Munich, Germany
Trip Start
Apr 11, 2006
1
12
26
Trip End
??? ??, 2007
Munich,
Germany
Saturday, July 1, 2006
After a two-hour train ride from Stuttgart's Hauptbahnhof (main train station), we found ourselves in Munich, or München. Walking outside, we were right in the middle of the city, with activity all around. Luckily, the tourist information office is right next to the Hauptbahnhof, so we walked down the street a bit and got some maps and directions to one of the vegetarian restaurants we found on happycow.com. After a bit of confusion and such, we were happy to come upon next to one of the biggest (and busiest) outdoor markets I've seen.
The restaurant, Anna's Küche, is actually part of what is said to be the city's largest natural foods market and serves pay-by-the-kilogram buffet-style food. All of it was very good, as was the organic German beer that I drank there.
We then walked back toward the main station to find the tram (light-rail, streetcar, trolley) to our "hotel"
01 Munich
. "The Tent", as we had read a few weeks before beginning our trip, is a large facility with two large, permanent tents and traditional "primitive" camping space, as well as a simple restaurant, a bar, very nice new bathrooms, and a bonfire every night (weather-permitting). By the time the tram reached our Botanischer Garten stop, the weather had turned for the worse, and we were rained on lightly but steadily for the entire five- or six-minute walk. When we arrived at The Tent, we were basically happy with our choice, as the place lived up to its billing and was certainly cheap. However, our reservation said "double bed" in the smaller tent (that holds about sixty people), when in reality we slept on bunk beds...no big deal though. Unpacked, dried off, and ready to see Munich, we got back on the tram and rode downtown to see what sort of trouble we could find. Upon our Lonely Planet Europe on a Shoestring guide's advice, we made our way to the Pinakotek der Modern museum, which contains displays on architecture as well as art. Models of sporting venues from around the world, especially of all of Deutschland's World Cup stadiums, were a highlight for us, as well as a large presentation of electronics over the years (it's really funny to look back on how cutting-edge technologies of one era become obsolete dinosaurs of the next). Part of the Pinakotek's actual "art" collection's strength was its diversity - the well-designed (by a Münchener) building contained a super mix of painting, photography, drawings, and sculpture, ranging from mundane to risqué
02 Rathaus
.After a beer at a great traditional German beer hall, we found probably the best falafel we've ever had from a small restaurant near our lunch stop. The weather had cleared up by this time, and we walked around for a while before swinging by the world-famous Hofbräuhaus, which featured some very drinking-friendly live music played by men in lederhosen and lots of folks who looked like they too were quite drinking-friendly.
The next day, after an almost sleepless night - olympic-quality snoring, lights, and open outside doors are not helpful when trying to sleep in a shared area - and some bread from Sonja in Stuttgart, we trammed downtown to the excellent municipally funded and operated Stadtmuseum. The only way I can explain the size, quality, breadth, and content of the museum is gargantuan. The temporary exhibit on the social and cultural aspects of soccer, or fußball (the ß represents a double-s, "ss"), was phenomenal. Covering everything from makeshift balls around the world (made of straw, plastic bags, tin cans, and more), football icons (Pelé, Diego Maradonna, David Beckham, Ronaldinho, and the beloved German, Franz Beckenbauer, to name only a few), team and fan apparel, team songs, historical information and images, women in soccer, fan antics (some funny, others not), and audio and video of classic moments, this enormous portion of the museum left us bewildered after really examining barely half of what was there
03 Hofbrauhuaus
. Stadtmuseum's permanent collection spans subjects, eras, and age-appropriateness to deliver an experience well-suited to almost anyone, despite the high percentage of exhibits that provide written information only in German. We started out with what seemed to us an exhaustive history of the city of Munich, which has undergone quite a lot of change - the most interesting parts for us non-German speakers were the scaled 3D models and graphics that demonstrated the city's growth over time. Next was a brief stroll through the puppet exhibit, which was well put-together and contained A LOT of puppets. A large display on the National Socialist party's rise, reign, and fall showed interesting insights into Germany's Nazi past. Old uniforms; photos of both Nazi rallies and anti-government uprisings, work and death camps, and; state propaganda ranging from blatantly racist to simply absurd stood out for us due to the near-absolute lack of English-language text. A display of military, criminal, and otherwise scary paraphernalia that seemed to come from medieval times rounds out the edgier side of the museum.
On the museum's top floor lays what we agreed was the jewel of its permanent collection: the biggest and most varied collection of musical instruments either one of us had ever seen
04 Bikes 1
. Asia, Africa, the Americas, Europe, Australia, and probably other places (did we miss the penguins' instruments in Antarctica?) were all well represented. Aside from a huge array of universally known instruments, we saw classical stringed instruments fashioned to resemble skeletons, with a ribcage for a body and a skull as the tuning head; a drum the size of a small pickup truck fastened to what seemed to be an animal-drawn trailer; Chinese instruments that look like xylophones, but much more complex, and; some very elaborately designed and intricately functioning pieces that resemble player-pianos. Meredith's favorite was the calliope collection, the first she had ever seen.For around €3.00 ($4.00) each, we saw a small shopping mall's worth of displays, and we tried to leave no fewer than three times before being stopped by the coat-check woman, who kept telling us that there was more to see. Finally, at around 1:30 in the afternoon, hungry, fully soaked in culture, history, sport, and music, and unable to find the Lonely Planet-promised beer brewing exhibit we took off for lunch. (We also left with an old, second-hand Paulaner glass and a nice glass and pewter stein for about €13.00.)
After a yummy lunch at another help-yourself veggie restaurant, we walked by some wonderful old buildings, squares, and plazas, toward Europe's biggest park, the Englischer Garten
05 Bikes 2
. Modeled in the style of traditional English parks, and actually designed by a Brit, this vast open space includes almost everything a person could want out of an urban park...INCLUDING SURFING!!! Yup, surfing in Bavaria. Thanks to some interesting (and assumedly accidental) hydrological engineering, one of the park's streams hits something in its bed pretty hard while traveling quite fast and creates an amazing surge for surfing in place. We saw at least 10 different people, wet suits and all, surfing on a fast-flowing stream and actually doing a pretty good job of it. But alas, what would a trip to Germany in July 2006 be without mentioning the 2006 FIFA WORLD CUP? Ok, you asked for it...In the Englischer Garten is a great biergärten that normally serves as the park's central point for eating a pretzel and drinking a maß, a full one-liter beer. However, since this was the day of the Germany-Argentina game quarterfinal game, the park was full of people, most of whom had some permutation of the German team jersey, black-red-yellow face paint, or the national flag, watching the game at this biergärten.
[Cultural Break: Our friends Wolfi and Sonja said that this is the first time since WWII that Germans have really felt like it is OK to be German
06 Drum 1
. People hardly ever displayed the flag, anywhere, and the majority of feelings of pride since reunification of east and west has come from soccer. Now, German flags fly everywhere, people all over town carry or wear them, faces are painted in the national colors, and chants of "Deutschland, Deutschland..." ring out loud and clear before, during, and after games. The other interesting part about this whole scenario is that while Germans have begun to feel at ease in their German-ness, they are still somewhat cautious to be seen as going too far. For example, lots of folks have flown the German flag out of windows with mini-flags from other World Cup countries. Sonja is an extreme case: before the Cup started, she bought full-size flags of every single country that qualified (except the Ivory Coast, which was approximated by turning their already-owned Irish flag on end) before the matches started and hung them inside her house! Germans have really gotten it right on this one - be proud of your country, but also realize that the others deserve respect and support. This is what the World Cup, the Olympics, etc., are all about.]Without going into play-by-play (I'm better meandering through color anyway), it was a great game, really intense all the way around. Somewhere around the close of the first half, I realized that I wasn't feeling well, so we made our way back toward town
07 Drum 2
. Along the way, we must have seen all but 10% of the rest of the match on TVs placed everywhere you could imagine. After regulation and then overtime ended in a 1-1 tie, it went into a shootout, which in my opinion is the worst way to end a game - take hockey's formula of reducing the numbers of players on each team to open up play, enlarge the goals a foot on either side, or like we joked later on, throw in another team and make the field into a triangle. Obviously, Germany won the shootout, to make the final score 2-1 and send the host country to the semi-finals against an opponent to be determined by that evening's Italy-Ukraine game.The city erupted, with horns-a-honking, people-a-partying, suds-a-surging (lots apparently onto the floor our U-Bahn [subway] train), and chants of "Berlin, Berlin, we're going to Berlin" raging (Berlin was chosen as the site of the final game). Since the drinking age in Germany is 16 and people can usually get by being a year or two younger without much trouble, we saw some pretty funny antics, but nothing all that out of the ordinary - just kids not knowing how to handle their stuff. (Having a low tolerance, in Bavaria, is somewhat anomalous.)
Who's ready for dinner? At this point, we certainly were, and ate at a great place somehow tucked in among, but not part of, the tourist souvenir shops
08 Instruments
. My veggie gyros were so good and authentic that I almost thought about asking whether they were actually meat - tasted just like the real thing. I think Meredith ordered something vaguely related to Indian cuisine, to which, you may know, I have some kind of allergy (really!)...so I generally tend to block these things out. Feeling much better now, I thought it might be a good idea to get back to the Tent as we were scheduled to leave for Prague at the crack of dawn. We took the twenty-minute tram ride out of town and were walking to the Tent when someone heard our English and asked if we were Americans. On the way back we told her about the snoring eighth wonder of the world and she offered us some earplugs from her reserve. Gladly accepting, we bought her a beer at the Tent's little bar and watched the remaining forty minutes of the Italy-Ukraine quarterfinal. Italy having won, we exchanged contact information with our new friend and got ready for bed around 11:30.
At 2:30 the next morning (can you call that "morning"?), I awoke for some reason and knowing the alarm was going to go off in a half-hour, I decided to just listen to my headphones until it was time to stir. Only problem was, we didn't need to get up until 3:30, so I could actually have slept for four whole hours, not just three. Anyway, up and at 'em at 3:15 or so, grabbed up all our stuff, brushed our teeth, etc., and returned our blankets to the guy at the desk, who was actually not that concerned about being woken up at that hour, and after talking a minute or two to two Russians who had hitchhiked most of the way to Munich and an Irishman who was hitting on them, we walked to the tram stop and awaited the 4:17.
After a quick transfer at the Hauptbahnhof, we were on the S-Bahn to the Flughafen for our flight (OK, get ready...which we got for $12 each on Condor, Lufthansa's cheapo-but-high-quality subsidiary!!!) to Prague
09 Surfing 1
. A little line-shifting, security-checking, and customs-clearing later, we were rushing to buy peanuts and a Snickers just seconds before boarding the plane. The only other noteworthy thing was that the plane had live video most of the flight of the ground below us, which was strange at first but made for an interesting trip.Looking back, Munich is a great city. Writing up this trip log and looking at our many pictures reminded me of all of the great things we did and places we saw. This is a city to which I would like to return someday and get a better idea of what it's really like there - the World Cup seems to have had more of an effect on Munich than the other cities we visited. I particularly liked the abundance of museums and beer halls, as well as the opportunity to actually eat decent, quality food for all of our meals, rather than whatever bad pizza or cheese sandwiches we could find - this is usually the case when traveling in France. I would also like more time to explore the Englischer Garten and some other beer halls, and next time I'll try the Augustiner beer, which is said to be Bavaria's best, better than Paulaner, Salvator, Hacker Pschorr, etc.
Hope this was informative; comments?
Comments
Great!
Hey John,
You did a great job telling about your travels. It almost made me think I had been there! Thanks!