Retreat from TUM

Ok, ok, I exaggerate – it’s not really that far. But any time I have to set the alarm for 02.30, it feels like it’s a long long way away!

TU Munchen host an annual retreat, and thanks to Prof. Joerg Ott I was invited this year for the first time. It’s held in TUM’s Retreat Centre at Raitenhaslach, originally a Cistercian monastery which is a lovely location except that it’s a bus ride from the hotel used and a bus and three trains from the nearest airport – which is, mildly confusingly, Salzburg not Munich. The latter point made me assume that there would be good directions via public transport from Salzburg, but that turned out not to be the case. And as Google Maps is, at best, patchy in terms of public transport coverage in this part of the world – it doesn’t know about all the buses at least – I thought it might be useful to record the process of getting there from Cambridge.

First, to fly to Salzburg or Munich? In the end I picked Salzburg as it was closer to the retreat centre itself and meant I didn’t need to fly via Heathrow or Gatwick. As I had to be in Cambridge the night before for family reasons, picking a closer airport for my very early flight seemed sensible. Unfortunately this means flying Wizzair UK from London Luton Airport, which after just twice flying from there remains my least favourite UK airport. Given the flight departed at 05.55, a £77.50 taxi from Cambridge was the only option.

Per Panther’s recommmendation I allowed 70 minutes for the journey, and on my own recommendation I aimed to arrive ~1.5h before the flight resulting in a taxi booking for 03.15. Happily when I get in the taxi the driver said it would be around 45-50 minutes, which was nice. Less happily when I checked in the day before – using a laptop as neither Safari nor Firefox on iOS was able to display the boarding pass – I got an automatic email from Wizzair telling me that I needed to arrive at the airport by 02.15 as the airport was upgrading their “central search facilities”. After trying to call the airport half a dozen times but getting trapped in the IVR menus at the inevitable “read the FAQ on the website” end state, I gave up trying to check if that really was necessary and decided to risk my original timings.

I did however spot one useful thing: “prebooked security check”. This appears to be the ability to book, at 15 minute granularity, a security check during peak hours (03.00-04.30). Given my estimated arrival time of 04.15, that seemed perfect. As it was also completely free requiring nothing more than my flight number and an email address (not even the one associated with my ticket), I booked it resulting in an email with a QR code to show to security. This worked perfectly when I arrived at the airport: show the person on security the QR code on the phone screen, and they simply jump you past the security queue to the front. Did I mention this was completely free? Seems a strange system to me but hey, I’ll take it!

In the end, the public transport worked though there was a short walk at the end that was longer than I expected – rebuilding a road meant I could get through but the bus couldn’t! And then the retreat happened – but you can read about that elsewhere :)