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Published: July 12th 2011
Claire’s life long association with Munich has it’s roots from before she was born - when her parents hosted a Bavarian youth football team and Peter, Reinsche and Wolfgang came to stay – on subsequent visits the sight of “Germans” camping in the backgarden of a Birmingham suburb was not an every day occurance and plenty of 4 and 5 year old friends were ushered in to see them!
Our journey to Munich through Austria was slow and tempered by the weather which was raining cats and dogs and dipped to a rather scary 11 degrees - a bit of a shock having left Bled that morning at a balmy 28! On our arrival at Camping platz Thalkirchen in Munich, our initial panic at being squashed in like sardines alongside other caravans and motorhomes for 6 nights dissipated when a more thorough search of the campsite revealed a less popular set of pitches at the back of the campsite away from the canal view.
Within the hour we were unhitched, sun shade out, van spruced for parental inspection and said parents telephoned and on their way to see us. We forgot to tell them to bring their own deck
chairs so when Marianne, Peter, Reinsche, Pat and George all turned up it stretched the catering (max 4 tea cups) and accommodations (one picnic table and 2 director chairs) of the Major to the full! A couple of clockwork Turtles from Marianne kept the boys fascinated!
Marianne is like a Grandmother to Claire and to see her again, now an octogenarian, was wonderful, our last visit being 10 years ago but with frequent letters and postcards in between! Mind you, working for Siemens and driving a BMW (sadly long gone in favour of the mummy mobile Jupiter) has always kept the Bavarian connection alive between visits.
Pat and George gallantly offer to take the boys for the day and Simon and I decide to pursue different past-times – our first time apart in 2 months! – Simon going to the Deutsche Museum and Claire opting for the Residenz Museum a vast palace complex built for the Wittelsbachs and their vast array of treasures definitely worth a visit. One of the later Wittelsbach rulers had two sets of identical twins amongst his 6 children – poor him!
The museum is an engineers heaven, full of machines and exhibits
of all sorts. Only having two or three hours Simon had to carefully select what to see and will need a return trip – highly recommended to techies.
We met up in thundering rain under the glockenspiel in Marienplatz at 3pm and after a beer and sausage lunch went to the Viktualienmarkt open air market which is a wonderful display of Bavarian foods. Asking directions to the local bio store in the rain we meet Klaus the taxi driver and spend 15 minutes with him looking at his photos of his favourite winter retreat in Crete – why not, we have the time!
That evening, after a lovely dinner in a traditional Bavarian eating house we return to the caravan to find a puddle of icy hailstones, Mum announces that it’s really cold and Simon reminds her that she has a lovely warm house to go home to and we are sitting it out in the caravan…yet still lends her his warmest fleece!
The next morning we take the boys on a sightseeing tour of Munich on an open-top bus – this place certainly has its fair share of beautiful landmarks. Peter and his Mum, Mrs Brueckl,
Munchers enjoying a beer
left to right: George P, Reinhard, Marianne, Ingrid (standing), Carolyn, and Marie Louisa.have invited us to a BBQ on Sunday evening at their house in Unterhaching where Pat and George are staying. Unfortunately Sat Nav takes us to another road with the same name in a suburb of Munich and we only realise we are miles from where we should be when we see the name on the gate and its not Brueckl!
All is not lost and within 30 mins we are where we should be in Unterhaching and enjoing a lovely afternoon with Peter, Mrs Brueckl, his sister Ingrid, her husband Gunther and Louisa his daughter. Unfortunately the weather is questionable again and so the BBQ takes place on the veranda but the eating inside! Despite the rain, the boys love the garden, especially the statue of the boy Mozart (which gets a Thomas and Miles style beating) and there is a lovely moment when they are playing tag around the legs of Mrs Brueckl who thankfully seemed to be enjoying the game as much as they were!
As we are in a city and the weather is still bad, we decide to go to an indoor play centre the next day, this one is called Lollihop –
much of the same as at home and more besides, this one had a big top that the kids could scale and slide down, a helter skelter and a boating lake – all inside! Thomas and Miles were in their element and so they should be as it cost us nearly £25 in entrance fees!
Everyone is meeting up at the Englischer Garten – one of Munich’s famous Bier Gartens - in the afternoon and we make our way there to find them all lined up on a trestle table drinking Steiners of Augustiner beer and eating Pretzls under the Chinese Tower with a band playing um pa pa! If you can’t beat them join them...
Legoland is about 100km away and we decide to go there as it is always such good fun at Windsor. The Germany Legoland doesn’t disappoint being a facsimile of the English one plus a bit extra. The boys are happiest in the water park and about an hour in we wonder if we are ever going to drag them away to the rest of the park. We do, eventually!
All too soon it is our last day. I have a lovely
morning with Marianne at her apartment whilst the boys go for a walk to a lake with Grandma and Grandpa and Simon sorts out the campsite in Switzerland. In the afternoon we all head to a beer garden near Nymphenburg Palace. Buying a round for 10 is quite an experience, white wine and white beer from one stand, lager beer and shandy from another, coffee from another and pretezls from another – red wine is a bridge too far and I am reminded by the locals that it is a “bier garten” and not a wine garden – touché!
Lots of farewells and we head back to the campsite, next stop Switzerland…
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Pat Pemberton
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A Good Time Was Had By All
This will go down as one of our most memorable holidays. Really enjoy your Blog.