Well, almost worst possible start to my travels. Only the persistence of my cab-driver in ringing my door bell roused me from my slumbers. My radio alarm had no such effect, nor my phone when he called me. And then almost missed flight getting through security which was abysmal. Of course abysmal by design. The reason it was slow was they were not using all their security gates. And the woman on the desk, an abject picture of boredom, seemed to be on work to rule. I thought that BAA had solved their industrial dispute. The final straw was when she told the bloke in front of me, who was only wearing runners, to take them off. He couldn't have been a shoe bomber unless they have started making micro-bombs as thin as credit cards. But no the real final straw was when she took my tiny bag of "liquids" which I had duly put in a clear plastic bag and slowly took out my toothpaste and deodorant one by one and put them into a second plastic bag, and handed it back to me. Sod terrorists, you could feel people behind me about to explode spontaneously through impatience.
Still having set a new world record for veteran sprinting with wheelie bag (surely a new sport for Paralympics?) I made it on to the plane. I then made my second mistake. I gave up my aisle seat to allow a couple (even behind me) to sit together. What I hadn't realised was the personal cost of my good deed for the day. I ended up with a middle-seat between two very big blokes. Indeed one was of such vastness that he needed to call for an extension to the seat belt. Surely by that stage you might think a bit of dieting was in order? And as a reformed fatty myself, I won't take excuses about water retention etc. If that guy was retaining water he could have accounted for the Russian drought on his own. So I sat squeezed in for a couple of hours, comforted only by the fact this wasn't long haul and hoping the left arm-rest wouldn't give way under the pressure.
Needless to say, having been up since 5:30am, wasn't in much of a state to do anything very exciting in Munich even though I arrived by midday. Bit of lunch at the hotel restaurant, bit of pottering and reorientation around the City, some random photos and then an early night.
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