Munich

I have arrived inMunich, sitting in the only place where I can eat and have a beer that is not overcrowded with mad holiday shoppers. I am scheduled to meet, Liz, my Xmas couchsurfing host in two hours at a bookstore that looks like it could possibly be the most crowded store in the city. I am a little upset with myself for having forgotten to get a gift for my hosts while I was still in Paris, we were just so busy. Now I have to sally forth, slightly delirious from what turned out to be more of a 14 and a half hour bus ride with my huge pack knocking over shelf displays in one of these madly packed shops and buy some stupid box of chocolates or something.

There was no passport check anywhere on the bus journey. It is a strange sleep you fall into on a long busride like that. Hard to describe. Not sleep, sort of like closing your eyes for a long time, but not being conscious. I had no dreams, never a deep sleep, too uncomfortable for that, but not even that half sleep where you have those hybrid daydream/fulldreams. It is not a limbo, more of a no-sleep. Just darkness and the slight humming and revving sounds of the bus in the nether regions of your brain.