Day 17 Paris - Munich:

Today we leave Paris for Munich. We need to be out of our apartment by 10am but because we packed most of our stuff yesterday arvo it is a relatively simple process to get ready. Unlike London, we feel we are ready to move on. Paris is a beautiful place and we loved it. The place is huge and there are people everywhere all over the city all day. Everywhere you look there is something amazing to see, a church, some architecture, a street, a cafe, a patisserie. It would be very easy to burn your camera out during a week in Paris but it just isn’t a welcoming place. In general the people are just as they are portrayed, rude, ignorant and arrogant. They look down their noses at tourists and offer very little assistance when they are asked a question. At street level the place is dirty. The stench of cigarette smoke is constant and the ground is littered with cigarette butts. You can be walking down the sidewalk and people dining at a cafe will just flick their half smoked cigarette butts still alight over the footpath in front of you onto the street. You find yourself constantly avoiding spit as you’re walking down the street and on a Saturday morning the place reeks of urine. Then there’s the driving, don’t get me started on Paris drivers!! But that’s it for the bad stuff, the rest is all good. So now we find ourselves on a train speeding through the French country side heading for Stuttgart. At the moment apart from the houses it looks like any other country side but I’m sure this will slowly change. Once in Stuttgart we have 8 minutes to get off this train and transfer to our Munich train. Catching these trains is stressful enough without chucking in an 8 minute transfer. We’ll see how we go we could be spending the night in Berlin..........LIVE UPDATE: Well, we made the train to Munich....just. We were still standing in the aisle holding our suitcases and back packs trying to find our seat as the train is pulling out!! The train from Paris arrived a couple of minutes late which reduced our time down to a 6 minute change over, then we had to battle the Germans to get off the train (that was pretty easy, we know what the Germans are like in a battle) and then of course our connecting train platform is at the other end of the station. We all run like crazy and jump on the first carriage just to make sure we are on. We had to kick some old German bag out of our seat. She had a moustache better than Merv Hughes and she wasn’t happy, I think she swore at me in German!!?? The conductor has just been passed and checked our ticket and hasn’t kicked us off so I assume we are on the correct train? Now I am looking out the window at Stuttgart passing by, I don’t drink scotch but I reckon I’d throttle one about now.........LIVE UPDATE 2: Mia has just vomited all over the train and some people. Kris has rushed her to the toilet. The train now stinks and I’m the lucky bugger that gets to clean it up!