I promise I'll catch up soon, Munich was just a daunting post to write up in an otherwise busy week. Pictures, as always can be seen on Picasa: Munich. This trip was from February 4-6.
Much of the Munich experience can actually be summed up in that album, since I won't bore you with lengthy descriptions of the profusion of fabulous museums I got to see that weekend, but suffice it to say that Munich is incredible for lovers of art and history. However, first interesting event occurred before I even set foot out of London.
My flight to Munich was out of an airport about an hour to an hour and a half outside of London, so I needed to take an easybus to get there. My easybus ticket was for 4am, and any later than that meant a good chance I wouldn't make the flight. The bus left from WAY across town, and the tube is closed at that hour, so I printed instructions for how to take the city bus system there. Just as I was going to get on the bus, I discovered my Oyster card (pay-as-you-go transit card for London) had insufficient funds. In a tube station, I could top it up, but not at a bus stop. Individual bus tickets are 2.20 and I only had £2 on me. Before I could beg 20p off someone, the bus pulled away, leaving me stunned and at a loss for what to do for a moment. Casting about for some way to get there (walking was out of the question at this point, as it would almost certainly take too long to get there), I booked it down to Trafalgar Square, which my directions had indicated to be a place where I'd need to change busses anyway. Grabbing £40 from an ATM on the way just so I'd have some cash just in case, I made it to the square and proceeded to look around for the stop that had the required bus to where I needed to go. Unfortunately, it's a large square, and none of the 5 or 6 stops I found by walking around mentioned my route. Cabs are everywhere during the day, but I couldn't find a single one for five minutes, until finally I managed to flag one down. The cabbie was very friendly, and I made the bus on time, but it put me down £18 (roughly $30) for want of 20 pence. One more transportation lesson learned, at a price.
The rest of the trip there went off without a hitch. Once there and once checked into the hostel and all that, I wandered into the town center with my newly acquired small guidebook (I had NO idea what there was to see in Munich!). Being a grey day at this point, I wasn't overly excited by anything I saw, partly from being tired from traveling as well, but the main square Marienplatz was pretty impressive. Having watched the mechanical figurines on the bell tower of the old city hall building move to the music of the carillon (see video), I was torn between thinking there was too much to do for the time I had and that there wasn't enough. The former of course turned out to be true, but at this point I hadn't read the guide too closely. Food was an adventure, as all the menus outside restaurants were in German, and I don't know a word of German. Menus inside almost anywhere were available in English, but this didn't help me decide if I wanted to eat there, and I had no way of knowing which places were overpriced and touristy and which places were actually authentic. The main cathedral, Frauenkirche, had one of its famous bell towers under renovation and covered in scaffolding, proving that February is the time in all these cities that renovations are done in preparation for tourist season. Depressed at this point and underwhelmed at first by the main "tourist attractions" in the center of town, I finally found a restaurant. The takeaway from this experience was that sauerkraut (which I HATE in the States) is actually not half-bad in Germany - although I couldn't eat a whole plate of it.
The rest of the day got much better, especially as the sun came out. I took the next step toward becoming a professional cathedral bell-tower climber by climbing to the top of Peterskirche, a much less dangerous experience than Rye. Although, despite trying not to think of it, it was the cathedral that was probably the most terrifying to be on top of once up there. There was a walkway around the belltower, and it had a grate around it, but that's IT. Were that thin metal cage not around the walkway, you could just step off the edge of the relatively narrow walkway to your death. But the view is tremendous, and you can see the Alps in the distance, though apparently not as well as in October during the time of the hot, dry winds.
The Victuelienmarkt, the big open-air market in Munich was the most amazing of its kind that I have seen, even more so than in Venice. The amount of cheese was particularly notable, and I had not previously associated Germany with cheese. I wanted very much to buy some sort of cheese or meat or wine in the market to try something assuredly fresh, local, and authentic, but I didn't know much about what they were selling and my Germany, as previously mentioned, is nonexistent. Good biergarten there though. The group of British students talking nearby demonstrated to me that American students aren't the only ones ignorant of other cultures and prone to stereotyping.
The rest of the day was spent doing a lot of exploring, much of which can be seen in the pictures. I saw the Cuvilliés theater, part of the Residence Museum (the former residence of the Wittelsbach dynasty). The ticket for the three parts of the Musuem was good for several days so I determined to come back the following day to see the rest of the Residence. Exploring further northward, I spent time walking through the English Garden, which is simply beautiful, despite the thick layer of slush remaining on the ground there from the snow of a few days earlier. Again, more exploring followed for the rest of the night. Upon returning to the hostel, I was pleased to discover that I had the entire 6 bed hostel to myself that night.
The next day I dedicated primarily to museums. The German Museum (Deutches Museum) is almost certainly the most fantastic science museum I've ever seen. There are 6 floors, and 80+ rooms with exhibits on everything from shipbuilding to tunneling to nanotechnology, musical instruments, paper making, physics, etc. I was impressed not merely with the quality of their artifacts and exhibits, but with the balance they struck with some hands-on exhibits, particularly in the nanotechnology and biotechnology area. True lovers of science will adore this museum. My only regret is that I had such limited time to explore. One really needs at least 2 days to do it right, and I only had 2-3 hours. I moved on from there to the Residence Museum, which used a different part of the brain and therefore was not overwhelming. Unfortunately, it didn't use different legs, and by the time I was done marveling at the beautiful architecture, art, and interior decorating, I had been standing or walking for the entire day.
To take a quick break without having to sit down for dinner yet (I still hoped to get to another museum before it closed), I stopped in a café called the Luitpold, which contained a delicious-looking array of pastries and desserts, a cappucino bar, and a regular bar. I decided that I wanted to get a small dessert to keep me from being starving until 8, which is when I wanted to eat. The lady behind the table told me to sit down and they would bring me my dessert. Noting the lack of seating inside, I saw an area in another room outside the café (but still indoors) that I was not sure was part of the café, so I asked a guy at the cappucino side of the bar. My strategy in Munich to this point was to simply say "Hi" (an easy way of announcing that what followed would be in English) and then to start talking in English, since most people here spoke at least some English, rather than having to ask if they spoke English each time I talked to someone. However, smartass behind the counter stops me mid-question and says "I believe the question you want to ask is do I speak English?" - in perfect English. I apologized and was a bit flustered, but later I was pretty miffed about this, as he was just being an ass for the sake of being an ass. Sorry dude for assuming you're intelligent enough to know more than one language, or for assuming that you, like everyone else in Munich, speaks enough English to get by. Not to mention that he obviously DID know English. My bad for not asking his permission to speak my language in his country.
I will note, however, that everyone to this point had been exceedingly welcoming and friendly. In any event, the museum I wanted to go to was closed, so I headed straight to the Hofbrauhaus, the most famous (and touristy!) beer hall in the world. The atmosphere is great there, and I'd love to go back with other people sometime since it really is a social hall. The guys who ended up sitting at my table spoke almost no English, so we didn't really have much to say to each other. However, the sauerbraten was excellent and so was the beer - a full litre mug plunked down on my table full of Hofbrau dunkel.
The other anecdote from the weekend came that night. When I returned to the room, I noticed that I no longer had the room to myself, but that there were 5 backpacking-type packs scattered about the room, and I think a pair of skis as well. After spending an hour or so with the crappy internet trying to upload pictures, I gave up and went to bed. Probably a couple hours later I was awakened by five very rowdy and drunk Irishmen, likely in their mid-twenties. I'd been hoping for that hostel ideal of camaraderie among travelers and meeting new people on the road and all that, but instead I was greeted by these Irish guys talking amongst themselves about "the American" (I was pretending to be still asleep) and about whether they should go through his stuff. One of them commented that he'd like some new music and that they should hook their iPods up to my computer to see what I had. Another was deliberating about erasing the pictures from my camera. Wishing I'd locked everything up before going to bed, I simply hoped and prayed they were just drunkenly rambling. Fortunately they were, and nothing of mine ended up being stolen or tampered with, but their loud talking (and one guy's snoring) kept me up half the night. Probably one of the worst night's sleep I've ever had.
The following day I went to church at St. Michael's, whose female choir sang a beautiful mass setting, the name of which escapes me right now. I had time then to visit the last part of the Residence Museum, the treasury, which contains some truly amazing pieces ranging from crowns and royal swords to crystal and gems and altarpieces. The pictures don't really capture the true shininess of these things (SHINY!). Immediately after this, I departed Munich, but I do hope to get back one day. I'd seen but a fraction of the German Museum, and missed completely their three notable art museums. Additionally, I never got to the Olympic village, which was a bit farther away, as well as the Nymphenburg Palace, which looks to be an entire day in itself. This doesn't include the fact that there are some fantastic lakes nearby, the Neuschwanstein castle, and Dachau concentration camp - all within an hour or two from Munich.
To close, I experienced on the flight home the most profound homesickness I may have ever felt in my life, perhaps due to being farther from anybody I knew than I'd ever been. I missed not just my family and loved ones, but people I wasn't even that close to back in high school, simply because they were emblematic of a life more familiar and comfortable than the tumultuous last few weeks have been. Additionally, returning to London felt like returning home in a way. I guess that was the first indication that I'd settled into the London routine well.
Random Thoughts and Observations:
-Munich is kind of the Florence of Germany. The comparison isn't exact, and Munich is a bit bigger, but there are a number of striking similarities aesthetically.
-Everyone speaks English rather well in Munich until around 5pm on Saturday, at which point everyone promptly is rendered incapable of speaking more than a few words in English and acting offended that you cannot speak German. A very strange phenomenon.
-I certainly won't extrapolate beyond what I've seen and experienced, but as for myself and everyone I've talked to so far, I've not seen an Irish student or young person under 30 who isn't an absolute raging asshole. This is coming from someone with substantial Irish heritage, mind you.
-I can walk by bakeries at home without a second thought, but every bakery or patisserie so far in Europe contains approximately 300 items I want to eat immediately.
-It is very difficult to see a city more than superficially when only there for a weekend, or to know what restaurants are geared toward tourists and which ones are not. Is there an authentic experience for the short-term traveler?
-Bavarian girls are some of the most beautiful I've ever seen in my life. In possibly related news, there are huge numbers of happy-looking couples wandering everywhere in Munich, a refreshing sight for a Colgate student, where it is refreshing to see even one couple holding hands.
-US cities/towns are always improved by sunny days of course, but the contrast between how beautiful/charming a European city or town looks when it is cloudy and rainy versus when it is sunny is astounding. This has been true of everywhere I've been so far, as every trip I've made has started out cloudy and become sunny. London is an exception, as the city seems to have been built for cloudy days. It facilitates a certain pleasant melancholy which seems somehow appropriate.
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