After an underwhelming drive along the autobahn, I was thankful to pull into the campground in Munich. It was pretty clean, well equipped, and we checked in and pitched our tent with ease. Even got a great spot under a tree! The weather was so good that most of the other campers were getting a tan or wandering around in bathing suits (or underpants, I swear, I saw a guy who was my mom’s age wearing boxer briefs) washing up dinner dishes and reading the papers.
After starting some laundry, Mom and I decided it was high time for a cold drink. They had Pepsi, which made her very excited, and I bought a cold beer. After a few more beers, the laundry was done, and we decided to just get a bite to eat from the snack bar and play some cards. So, we played for quite a while and I had another beer or two (all of which were delicious, if I might add, and necessary, due to the very warm weather). Finally we made our way back to the tent, and got our PJ’s and toothbrushes, and went to get ready for bed. I swear, no sooner had we laid down our little heads than it started raining. And I don’t mean drizzling. I mean giant drops pounding down on the tent and everywhere else, and not looking like stopping anytime soon.
Which sucked. Because, frankly, I was quite drunk (solidly the most drunk I have been at any point on this trip). And we were in a tent. Under a tree. In a low patch of the campground. But I passed out for a few, and woke up around two o’clock in the morning, and four, and then again at seven o’clock, when I finally decided that we should probably do something about all this rain. Which, had of course, leaked into the tent substantially by this point.
And amazingly, the hangover didn’t set in at first. I encourage anyone with a hangover to schedule some sort of adversity the morning after the drinking. Does amazing things for one’s constitution. I was able to spring out of the leaking tent, dance around the car while folding all the laundry which had been drying inside overnight, manage my very own wet t-shirt contest at seven in the morning, deflate the air mattresses, fold up all the bedding (which was in various stages of being soaking wet), load it all into the car, break down the tent and toss it into the trunk, and then get my mom’s assistance with folding up the sodden tarp we’d just procured the day before before feeling the first pangs of hungover-ness. The tarp had to be holding five gallons of water, and there was a puddle under the tent which was three feet across. And, if I forgot to say earlier, it had gotten damn cold overnight.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a shift in the weather as quickly, and as we attempted to drain out as much water as possible from our gear and stuff it into the car to head out, we noticed that everyone else was doing the same. I’d talked to four people who worked at the campground, and they all said they thought the weather was going to be great for days, but alas, we were all wrong. Mom and I trudged off into the gloom after a nice hot shower, and headed for a library with Internet to get it all sorted out. We booked a hotel after we figured out that the rain was there to stay, at least for the next three days, and found our way there.
Luckily there was no rain in the hotel room, and after drying ourselves out for a bit, we headed to the Metro to take a ride towards Marianplatz and finally see what Munich was about.