München - Days 2-5

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After getting a good night's rest on Sunday night, I spent most of Monday exploring the city on my own. I took the U-bahn to the former site of the 1972 Olympics to visit the BMW Museum. Unfortunately, the museum was closed as they're performing major renovations until 2007. However, they had a small exhibition of a few select models so I paid 2 Euros to see some rare models, like the M1 (only 400 were ever made) and Z1 (which was never available in North America). In the afternoon, I decided to take a walk in the English Garden, which is a largest municipal park in continental Europe (I think it may be larger than Stanley Park). I wanted to see the famous Chinese temple, but I ended up walking around the entire south end of the park until I finally found it. The walk was nice, but the temple itself was quite disappointing. The temple is somewhat "Asian", but I would hardly consider it very Chinese. On the way back to the U-Bahn station, I ran into 2 Aussies that I met in Paris (how's that for a coincidence?) In the evening, I walked around the main pedestrian mall as I felt like doing some shopping. I was close to buying a blazer, but I decided against it at the last minute.

On Tuesday, Christina had a day off work so she drove me to the Bavarian countryside. We saw 3 small towns about 50 clicks away from Munich. The first town that we saw was probably the nicest as it had cobblestone roads and was situated on a hill. Unfortunately it rained on Tuesday so it was not possible to see the mountains in the background. In fact, the scenery reminded me very much of the West Coast - the mountains, the green fields, the clouds, and the small winding roads. At about 4 PM, we drove to Christina's parents place. Although her parents speak a bit of English, Christina ended up translating for most the afternoon and evening. We had some plum cake and tea (very Bavarian) and took a walk around the neighbourhood. In the evening, we were joined by Christina's boyfriend, Axel. Fortunately, Axel did speak English quite well so we were able to have a conversation on a variety of topics such as the expansion of the European Union, his time in the German military, and the automobile and petrol industries. (I'm sure you're rolling your eyes, but this is the type of conversation I long for.) I was treated to a very typical Bavarian dinner with cold cuts, bread, cheeses, some beer, and salad. The food was excellent, though everything is laced with salt so I wouldn't recommend the Bavarian diet to people with high blood pressure (though I'm sure none of you have that problem).

On Wednesday, I took a trip to Dachau, which was the first concentration camp. The site was actually a work camp where undesirables like political opponents, Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, religious people, and later political prisoners were taken to perform work such as producing armaments. Though it was a work camp, thousands died as a result of malnutrition, exhaustion, disease, and cruel treatment by the SS. There was a short film that showed some footage from the time the camp was in use and some of it was quite difficult to watch - walking skeletons (i.e. people so malnourished that they were nothing more than skin and bones), people being punished, and piles of dead bodies. I also paid a visit to the crematorium where dead bodies were incinerated and where a gas chamber was constructed, but never used (nobody really knows why since gas chambers were used at other camps). Overall, walking through the buildings and the grounds was a very sobering experience despite the fact that it wasn't an "extermination camp" like Auschwitz.

On Thursday, my final day in Munich, I decided to check out the Deutsches Museum which is one of the largest scientific exhibitions in the world (think Science World, but 1000 times larger). There are a number of sections which include aviation, motors, astronomy, telecommunications, agriculture, broadcasting, and chemistry. One could literally spend weeks exploring all of the exhibits, but I only spent about 3 hours walking around. I found the section on the history of space flight the most interesting (probably because the history is intertwined with a heated political context - the Cold War). After grabbing a quick bite to eat (meat on a bun - very German), I decided to do some browsing again along with some people-watching up by the university campus (Leopoldstraße).

Munich is very much like Vancouver: there's a coffee scene, people are into fitness, attitudes are relaxed, people dress somewhat casually, and it rains, BUT, it has a much better public transportation systerm (U-Bahn, S-Bahn, and trams that announce stops!). Although I haven't been to other German cities, I think that Germans are a happy medium between the grumpy French and the laid-back Italians. They're very focused on following rules, like waiting at crosswalks and not walking on bike paths, but this allows them to get things done. Although people aren't quite as slim as the French (Christina tells me that obesity is an emerging problem), they are generally healthier than North Americans (notwithstanding Vancouver) despite their diet. I do have a soft spot for blondes (who doesn't?), so it was nice to see attractive real blondes walking around the streets in their skinny jeans (love em or hate em, they're here) and boots. In sum, I would not hesitate recommending a visit to Munich.

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