Weimar, Bamberg, Lindau and Munich

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  Munich, Bavaria, Germany
Monday, September 15, 2008

On my final night in Munich I write this blog. Tomorrow morning I am catching a train to Koblenz where I am staying with family friends for a couple of weeks. I have spent two weeks based in Munich doing all sorts of different trips. It has been an adventure that is for sure.

Those of you who have been jealous can now stop being jealous. Verena and I came down with food poisoning from our road trip. She was unfortunately was sicker than I was but I have also had a cold on top of this. As a result this last week we have not done what we had hoped to do. After Dresden we crammed Weimar and Bamberg into one day and got home at 9:30pm. These were two very different towns. Weimar is like the cultural center of Germany. One of the Duchesses of Weimar invited philosophers, writers and Liszt to Weimar. Also Martin Luther frequented Weimar. They are very proud of this literary history. Being a Sunday, it was very quiet. Shops in Germany are closed on a Sunday. I'm quite enjoying it. The tourist spots were still open so we checked them out.

Then we headed off to Bamberg and raced around seeing the things we wanted to see before they closed. There is a magnificent church there with this angel with an almost devilish smile on her face on one of the aisle as you walk in. It is quite bizarre. There is also a tomb there for a pope, apparently the only one north of the alps. Catholic churches are strange round here.

Back in Munich we rested on Monday. Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons Marc was my tour guide. He took me out to Dachau, the concentration camp that all others were modeled on. It was weird visiting it and seeing what actually happened there. Sometimes thought you can still talk yourself into not really believing that this all happened.

After Dachau we went and visited on of Munich's castles and it beautiful gardens. The next afternoon we took in all the city sights. Did you realise that Hitler first attempted to take over power in Munich. Munich was Hitlers base city. There is is much history here relating to the war. I always assumed it was Berlin, but it wasn't. Can tell I didn't do history at school.

Thursday I visited the old and modern art museums with Panos, a friend of Verena's who was born in Munich but is from Greece. I managed to see a couple of Rembrandt's, which were amazing. They were scenes from Bible stories which really touched me to see. The interesting thing was that the artist of old were fascinated by both biblical stories and mythological stories and so painted both and displayed both next to each other, which I found kind of ironic in their contrast.

Friday we headed to Lindau. The weather wasn't fantastic so we checked out the island and had Hot Seele ("sole") for dinner at an Irish pub. Hot Seele is a typical Lindau dish. It is like a baguette gut in half with onion, ham/pepperoni, cheese and other things. It was quite nice. Saturday was raining so we had a look at Verena's photos from here NZ trip and then headed home via Austria. Yes I have been to Austria. There is no stamp in my passport as there is no border control but I have the credit card receipt to prove it. Petrol is 20c cheaper in Austria. It is €1.48 here in Germany.

Today we had brunch at a student pub with Florian (CACM* exchange student 2007), his girlfriend, Verena (CACM* exchange student 2005) and a few of their friends. Marc (CACM* exchange student 2006) finally joined us 2 hours late. Marc, his girlfriend and I then spent the afternoon at the BMW museum. It was quite cool to see all the cars, concept cars, motorbikes, engines and that BMW first did areoplane engines till the end of the 1st world war. It is a fascinating place with some sweet cars!

And that is the update on what I have been doing over the past week. It was been great. The weather has been nice until the last few days. The temperature is dropping and getting quite cold. There goes my summer, hopefully not. Hope all is well back home. Talk to you soon.

* CACM is the Center for Advanced Composite Materials at the University of Auckland, where I work/study, depending on your perspective.

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