Soon after we got married, the wife and I figured out that we like to travel differently. She likes to go and hang out in hotels, getting room service and maybe even watching TV, and not doing much. I’m much more of an active traveller, wanting to explore places, walk around, eat in random places, etc.
Our disagreements on how to travel have reached such a level that on a couple of trips, we actually split up, with her staying at the hotel and me roaming alone. However, roaming a city alone is not so much fun, so I’m trying to recruit a partner for that. And rather than “searching all over town while holding a baby in my arms” (a Kannada proverb), I want to train the (not so proverbial) baby!
Today was the first such day of “training”, and we are in Munich. The wife had some work here today and tomorrow, and this was a great opportunity for the daughter and I to flaneur by ourselves (ok she doesn’t have a say in this!).
So day one went off quite well, though I sometimes think I gave in a bit too much to her interests. The walk through the old town of Munich (around Marienplatz) lasted not more than an hour before we were in the gardens – first briefly at the Hofgarten and then later at the Englischer Garten (English Garden, which is larger than both Hyde Park and Central Park) where we went cycling.
To be honest, the walk around Marienplatz was a bit of a bore even for me. The place is full of fashion outlets, and there isn’t much to “do”. It also didn’t help matters that we were walking around on full stomachs – we had eaten massive dinners last night, and even though we woke up late and had a small breakfast, we weren’t hungry (I made the mistake of going to a chain coffee shop for breakfast. The coffee was atrocious and the food also unspectacular).
One of the keys to effective flaneuring (to borrow a word from Nassim Taleb) is the willingness to try out interesting food and drink you come across on the way. This means travelling on a light enough stomach, so that you can eat whatever you want without constraint. The full stomach thanks to the bad breakfast this morning meant that we couldn’t partake in any of the interesting looking foods on offer, thus significantly diminishing our experience.
Another necessary condition for good flaneuring is the availability of good public transport – sometimes you can just get bored of the place you are in and want a change of scenery. At other times, you’ll want to be at a specific place that is too far away to walk to. In both situations, availability of dense public transport network (and low marginal cost of travel – such as a day travel card) can really help.
Through the morning, though, whenever Berry saw a bicycle, she would scream “bike-u bike-u” (she’s got this very Kannada habit of ending every noun in “u”. So car-u, pant-u, dog-u etc) and demand to sit on it. So when we got near the English Gardens (where I’d heard it’s good to bike), I had the problem of trying to find a bike rental store.
We walked around till we encountered a public WiFi hotspot (Munich has lots of those!), where I found the addresses of a few cycle rental shops. And one was right at the edge of the English Gardens, and I had to take the U-bahn (underground metro) to get there. It was an extremely peaceful ride (I pride myself on adjusting myself easily to public transport in new cities), though we had to change trains.
We borrowed an electric bike with a child seat from MUC Bike. It’s like a normal cycle except there’s a Lithium ion battery backup, to give you that extra power in case you’re tired. And we went round the park, watching ducks in several places, and playing on the swing (Berry only). The cycle returned, and a quick beer and pretzel later, we were on our way back to the hotel!
Overall I think it went well. There is one noticeable area of improvement- food. I need to optimise for both of us, and we sometimes have different food preferences, and I end up making poor choices. Like I asked for rice with today’s lunch even though there were already potatoes in the dish (since Berry likes rice). As it happened, she wasn’t so hungry and we ended throwing the rice!
The plan for tomorrow is to go see the Deutsches Museum. Let’s see how that goes!