Freising

  Freising, Bavaria, Germany
Wednesday, May 7, 2008

 We are just about to leave this lovely town.  It is a short drive from the airport at Munich and we have had two nights and one day here.
I hadn't realised that the people of Bavaria were staunchly Roman Catholic.  The Cathedral rivals any I have seen in Italy (with the exception perhaps of Vatican City, with beautiful friezes all along the walls and over the ceiling a la Sistine Chapel.

Freising Cathedral

The attached museum has an extensive array of religious paintings, sculptures and artifacts that spread over a number of rooms on three floors and the library has an exhibition of the current Pope's life.

Sichtungsgarten

However we loved the Sitchtungsgarten which I would never have found if I hadn't had the book "1001 Gardens to see before you die" which my son gave me. It was a nineteenth century villa garden and now opens as a public park. What I really loved about it was that every plant had a tag with its name on it, and there were so many different, unusual plants. It was part of a Technical College, so students were working on it all the time.  There is no entry fee surprisingly.  We came here by default as we had intended to stay in Munich but there was a Trade Conference on there and accommodation was super expensive. So we decided to stay here, 20 minutes from Munich airport, and it is a lovely town of c.50,000 people.
The cathedral here is amazing and I have never seen such a huge collection of religious paraphernalia outside the Vatican.

the current Pope in Freising

In fact the current Pope will be here on September 14th September because he was once a bishop at Freising Cathedral and there is a very good exhibition about his life here. The town is all agog! So if you are in Bavaria I would recommend a visit to Freising, however probably NOT on September 14th, 2008!
Oh the other interesting thing about Freising is that there are fiberglass polar bears (ice bears the Germans call them) gaily painted all over town. I photographed about 15! They are like the cows in Shepparton for those of you who have been there or seen our photos.

an ice bear

another ice bear

yet another ice bear

We are now at Munich airport, they have free tea and coffee in the Departure lounges! but we were amused by the smoking area, it is a small glassed stand up area where people were crammed in puffing their hearts out.  You could see the air in there was rather thick!!! That should be enough to encourage you to give up smoking!

a bear melange