Munich

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Saturday 8th September 2018

I arrived in from Los Angeles (via NYC and Nice) at about 6pm on Friday night but Lew flew across from London Stanstead Airport alone and arrived at the Airbnb at 1 am. Saturday morning we were woken up by very loud construction from the half built building across from our window and this was the cue to get out of bed. Yesterday and on the plane I had done a small amount of research as to what we should do in our two days in Munich and we planned to take it pretty easy since we both had such busy weeks. Once we left the house at 11am we walked into the main area of town admiring the beautiful buildings. The first part of the day I thought we could look at the Royal Residence of Munich which is in the Odeonsplatz square. This building is very very large and has been used as the seat of government and residence of the Bavarian dukes, electors and kings between 1508 to 1918. It begun as a castle in 1385 and every ruler who lived in it made additions to make the place bigger until it was transformed into the magnificent palace surrounded by gardens that it is now. The main family that were rulers of Barvaria (now considered one of 16 states within Germany but at the time it was considered it’s own country) were the Wittelsbach dynasty who ruled for a total of 740 years. The Royal Residence of Munich was severely damaged by the allied bombings in 1944 but by 1945 reconstruction had begun and whilst the outside of the palace looks as though it has been painted on as a short cut this is what the original palace looked like and is a French style of design. Since I had heard such good things about how incredible this palace was to visit we decided to buy some tickets for €13 (£11.60/$23.11 nzd) and left our bags in the cloakroom whilst we went to explore. One of the first rooms we walked into was mind bogglingly stunning and that is the room called the Antiquarium. This hall is the oldest room in the residence and was built by Duke Albrecht V from 1568-1971 for his collection of antique sculptures which is why the room is named as it is. Everywhere you look there is a interesting painting, grotesque or statue looking back at you and with its multi coloured floor it is incredibly eye catching. Another impressive room was one called the shell grotto which was built in 1550 and consists of Bavarian freshwater shells depicting Mercury, a mermaid and Medusas head. Unfortunately in the allied bombing this was also destroyed and people post war had no money to aid in the reconstruction so instead they gathered shells to help its redevelopment. Every single room was intricately decorated in the Renaissance, early Baroque or Rococo styles which shows the changes each Monarch made during their time living in the residence. There are 130 rooms within the residence and it took us a couple of hours to get around it all. We didn’t understand how one family could need such wide marble staircases and so many rooms that you wouldn’t see each other for days! Attached to the residence was the Court Church of All Saints built in 1826-1837 by King Ludwig I which we were able to enter from inside the residence. We also realised we had already admired this church from the outside and we found it very intriguing looking at the stone front on the outside of the building as it was littered with remains of bullet holes. The church was also severely damaged during WW2 and was only reopened after reconstruction in 2003. Many of the bricks have been replaced and it is very obvious which parts of the church are new and which are the original. The interior of the church is made of all brick now and boasts high dome ceilings. All of this used to be painted as shown in the picture which would have been magnificent but the high structures of red bricks is also quite unique. Once we had seen all there was in the Residence we wanted to try and find somewhere for lunch. There is a famous place called Viktualienmarkt which I thought would be ideal for lunch and was only a short while away. It was a cute wee area with stalls selling all sorts of German food from bratwurst to pretzels and even a beer garden. We walked around not sure what to get for lunch and Lew had already become hangry and disinterested. This is where we miss Italy and its pizza as its always a simple, quick and cheap food option. Whilst this area was lovely and full of all sorts of food options we couldn’t choose and Lew set about searching for a nearby burger restaurant. We walked to the one just up the street but I decided to put my foot down as we needed something much more unique to Germany than burgers. Many people had recommended the famous Hofbräuhaus so I made us walk there. It was pretty packed and the menu didn’t look incredible but we found a couple of seats in the sun and planned to enjoy the atmosphere. I didn’t know much about Hofbräuhaus at this point but it really is considered the place to go in Munich it seems if your a tourist or even a local. So it was founded in 1589 by the Duke of Bavaria Wilhelm V and is one of Munich’s oldest, best and largest beer halls as it is able to seat 5,000 guests. Mozart was one of the famous guests that used to attend Hofbräuhaus very frequently and rumour has it that he even wrote Idomeneo after an inspirational night at the famous beer hall. Hitler was also a regular guest and Hofbräuhaus was used by the Nazi party to hold functions and assemblies. In 1920 this was the exact location where Hitler declared the 25 thesis of the National Socialist party. Even Vladimir Lenin the Head of government of Soviet Russia visited the place. The beer became famous due to its purity and incredible taste and it was so good that King Gustavius from Sweden accepted to not invade Munich in exchange of 600,000 barrels of the fine brew during the Thirty Year War. There are 6 large breweries in Munich and each Biergarten (beer garden) can only serve one of the 6 which are: Paulaner, Spaten, Hacker-Pschorr, Augustiner, Hofbräu and Löwenbräu. During WW2 Hofbräuhaus was damaged and only the beer hall itself survived. The beer hall has become so famous around the world that now there is 24 other Hofbräuhaus locations with the closest one to NZ being in Melbourne’s Market Lane which opened in 1968. As we sat down at the table enjoying the sun we were luckily given an English menu and we decided to try the radler which is half lemonade and half beer in just half a litre with two bratwursts with sauerkraut. Then we spotted a women in the typical local attire called a dirndl (if you have been to Octoberfest or have seen photos you will probably know what i’m talking about!) carrying a basket full of huge fresh baked pretzels. There was no way we were missing out on those and we waved her over and paid the €3.70 (£3.30/$5.60 nzd) for one to share. The first time I tried one of these wee gems I was flying though Frankfurt on my way to Finland for Ice hockey when I was still in high school and iv always loved pretzels ever since. We were amazed at the staff walking around with at least 6 large 1L jugs of frothy beer in their hands and were a little embarrassed we had brought such a small jug! Turns out the raddler is actually not bad at all and I normally hate beer with such a passion but this was completely different. The food took awhile to come out so we were lucky to have the pretzel in the mean time as despite the low percentage of alcohol in the beer it was no doubt it would go to our heads quickly. Once it did arrive it really was nothing special - a large sausage slopped onto a plate with some sauderkraut and mustard, but hey it filled a gap. The place was a really cool atmosphere and the beer hall had old wooden tables and chairs with the ceiling painted with all sorts of traditional designs. On the walking tour we did later we discovered that there is always traditional music playing and in between songs about every 15-20 minutes you can hear the Hofbräuhaus song or “Prost” (cheers) which is to encourage people to keep drinking basically and also mingle with others at the table. Something you also must always remember to do is that when you are “cheers-ing” people around your table you must look them in the eye and also drink afterwards as the rumour is that if you don’t you will be cursed to 7 years of bad sex. Unfortunately we were there for lunch and also outside so we didn’t hear any of these songs or participate in any singing! We paid for our food and left the beer garden making our way to the Birkenstock store as Lew was keen to get himself a pair since I keep raving about mine. Hes very interested in a particular dark blue pair which have been difficult to find and I had looked in Nice and even on the USA website and found no stock. Sure enough the store down the road had also sold out of this colour but he found another online that would do the trick and I ordered it then and there so it would be here before our Croatia trip next week and for his birthday. We made our way to Marienplatz which is the town square in Munichs old town where we would be beginning our walking tour with Sandemans tours. There was a protest against right wings extremists happening in the middle of the square so it was very busy with lots of police presence also. Iv probably mentioned it before but these tours are excellent and often provide a really good historical overview of cities that you wouldn’t get just wandering around. They are also “free” but really you can contribute whatever you want to the guide at the end so it means that any traveller regardless of their budget is able to access historical city tours. Our guide today was Ben from Ireland who moved to Munich for his girlfriend and he took us out of the main center and away from the protesting chaos to give us a chat about Munich and the town square itself. Munich is known as München in German and the name is derived from the old spelling of monks as the area was initially the home of monks in a monastery. The date the city was founded is 1158 which is when it was first mentioned in documents. Munichs old town hall was built in 1310 but Marienplatz also had a new town hall built in 1908 in the typical gothic style popular back then and appears older than the new town hall. The new town hall has something called the Glockenspiel in the tower balcony of the Neues Rathaus which are figurines representing stories of Munichs history thats twirl around. They play at 11am, 12pm and 5pm (summer) but this wasn’t something we really felt we needed to see and those in our tour group agree with Ben our guide that it certainly wasn’t life changing! Our tour moved along to stand outside of the Frauenkirche which is the two towers of the Cathedral of Our Dear Lady popping up above the rest of the city. It was built in 1488 and took 20 years to complete ( a very short time in those days!) and despite it being called a gothic style building it is missing all the usual additives which is typical of one of these buildings such as gargoyles, grotesques and lots sharply pointed spires. That is because the town didn’t have much money during this time so they didn’t wanted to pay for all the added details. The town even has a local rule that no one is allowed to build higher than the Frauenkirche within the city center so that it remains the most eye catching thing in the city. An interesting fact is that the cathedral survived WW2 as allied bombers used the towers as landmarks to destroy the rest of the city. The cathedral has old tombstone attached to the side of it and Ben told us that it used to have a large graveyard attached to it but as the city grew more space was required and the tombstones were transferred onto the wall of the church so the graveyard land was able to be used for buildings. The next stop of the tour was back where we had already been this morning and that was to Odeonplatz which is the square near the Munich Royal Residence. We stopped in a small side street where Ben begun to tell us about the Third Reich present in the city and that Munich was where the Nazi movement first begun in 1919. Hitler was an army veteran who was frustrated by Germanys defeat in WW1 which left the nation economically depressed and politically unstable which is why the German Worker Party was initially founded. The party promoted German nationalism and anti-semitism and was all based off the fact that the Treaty of Versailles (peace settlement that ended the war) was unjust towards Germany. Hitler took control of the party in 1921 and renamed it to the Nationalist Socialist German Workers Party or NAZI for short and begun giving charismatic and energetic public talks attracting new members to his group. November 8th 1923 in a large Munich Beer called hall Bürgerbräukeller (survived WW2 but was demolished in 1979) Hitler staged the Beer Hall Putsch as he planned to takeover the government of Bavaria and spark a bigger revolution against the national government. He organised to kidnap the state commissioner of Bavaria and two other conservative politicians and forced them to join the party at gunpoint. However, he left to deal with another crisis in the city and the hostages were accidentally allowed to escape which meant Hitler was put on trial for high treason. The judge was a Nazi sympathiser and he ended up being released after 18 months for good behaviour. Lew and I both found this information so incredible because if he had actually had a proper jail sentence he could have been in prison for so many years and the entire Holocaust may not have happened! But alas the entire trial made the news and even gained more followers for him and in 1933 the Nazi’s begun to rule Germany and the first concentration camp in Dauchau was opened. This camp is about 40 minutes out of town but not somewhere we were able to get to. Ben also spoke about the exact small street we were on and that just around the corner there used to be a memorial of the 16 men who died during the Beer Hall Putsch and two SS soldiers were positioned either side of it at all time and anyone who walked past must salute it whether you were a sympathiser or not. People then discovered that small street known as Drückebergergasse (The Dodgers' Alley) we were currently standing in as a way of avoiding the statue but the soldiers caught on and another guard was stationed along it in an archway and everyone walking down there was pulled over and questioned. If they didn’t have a proper excuse for walking that particular way their names were written down on a list and these people would have ended up in concentration camps. To remember these people who stood up for what they believed and refused to salute this memorial a gold trail goes down this alleyway marking the route that they would have taken. I hadn’t noticed it at all until it was pointed out to us. Ben then also pointed out a couple of beautiful old buildings surrounding Odeonplatz one of which is the Feldherrnhalle (Field marshalls hall) build by Lugwig I (he build most things in the city) in 1844 to honour Bavarian generals. It has two large lions at its entrance and the entire thing has a very Italian feel. The other extravagant building was the yellow Theatinerkirche St. Kajetan (Theatine Church of St. Cajetan) built in 1663-1690 in the Italian high-Baroque style. Ferdinand Maria elector of Bavaria built the church as a gesture of thanks to god for the long awaited heir to the Bavarian crown Maximillian Emanuel after he publicly begged on his knees in the middle of the square for a heir. Our tour moved on and as we walked along the streets there were beautiful German cars everywhere in sight - Porsche, BMWs, Mercedes, Audis and it was hard to keep up with the tour after admiring so many of them. We stopped off outside the very Greek looking building of the Bavarian National Theatre built in 1818 by Ludwig I of course who had a love for Greek architecture. The building has an incredibly unlucky past as it has been rebuilt 4 times already. It was damaged by fires twice and on the third fire they had installed a type of sprinkler system which worked using a big pool of water on top of the building that fed through pipes into the building to put out the fire. However, the fire happened during the winter and the water had been turned into ice and therefore the system didn’t work. Munich always has a large supply of beer so instead the locals formed a human chain from Hofbräuhaus to try and put it out. Of course men begun drinking the beer as it passed a long the line and the building was not saved and was in need of rebuilding once again. Ben also spoke to us about the tradition of Oktoberfest and how it was initially started. It begun back in October 1810 for the wedding of King Ludwig I to Princess Therese when all citizens of Munich were invited to attend the festivities on the fields surrounding the city gates to celebrate the royal couple. The royals decided to continue the tradition the following years to celebrate their anniversary and now this has grown into the large famous beer festival known as Oktoberfest which is still held today. During Oktoberfest everyone attending wears the traditional Bavarian attire of lederhosen for men which are leather pants and dirndls for women which are the tight fitting white blouse, skirt and apron. These clothes are still very much a part of everyday Munich/Bavarian culture especially since German reunification in 1990 and Bavaria wanted to preserve its tradition. Something I didn’t know was that the way that a women ties the bow on her dress means a lot in terms of her relationship status. If the bow is tied to the left it means you are single, if it is tied to the middle of your back it means you are a widow, if it is tied to the middle on the front it means you are a young girl/virgin and if it is tied to the right it means you are married or in a relationship. Ben said he often feels the need to tell many female tourists attending Oktoberfest that they have tied their bow completely wring and it will attract far too much attention with it being front and center. Also a mans lederhosen must never be washed and often these are passed down for generations and generations! The final place on our tour was also somewhere we have been before and that is the Viktualienmarkt food market that has been present since 1158 when the city was first established. It used to be in Marienplatz square but was moved in 1807 when the market got too big for the area. The market has a maypole in its center with figurines and pictures displaying the trades and crafts in this area of Munich. A Maypole is a symbol of fertility and every year on May 1st which is considered Maypole day in Bavaria symbolising the beginning of spring locals dress up in their lederhosen and dirndls to celebrate. A tall straight pine tree is chosen for the event which is felled weeks before and hidden. Ben told us about one very funny tradition and that is that other villages try to steal each other maypoles and if they can they are rewarded with a feast and two barrels of beer. Each village has a designated group of men assigned to stealing other villages trees and last year two nearby village Hohendilching and Ismaning on the outskirts of Munich joined forces and successfully stole Munich’s maypole. It took 80 men and the towns fire department to sneak the tree out of a farmers warehouse and onto a trailer to take it to their secret location. They tried to bargain for a table at Oktoberfest every year but this request was declined and the usual feast and beer was provided to them. On May 1st these thieves joined in putting up Munich’s maypole and there were no hard feelings. I could see Lew next to me grinning ear to ear when he heard this story as its such a funny tradition for a town to uphold. Once the tour was done we had a short amount of time before the sun went down and we planned on seeing one of the other cool things that happens in central Munich and that is the surfing in the English Gardens. We plugged it into Google maps and fast walked to the nearest train station where we took a train out 15 minutes and then had to walk 20 minutes or so into the gardens. My feet were beginning to hurt in my lovely new shoes and it was also starting to get dark and cold but we continued to follow the directions I had put into the map as to where the particular location on the Eisbach river was. Turns out when we arrived I had literally just put the name of the river in and it had taken us to that particular spot as to where the river was named on the map with no surfing in sight! We then had to walk another 20 minutes in the waning sunlight to where the smaller of the two waves were. I was surprised there were still three guys surfing this wave in wetsuits at this time of night and it was incredibly impressive watching them surf between two concrete blocks on each side. Lew then told me this wasn’t even the famous wave so we continued another 15 minutes back towards the city where we had actually been before we caught the train (silly me!). Now this wave was insane! So it turns out that this wave was created in order to slow the water down in the river and it has been surfed since 1972. However, this was considered illegal until 2010 as it was a dangerous spot with fast flowing water and concrete banks on either side. Often surfers would be seen running through the English gardens being chased by police only to have to pick up their board from the local station later on. Surfing in the ocean was only seen on TV at this point and surfers in Munich tried to replicate what they saw by riding door like planks. In 2010 surfing the wave became permitted and Munich now even holds surfing competitions on the wave. There were two guys still riding this massive wave despite it being dark and the street lights were only just illuminating the water. You could tell they were a lot more skilled than the riders on the other wave since this one was much larger and also flowing much more swiftly. We stayed watching for 10 minutes or so before we decided it was getting late and we still hadn’t had dinner. The plan was to get back and grab something simple from the supermarket. We didn’t have enough change to catch the bus so we were a little naughty and just hopped on and sat at the back not bothering to pay because other wise it would take us 30 minutes to walk. Arriving back at our street despite it being a Saturday night every single supermarket across the road from us was closed and a quick google search told us the only one open was the one close to the train station which was were the bus we were just on was headed to. It was a good 20 minute walk to the shop and I ended up in bare feet walking through the middle of town my feet were so sore. This supermarket was also a fail because the line to pay was down the entire length of the shop and wrapped around the aisles - we never seen such a thing even the day before xmas at home. We dumped the basket and left feeling a little unsure of what to do next but we would have to find some sort of takeaway. We had walked past a small Thai place with lots of local people eating there so we thought that was probably the best bet. We ordered a couple of dishes and poor Lew had to walk back to the station to find a cash machine as they were cash only. We finally paid and walked the rest of the way home feeling pretty exhausted. That didn’t stop us calling my parents and eating our takeaways whilst discussing their potential trip ideas for Europe next year. We ended up staying awake until 1am planning their trip using trains through France and Italy since they arnt keen to drive and also working out how long they needed in each place. They are also adamant they are doing a sailing trip around Croatia and that we will have 8 days in Portugal with them that we can plan out with a car and using Airbnbs. Bring on 2019!

Heasdstones on the exterior of the Frauenkirche

Exterior of the Court Church of All Saints

Locals in their lederhosen going to a drink

Drückebergergasse (The Dodgers' Alley) where the Jews passed

Sunday 9th September

As you can imagine we weren’t up at the crack of dawn but we left the house by 10.30am and made our way out to Olympic Park where the BMW Museum is. The last car museums we had done was in Modena, Italy but that was for Pagani and Ferrari and Lamborghini which are much more preferred than BMWs in my opinions. Majority of BMWs just look like taxis to me…so Lew has the challenge of converting my opinions! There is a big show room that you can enter for free where you can look at Mini’s which are also part of the BMW motor group. BMW actually stands for Bayerische Motoren Werke which wasn’t what I was brought up being taught. BMW always meant big mans willy/black mans willy or something silly like that to my family (they are very particular about their car brands). Anyway so BMW did have a surprising amount of impressive technology happening especially with its electric cars and many prototypes of future driverless cars. Not to mention they also have some excellent ways of reducing waste with the electric cars and they are 80% recyclable. There was also an amazing collection of motor bikes from over the years and I had no idea BMW produced such things. On top of that they even produced plane engines and turbo props so Lew talked me through how they all worked since the large motors were sitting in their show room. Once we had finished with the many floors of the BMW museum and also had a brief look around Olympic park from the 1972 Olympics we headed back into town on the U bahn train to find ourselves some lunch. We of course ended up at a burger place called Hamburgeri which was close to where our Airbnb was based and one of the top burger places in Munich. It sure was delicious and for £17.80 ($32 nzd) it wasn’t horrendously expensive either! With not a huge amount of time to spare before we needed to go to the airport we googled the nearest beer garden and Augustina Keller which was one highly recommended to us was just around the corner. A short walk away we found the garden which was massive and had a heap of tables around with locals and tourists enjoying a beer and a pretzel. It seemed like the perfect way to spend the afternoon basking in the sunshine and we vowed to share an entire litre glass of radler between us. The 1L beer glass was so damn big I had to hold onto it with two hands to drink which Lew just thought was the funniest thing! By the time it was 4pm we left the garden slightly tipsy and made our way to the station to buy a ticket out to the airport. We got onto the train and sat down when Lew suddenly exclaimed that we had forgotten to pick up my suitcase! I had no recollection of another bag what-so-ever but thankfully the next stop was actually the main train station so we were able to get off and pick it up, running back to catch the next train to the airport. It made us slightly later than we wanted but it wasn’t an issue at all. We were flying Smartwings back again and we had no issues getting back to Stanstead Airport with them. We were exhausted after the long week, busy weekend and late night once we returned home and I had been away for just under a week. This coming week we are leaving for Croatia where we are meeting Lews parents! Finally a holiday is on the cards.

ShannenSeptember 9, 2018Munich, Germany, Oktoberfest, Beer, Augustiner-Keller biergarten, hofbrauhaus