Munich - They dun got beer and brats here!

We arrived in Munich about 8pm on Sunday and easily found our hotel, located only a few blocks from the train station (Thanks, Rick Steves!) On that first evening, we didn’t have time for much other than grabbing some dinner, so we headed out to Munich’s famous Marianplatz central square. We figured if there was any place that would have good eats at 9pm, it’d be Marianplatz. We were not disappointed. We found a traditional beer hall, ordered some sausage, sauerkraut and beer and ate until we were stuffed. That Bavarian cuisine is good stick-to-your ribs food, y’all.

Monday morning, we got up and headed down to the breakfast room in our hotel – which is cuter than cute, filled with flowered wallpaper and curtains and with all kinds of little cherub imagery everywhere. The food is good and eating at the hotel gives us a quick start to the day.

So, after finishing our morning meal, we were off to the EurAide (no not a refreshing citrus drink, but a helpful info service) desk at the train station, which sells all kinds of good sightseeing tours, multiday transportation passes and the like. We picked up a one-day pass for the hop-on-hop-off bus that hits all the major touristy areas and a 3-day partner metro pass and then headed out to catch the next tour bus. Unfortunately, we weren’t really aware of where the bus left from, so we spent a good chunk of time wandering back an forth across the HUGE Munich main train station until we spotted the exit facing the department store that is the meeting place for the busses.

There were 4 busses lined up, so we hopped on the next available bus making the “big” loop of the Munich sights and headed off to Nymphenburg Palace, the summer palace used by Germany’s royalty – back when Germany had royalty, of course. Nymphenburg Palace is huge, as one would expect a palace to be – and is an understated grayish color on the outside. But, for those who need their fill of gold-leafing on their palace visit, fear not: the inside has more than enough gold-encrusted doorframes, chandeliers and priceless works of art to satisfy any tourist that might be going through a bad case of Versailles-withdrawal.

The palace was built as gift from the King of Germany to the Queen after she finally delivered the male heir to the throne that was stipulated in her contract (after 10+ years of trying). Being the Italian-born princess that she was, the palace has a very romantic, renaissance-y kind of feel to it. Very pretty – though the subsequent king liked his ladies, so there are multiple halls full of portraits of women that he thought were beautiful. Kinda like Barker’s Beauties, but slightly more tasteful. Only slightly, though. After touring the palace, we hopped back on
the bus for the rest of the city tour.

The next stop was Munich’s Olympic park, site of the 1972 Summer Games – made infamous by the kidnapping and killing of members of the Israeli team. The park and many athletic facilities are still in use today, a fact, which, as the tour guide pointed out to us, allowed the German government to pay off the cost of the facilities in record time (5 years). It had been raining all day, and we’d been looking for a nice umbrella that would double as a nice souvenir. We found one at the Olympic park, which was handy, since it continued to rain on us as we walked through the grounds of the park.

We hopped back on the bus when it came back around an hour later, and stayed on through the rest of the tour until it returned us to the main train station.

Next stop on our now-metro-facilitated tour of the city was back to the Marienplatz, which – in addition to having about a gazillion yummy beer halls – also has a famous clock that thrice-daily presents a show of jousting knights to the spectators in the square below. We’d heard that it’s very charming, so it was high on our list of must-sees. However, at this point we’d missed both the 11a and 12p shows and the next show wasn’t until 5p.

Instead we forged on to Munich’s next mega-tourist spot: the famous Hofbrauhaus beer hall, which sells lager and wursts en masse to just about every tourist who sets foot in Munich (I think it’s actually required that you go). Think Senor Frogs, Bavarian style, and you’ve got Hofbrauhaus. The food was good, the beer was even better and it was as a really fun time.

Of course, they make all their real income by seducing you into buying 5 tee-shirts, 3 beer steins and a couple more beer glasses emblazoned with their logo. I think Rolf and I can fill about ½ a suitcase with all the swag that we picked up there; it all goes the good cause of brewing more beer though, I’m sure. So, we can at least feel good about that.

That was it for us the first day in Munich. Laden down by our 1.5 liters of beer, assorted wursts, and a ginormous pretzel we decided to do the next most logical thing and sleep off our heady excess.

We awoke the next morning ready for some more Euro-culture. Once again embarking upon Munich’s transit system we headed to the assorted Pinakotheks to see what we could see. Despite how it may sound, Pinakothek is not a Mayan folk hero. It is instead a painting gallery. There are three such galleries (which are sub-titled “old”, “new” and “modern”) located in close proximity to one another along with a fourth nearby building which houses what I like to call “art which requires chemical enhancement”.

The “new” works museum was closed and so we started off with the “old” gallery. The building did not feel cluttered despite the large number of works and expansive rooms . There were many artists represented, though the bulk of the famous work was done by Rubens. Rubens work can best be described as “fleshy” (well, it’s probably best described as “Rubensesque”, but “fleshy” is a good second-best .) Nevertheless, it was all very cool and very impressive, in contrast to...

The “modern” works museum located just across the street was less of a museum and more of a collection of random household objects. It was like of like a Volkswagen dealership and an Ikea engaged in an illicit love triangle with a starving artist and this museum was the malformed byproduct of their unholy union.

The three main bodies of work were cars, chairs, and scribbled sketches of naked women in upside-down crucifix poses. There was also the dark room of floating body parts and a random cartoon with very graphic anatomy, but the less said about those the better. The cars were neat, the chairs were… um… chairs, and other bits were disturbing. I’m not sure what I was supposed to get out of any of it, other than a strong desire to sit in a chair while driving a car to rescue a woman from a pagan ritual. It was all very confusing.

There was one more museum to visit, and the outside of the building prepared people for what was to come. The walls of the building were not the usual dull-gray but were instead brightly hued cylinders of random colors. I’m sure it was symbolic of something, probably the struggle of the working class or how man and nature have grown apart. Or maybe they just got a really great deal on leftover paint at Home Depot. One can never really be sure.

The art inside the gallery was interesting, at least (particularly in contrast to staring at 40 different styles of chairs, all of which look remarkably similar. I’m still not convinced that we didn’t somehow wander into a furniture store.) There were paintings of giant splotches of color which I am told described a naval battle, giant poop sculptures, and a giant tissue box complete with giant price tag.

I actually enjoyed this museum quite a bit. The sheer randomness of the works amused me. Unlike other museums, where one can pretty accurately predict that the next room will contain eighteen depictions of the life of Jesus, one is never quite sure if the next room will contain an homage to the planet Krypton, an entire wall display of different types of pills, or a tower made out of Madonna statues (the Mother-of-Jesus kind, not the Material Girl kind).

There was yet one more museum that we had our sights set on, the Deutsches Museum (“DM” for short). We arrived around 4:15 or so and sadly discovered that the DM would be closing at 5:00. As we debated whether or not we should enter, the girl behind the counter decided that she had experienced enough waffling and told us that we could do in for free “but at 5:00 we kick you out.”

You’ve got to love the Germans. They say it like it is. Not “we will ask you to leave” or “the museum will close at 5 and you should extrapolate our actions from there” but straight-up “we will kick your ass out, with force if necessary (please make it necessary, we get bored)”.

We thanked the nice ticket lady, assured her that ejection would not be necessary, and headed into the exhibits. The DM is kind of like the Smithsonian. It’s a science-y museum with a lot of hands-on stuff covering a wide range of subjects from geology and electricity to nautical science and space exploration.

After three weeks of not being allowed to touch anything, it was great to be able to push buttons and twist dials. I marveled at the very first U-boat ever, raced through the airplane section, and played with the oil-clutch demonstration for perhaps an inappropriately long time.

In the end, 45 minutes was barely enough time to scratch the surface of this incredible place and as the loud-speaker “gently” reminded us: we didn’t have to go home, but we couldn’t stay there.

We’re now sitting in a Laundromat, waiting for our clothes to finish sudsing and groovin’ to the classic sounds of the Eagle’s ‘Hotel California’ and Elvis’ ‘In The Ghetto’ (no, not simultaneously. I think the Laundromat would spontaneously combust if that happened). That’s all from here. Wednesday's itinerary: on to Fussen! (“Fyu-sen”)