Round and Round It Goes

My Trip to Germany: Munich

Munich – July 6, 2006

(At this point, I’d run out the ink in two pens. Did I do ANYTHING but write in my journal on this trip???)

We made it yesterday, finally. We met our buddy M, who kindly offered his apartment up for our Munich stay, then had dinner (our first food since breakfast) at a nearby Italian restaurant. The waiter kept teaching J German, making her repeat after him.

We finally learned how to tip – you only tip about 10%, and since the waiter/tress carries a money wallet, you just tell them the total amount you want to pay, bill plus tip.

M also taught us how to toast in Bavaria, by looking directly into the other person’s eyes, clinking the bottoms of glasses (for delicate wheat beer glasses), and saying “Prost!”

We then went to a biergarten to watch the first half of the Portugal-France game. They had beers as big as your head, but I couldn’t get a small Radler, my new favorite drink. We watched some kid running around with no pants on and poo schmeared all over his bum. The score on unbidden penis sightings goes up by one.


The biergarten with beers as big as your head (© hermitthecrab 2006)


No lie (J's pic6)

We watched the second half from Outland, the Aussie bar near M’s apartment. I was way full of beer and a bit tipsy at this point, but the game ended in regulation for once after Henry’s only goal in the first half. So the final is to be Italy vs. France. At least we’ll get to boo the big baby Cristiano Ronaldo in person at the third place game.


The Aussie bar (J's pic)

This morning we managed to accomplish another first: visiting a place J was interested in, the Deutsches Museum. It focuses on engineering, with a little science, a miniscule amount of history, but not much. I was pretty bored and could have left after an hour, but J was in her element so we stayed for three. They did have a Gutenburg Bible, though, which so filled me with reverence I felt the need to whisper.


The Deutsches Museum (© hermitthecrab 2006)


The book that changed the world (© hermitthecrab 2006)


Inside the Bridges exhibit in the Deutsches Museum (© hermitthecrab 2006)

We headed out on a walking tour of Munich. Munich is known as Germany’s wealthiest city, and it shows in all the expensive boutiques and shops that line the streets. Bikes are a preferred method of transportation, which means pedestrians really have to watch their asses. Dogs are pretty common, too – I hadn’t even noticed their absence from previous cities until we came here.

(In an effort to save space and not make you read until you are dead, I’ve combined the walking tour pics with the next day’s bike tour pics below, other than this one, a freaky doll with a soccer ball for a head. For the sake of your sanity, I have only posted one of these pictures.)


Not only is it a soccer ball head, it's a deflated soccer ball head (© hermitthecrab 2006)

The rain that had been threatening all afternoon finally started falling, so we hoofed it toward M’s apartment to write out postcards (I got silly and wrote one to myself, plus one to J she doesn’t know about) and dry off, and had planned to go swing dancing, but it’s rained out. So I suppose we’ll head to dinner and figure something out!

Later…

Went for dinner and had another traditional German meal, Käsespätzle, which is pretty much mac & cheese with onions (only a gazillion time better). I had Apfelschorle to drink, a mixture of apple juice and mineral water, not bad. They like to throw random liquids together here, it seems.

Then we walked toward the university for dessert, stopping to take a pic of a store called “Suckfüll” with a huge ad in the window screaming “Dick.” Just too funny to pass up. Dessert of Kaiserschmarrn was yummy, kind of a fatter, doughier funnel cake with ice cream and raisins.

We decided not to go to castles tomorrow, as the trip is 2 ½ hours each way by train and bus. We just can’t handle more train rides than necessary. New itinerary for tomorrow: bike tour, Olympic Park, stadium, and shopping.

My head issue has been officially diagnosed as cooties. But it’s not so bad because J has developed cooties, too, on her foot. Ha ha.

Oh, and Munich has their equivalent of Berlin’s buddy Bears: Lions. They’re everywhere here, too. City mascots, I guess. A little freakish, really.


Me with a literary lion (J's pic)

Munich – July 7, 2006

Super full day today led by Sideshow Bob with a bunch of sorority girls from Miami-Ohio.

Munich – July 8, 2006

Well, I wrote the above last night and then never finished. We’re on the train to Stuttgart now, so here we go…

While J showered I took a few shots of the view from M’s 5th floor apartment. The buildings are all very packed together, but unlike Russia, they have lovely little courtyards with trees popping up in the middle. And a lot of bike parking.

With an hour to kill before the bike tour, we managed to catch the Glockenspiel, the clock display in the Neues Rathaus that our tour guide later claimed was the second most overrated European tourist attraction, after the people of France. But I got some fun crowd shots.

Note: there is not a single German in any of these photos. Japanese folks and Americans have completely taken over Munich.


The Glockenspiel in the Neues Rathaus (J's pic)

Almost as soon as the little clockwork jousting display was finished, it started to rain, so while the street cleared of tourists, we pulled out our rain gear and beat it to the Bacchus statue we’d missed the day before, just under the Karlstor. The pics are slightly rain-blurred, but oh well.

(For those wondering why Bacchus is so important, it has to do with me being a know-it-all yet again, this time when I first met P. Everyone seems to think it’s soooooo funny.)


The drenched rat is me; the statue is my old pal Bacchus (J's pic)

The bike tour started under the Altes Rathaus. It was actually sort of a whirlwind tour of our walk from the day before, but with some great stories. Justin, our guide, was from Papua New Guinea, and as he later joked, he really did resemble Sideshow Bob.
The history of Munich is that some monks built a bridge for themselves across the Isar River, then found it was a lucrative business to charge folks to cross. Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, thought so, too, so he blew up the monk’s bridge and built his own. The Holy Roman Empire caught wind of this, so to keep his head Henry proposed to give 1/3 of the tolls to Rome, 1/3 to the city, and keep 1/3 for himself. It was agreed, and Henry became the first king of Bavaria. His symbol was the lion, so that’s why the lions are everywhere, as is the monk, the symbol for the city. Monks are drunks!

Bavaria itself was its own kingdom for a while, and is a lot like Texas in its independent nature. The attitude of Bavarians toward other Germans, and vice versa, is also like Texas in its mutual condescension. The statue of a woman often represents Bavaria – at the Feldhernhalle, the General’s Hall, the central statue represents the fierce warriors of Germany, while the woman is Bavaria. She has her arm around him, supporting him, but is looking away, showing Bavaria’s independence.

So much of Munich was bombed and rebuilt after WW2, it’s extremely common to see an 1850 structure standing next to one built in 1970, and so many historical structures (including the residence, Hofbrauhaus, Chinese tower, etc.) are rebuilt “exactly as they were.” Though none has been rebuilt so often as the church outside Marienplatz, which burned to the ground several times, then was bombed a couple of times. It’s liable to explode at any moment.

• Altes Rathaus, Munich’s old city hall
  
• Marienplatz, where we saw the Neues Rathaus (the new city hall), and Peterskirche, which we climbed all…the…way…to the top (300’) to get a 360˚ view of the city. We could see all of Marienplatz, a biergarten, the Frauenkirche (domes look like overflowing beer mugs, tallest structure in the city).
  
  
  Marienplatz, with Frauenkirche & the Neues Rathaus (© hermitthecrab 2006)
  
  
  Peterskirche...all 300 feet of it (© hermitthecrab 2006)
  
  
  Inside the Peterskirche (© hermitthecrab 2006)
  
  
• Hofbrauhaus, where Hitler and his cronies used to whet their whistles and brainstorm on how to ruin the world. There are paintings of flags on the ceiling that were designed to cover the Nazi swastikas, and they still bear the shape. In case you’re wondering if we stopped here for beers, the answer is no, huh-uh, no way. It is the Disneyland of beer halls, definitely not worth having a brew in.
  
  
  Thinly disguised swastikas (J's pic)
  
  
• We walked to Karlsplatz from there, passing shops, more museums, and a number of fountains. Saw a cool rooftop with some fun weathervanes at the Kaufhaus Oberpollinger.
  
  
  Why am I laughing so hard? The stone was wet and I had attempted highly unsuccessfully to "hover" for the pic (J's pic)
  
  
• J got all excited at the Lamborghini dealership, though she totally missed seeing a bright yellow Ferrari in the street as she was photographing a random building.
  
  
  J's idea of sightseeing (© hermitthecrab 2006)
  
  
• Theatinerkirche, built by Elector Ferdinand Maria and his wife, Henriette Adelaide of Savoy, as a gesture of thanks to the lord for finally delivering him an heir after 12 years of trying and praying in 1662.
  
• Feldhernhalle – Behind the Feldhernhalle is a cobblestone alley through which a ribbon of gold cobblestones threads. During Hitler’s reign, he constructed a monument in front of the Feldhernhalle dedicated to several of his stormtroopers killed there in a battle with the Munich police. Everyone passing by the memorial was required to offer a “Heil, Hitler!” Those who did not sympathize avoided walking past it by diverting to this alley, and the gold cobblestones are in honor of their courage.

The Feldernhalle and Theatinerkirche (© hermitthecrab 2006)

Opposite the Theatinerkirche is what was once a residence, where four lions guard the gates. In the time of Bavarian kings, one was such a philanderer that a student at the university wrote an open letter, calling him a bad Catholic, a bad husband, and a bad king. The king put a price on his head, but instead of waiting to be arrested, the student marched with 2000 others to the palace. He saw the king on his own, and said “Do with me what you will.” The king was so impressed with his bravery that he gave the student the bounty money and let him go. On his way out, the student rubbed the brass noses on three of the four lions, because to rub all four would be greedy and would destroy his luck.

It was still raining at this point in the bike tour, so of course I’d gotten cold and my legs had broken out in hives from knee to hip. I went a little crazy every time we had to stop, and my legs are still marked from my scratching.

• Hofgarten (royal garden) and Royal Palace
  
  (© hermitthecrab 2006)
  
  
• Chancellory of Bavaria and the sunken crypt of a German soldier (equivalent to our Tomb of the Unknown Soldier), bombed and severely damaged during WW2. When they rebuilt the wings, their desire to make amends to the public was so great they made them out of glass, so the people could always see what their government was doing.

On to the university square. This was the site where students protested Hitler, passing out anti-Nazi pamphlets. A university chancellor was a Nazi-sympathizer, so he locked the leaders of the movement in the main student building and informed the Gestapo where they were. When the Gestapo came to arrest them, one student tossed hundreds of pamphlets from and upper story window down into the square below. The students were arrested, tortured for four days, then publicly guillotined. Today, these pamphlets have been embedded in the granite around the square, and the White Rose monument was built in honor of all the students who stood against Hitler. Every day someone replaces the rose, and others place pebbles around it.

At this point Justin noted something we hadn’t quite thought of before: that after WW2, nationalism and patriotism became sentiments the Germans were ashamed of. Until this WC, flags were not flown, songs were not sung. The WC has imbued a new life to German nationalism, tinting it with positive connotations, moving forward from past hurts.

M said WW2 is a very touchy subject here, especially among the older generation. It is still illegal to own a copy of Mein Kampf. Both M and Justin seemed to think the younger generation is more open to history, better able to study and explore the events without revisiting the horror.

• English Garden, stopping briefly at the rebuilt Chinese Tower biergarten – a gift from the Chinese in the Prussian era – though we didn’t even get a beer for the road, whizzing past the Greek Temple, and watching the surfers. We wound down a shady path along the Isar River, no longer suffering rain (though my legs continued to itch), but sloshing through mud and puddles.
  
  
  Me at the Chinese Tower (J's pic)
  
  
  J with the Greek Temple (J's pic)
  
  
  Surfen verboten (J's pic)
  
  
• The oddly ornate (for a Protestant church, anyway) first Protestant church in Munich
  
  (J's pic)
  
  
• Volksbad (Munich’s first public bath)
  
  (J's pic)
  
  
• Bavarian National Museum

We lined up our bikes for lockage outside the Hofbräuhaus, then walked around the corner to Augustiner Am Platzl. It was a good thing, because we were close to fainting from the need for meat and beer.


The longest bike lock ever (J's pic)

Justin explained our beer selection – Helles, lightest and least flavorful; Weißbier, wheat beer; Dunkelweiß, darkest, for purists only, “like drinking a loaf of bread” (not really – it’s nowhere near as heavy as Guinness); and the Radler, an “abomination” (I still like it). Out of ~60 people, J and I were 2 of only 4 who ordered the Dunkelweiß (how’s that for math post-beers?). All the sorority girls on the tour went “Like, what was the lightest?” Ugh.

J and I shared a pork knuckle, kind of a mini-pork roast, and a great meal with the four non-college folk on the tour: D & E from WA, a married couple about our age, and B & K from Las Vegas. B is E’s uncle, and K is originally from Germany. B told us a lot of cool facts about Germany, and stories of places they’ve been. E (a world history teacher) and I commiserated about D and J’s lack of history knowledge, and our awe at all the amazingly significant things we’re seeing (she totally got my excitement over the Gutenburg Bible – “It changed the world!”).


J, me, K, B, E, and D at the Augustiner Am Platzl (J's pic)

We settled our tab and headed back to put away the bikes and pay for the tour. As soon as we got back on the bikes the sorority girls started whining about how their vaginas were bruised from the bikes. Over and over. Rather than being my know-it-all self and giving them an anatomy lesson to tell them their vaginas were NOT in fact the bruised appendages, I just went elsewhere. I’m sure they felt better last night when they went out to “get tanked like everyone else! Jell-o shots rock!” Since they hadn’t really been able to ride the bikes, and were bitching about how uncomfortable the California Cruisers were, I didn’t feel that sorry for them.

Tour finished, we headed out shopping. I bought some junk for folks back home, and a beer stein printed upside down for me (the Aggie in me couldn’t resist).

Some other Munich sights:


The Neues Rathaus (© hermitthecrab 2006)


A Munich street – believe it or not, I was standing at the edge of a crushing crowd (© hermitthecrab 2006)


Toys! (J's pic)


A brain-assed lion, just for P (J's pic)

With almost no rest, we went to dinner at a more traditional Bavarian place, the Bratwursthertzl, among smoke and almost no English whatsoever. Not a bad thing considering how sick we were of Americans. We couldn’t go anywhere in the city center without landing in the middle of a horde of tourists, something we haven’t experienced in any other city so far. I had more Käsespätzle for dinner, and a Radler, making me officially the child of the group. Oh, and Kaiserschmarrn for dessert, much better at this place than last.


Mmm...kaiserschmarrn (J's pic)

This morning before we caught the train M took us to have a traditional Bavarian breakfast: weißbier, white sausages, and pretzels. Traditionally, the white sausages can’t “hear the noon bells toll,” and we gobbled them just in time. The one beer also made me quite a bit drunk, and I wish I could start every day that way.

The train now is nice and cool, quiet, and not terribly crowded. Thank goodness.

Except for my family and pets, I really don’t have much of a feeling of homesickness the way I did in Russia. I will miss Germany, the ease of transportation, the relaxed atmosphere, the outdoor cafés. They’re allowed by law to have 1 L of beer at lunch, even in the office. Except for wheat beers, no additives and preservatives are allowed in the beer. They get 5+ weeks of vacation, more holidays, and rarely work weekends or overtime. America sux. :(

Go to next entry: Stuttgart

posted by Lyle Skains @ 11:43 AM