Beer Gardens!

May 25, Wednesday. It was a beautiful clear day. I headed into the city again to meet Barbara at Rosenheimer Platz. From there, we took another S-bahn to the monthly meeting of LIA – Ladies’ International Association. The speaker was a last-minute substitution and she spoke German, and had someone translate for her. She talked about an agency in Munich that helps people find volunteer opportunities. There are more people volunteering in the past few years. (Duh, their economy is down too!) The meeting was a snooze for me, but afterwards 6 of us walked across the street to a beer garden & had lunch. That was fun. I’m trying to hear all the things that the servers say, and get translations and learn what to say back so that I can feel comfortable going to a place on my own.

I got home around 3:30. Talked with Logan and he wanted to go out to dinner, so he got a recommendation from Bruce for a beer garden near “home” that is Italianische and makes good pizza. We got to Rosen Hof around 7, had a couple good pizzas – they have a wood oven out in the back, at the side of the beer garden area. It was great to sit out and eat for dinner, too! It is light late here, until 9:30 or so. I love the lifestyle, so far.

A note about our stuff getting here: the bikes are held up in customs. Well, not held up so much as they want us to pay 2,500 Euros for duty & VAT – they don’t believe the bikes are ours! Luggage Concierge, the people who shipped the bikes, didn’t tell us that we should have the receipts for the bikes with us to prove they are our personal belongings. So Logan was on the phone to DHL and Luggage Concierge a couple times each today. The folks at customs can’t be persuaded to open the boxes, to see that the bikes are used.

We may have to have a friend go to our storage space & rummage through the files to find the receipts. What an avoidable hassle.