Hello You-Woo Photo and other random ruminations

So we are in Munich and I am not going to lie I am not in love with this place. I think I am just tired but it is making me cranky. To avoid sinking too far into a bad mood I thought I would share a few more random thoughts from the trip thus far.

1. Hello You-Woo Photo - This little gem comes to via Paris. While in the City of Light we decided to take a night boat cruise on the Seine. Like manz tourist traps this place wanted to take a commermative picture to sell zou at the end of the cruise. But they used the world´s worst method to achieve this goal. First they had not one but two photogs. The first took random pictures of you on the ship´s gangplank. But he didn´t tell you he was just sort of in a corner snapping random pictures as folks walked on. The result was that no one was looking at him and sometimes people were only half in his pictures. Now if you can believe this the second photographer was actuallý even weirder. He was walking around the boat and he would come up to a group of people (sometimes they weren´t actually together as a group just happened to be sitting togehter) and he would yell Hello, You-Woo Photo and then immediatelz snap a picture. The result was everzone had one of two expressions -startled or confused. Again not a good business model.

I thought I would be smart and out smart him. I saw him coming and grabbed Mike and we posed. We got off the boat and went to the thing to see the funnz startled or confused expressions. Must to my surprise was our picture. Yes we were posed and smiling but my tank top had slipped while I leaned forward. These crazy people printed a full color 8x10 picture of us and one entire half of mz bra is out. Lovely.

2. Cliff Diving - In Murren, where we stayed in Switzerland the big thing is cliff diving. Now for those not familiar with this ´adventure sport´ allow me to explain it. You are given this skinny parachute and then thez shove you off of a cliff. The goal is to see how far you can free fall before you decide to pull the parachute cord. Of all this is down of course while attempting to not hit the cliff face. People were doing this is droves and paying around 200 bucks for some one to push them off a cliff. I believe there are wards and drugs for these folks. Mike wanted to try it. I told him he had good life insurance through the state so to go ahead I´d collect the body.

3. He can walk its a miracle - So today we saw the crippled walk. What caused this miracle you ask? A holy relic at an ancient church perhaps, nope 2 beer cans that were thrown in the trash. That´s right we were at a train station waiting for a connection and there was a young boy there in a wheelchair. Two girls finished two tall boys and put them in the trash can. The wheel chair bound boy got up out of his chair, walked to the trash can, fished out the two empties, crushed them and put them in his backpack. I wanted to yell it is a miracle he´s cured. Mike just said the German´s take their recycling seriously.

4. The former royal family is bad at screwing tourists - Today we went to visit Neuschwanstein castle. For those who don´t know click the wikipedia link. But basically the two castles are built around a village whose whole purpose in live is to soak as much money as possible out of tourists. These places are for the most part owned by family to the former royal family. They are so serious about soaking tourists here that they force you to have downtime between tours in their shops. Once again I am forced to point out the flaws in a tourist traps business model (though maybe I shouldnät make suggestions on how to take more of mz monez). This town had 1 ATM which was out of service, no money exchage and no shop or food place took credit card or any kind of money but a euro. We had a grand total of 8 euro which we needed to pay for the public transportation to and from the train station. Now we were hungry and crankz but reallz the parties truly hurt by this are the businesses themselves since they can´t fully bilk tourists under this system. Mike says he is buying a stand there and selling food and beer while accepting credit card and exchanging money at a horrible rate. But it won´t matter because we have no competition.

I think that is it for me for today. I am exhausted. We have walked and walked. Also who knew but Munich is miserably hot with terrible humidity. It has been 90 the past two days yet nothing has AC. I kind of want to curl into a little ball and die.