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Munich is great city.
I started Munich full of worry that the rain would destroy my one day there. Seriously The rain is following me. It rained in Vienna, all 3 days in Hallstatt, in Munich, and even now in Interlaken it's raining. Enough already! But the walking tour (neweuropetours.eu) still went even with the rain, and my lovely Broken Umbrella (TM) is still going strong, so no stupid rain is gonna stop me 😉
The tour is great, as it's purely tip-based and therefore requires the guides to be excellent in order for them to make moneys. And I tipped the guy twice what I had originally planned, the the half-scot half-kiwi was definitely good. We started at the new town hall, with it's apparently famous Glockenspiel (which was underwhelming but I guess charming). The town hall itself is an excellent example of gothic architecture, and fit the vienna-like hugeness of this town. Again with the huge buildings and their huge facades, as well as the huge gardens (ie the English garden which I visited later, which is the largest in-city garden in the world. But, again, that comes later.
We continued on to a church that
took many, many years to complete because they ran out of money 9 times building it. It's cool because you can see the difference in the bricks and such where they had to wait. It also came with an interesting story about how the devil supposedly helped to complete it because he entered it through the front door, ready to destroy it, but then saw a dark, dank, no-windows church and liked the idea so much that he offered to help the architects finish it in 20 years if they agreed to not add any more windows. They said yes. When he came back 20 years later, he came in through a different door and saw bright natural light coming from windows all over. Angry enough to kill, he confronted the architects with a fist full of flame. They then guided him back in through the front door where he saw the same sight had he 20 years previously. The place is designed so that no windows are visible from the front foyer. The devil was supposedly so mad the he stomped his flaming foot down and left a permanent mark which is still there today (you can see me
trying to fit my foot there, it was a pretty darn good fit). The mark is actually the signature of the architect.
Right outside the church there's a 3d sculpture "map" of the city where every building is marked with braille. An interesting idea, but probably not as practical for the blind as they would like. And right next door there was a toy museum which I didn't get around to seeing, but which was surrounded by cool little stores, one of which specialized in Christmas decorations that I bought a few trinkets from. This was the first time I actually got to barter in Europe, got the total price on 2 items down by about 15 euros, which made me happy.
The guide also told us about the German guilt complex over WW2, which is actually pretty evident as you walk around Munich. They deal with the sensitive issue of remembering the atrocities of WW2 by having over 150 very subtle memorials around Munich. The idea is that, in order to find out more about the memorial sites, you're forced to talk to people bout it. It's a cool idea I think, and it seems to work,
at least for tourists. There's also this very architecturally interesting synagogue whose bottom half is supposed to recall the Wailing Wall and whose top half light up SUPER bright at night.
We then hit up the Viktualemarkt (Victual market), which I ended up coming back to later, so I'll talk about it in that light. The place is basically like an Amish fair (like Hartville for those that know what I mean) that's set smack-dab in the middle of a city. The varieties of vegetables at the vegetable stands, of cheeses at the cheese stands, of meats at the meat stalls was amazing and really fun to look at but too expensive. I ended up buying some cherries and strawberries here later before hiking through the ginormous park, which was nice, but that's later!
Next up was the Hofbrauhaus, which is probably the most famous bar in europe. The place is 5 stories tall, and has been around for hundreds of years. And tables are so in demand that it takes 15 years of regular attendance before you get the privelege of reserving a table. These "regulars" even get their own, personalized mugs.
We visited the Residence,
which like in Vienna was where the rulers stayed. It was under construction at the time, but in europe they have this cool practice of putting up fabric facades of what the finished product will look like. Except the huge face of Pierce Brosnan, the Residence looked like it should in few months instead of like a scaffolding nightmare.
The tour ended at Field Marshall's plaza, which was pretty with its brazenly yellow building. Apparently the place had placards put up during Hitler's reign that required people to salute them any time they passed or face concentration camp internment. So many people used an immediately preceding alley to avoid having to do this that the place has been immortalized as "Dodger's alley" with a painted yellow line showing the diverted path.
I went to eat some cheap stew with the guide and then continued on. I decided to head back to the market and get me some Starbucks (mmm) and some fruit, and then tooled around the knickknack store for a bit. I then hiked up a ridiculous number of stairs to the top of the belltower of Old st. Peter's church, which had nice views of the
entire area. It was from here that I couls see the edge of the huge huge english gardens, which I decided would be great way to spend the next 4 hours or so that I had left.
I walked in what I thought was the right direction and got a little lost in the super-rich-person part of town. I saw more minicoopers here than I probably have in all the rest of my life combined, no joke. I found my way to a garden with a nice little pagoda thingy that a bunch of people had taken cover because of more rain (getting used to that by now). It was great though, because there was a classical trio playing music there and the acoustics were surprisingly good. Them playing with the backdrop of the gardens and the rain was supersweet.
The english garden itself was ginormous. It had a Japanese garden, an avian garden, a terrace garden, a waterfall garden, a huge wide-open area where people played soccer and such, a lot of dogs, and a building way off in the distance which I decided was my goal. After seeing all the above things, I reached the building
which has in interesting view of the rest of town (and a lot of snails). A leisurely traipse back out and past a couple more memorials and I was done for the day. Tomorrow I meet up with Brent in Switzerland, and it looks to be a long day so I went to bed early.
I am in actuality already in Switzerland and have met up with Brent, but I'm a bit behind in my entries so I'll try to catch up ASAP 😊 Let's just say though, things are going well!
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