Munich and the Ump-pa band

Monday, November 12, 2018

Munich, Germany

Today was a “de-tox” day. After the incredible experiences of the last two days, today’s journey is ‘back-to-the-real-world’ day. Today’s adventure to Munich is exciting to me, just not as “gee-whiz-golly.”

Munich, the capital city of Bavaria, has a population of about 1.5 million. An easy drive of just over an hour put us in the heart of the city. We first went to the Deutsches Museum. It is enormous, and somewhat the equivalent of the Washington Smithsonian...not as widely varied, just housed in several buildings, each of which has multiple floors. The museum tower has a working barometer the full length of the tower. A tree blocked my shot, so you’ll just have to take my word for it.

At the entrance all the routes to parking were blocked by construction. Rather than search for a new route, and since the Michelin Guidebook said to allow several days to see it all, we headed for the smaller Transportation Museum.

Parking in a garage that the car GPS said was close we set out on foot. After taking an elevator up two floors we found we were inside the foyer of a large office building, two floors above the outside world. There were five ways down...four were monumental stairs and the fifth was a high speed escalator heading up not down. Pondering why we would even bother (since I would be exhausted by the time we reached the bottom-much less walking to the museum, etc.) a lady saw our quandary and showed us how to use the escalator. It was two way! You pushed one carefully concealed button (not really...it just wasn’t obvious to us) to make it go one way. Pushing it again made it go the opposite direction. Thank goodness for guardian angels and travel companions who speak German.

I said today wasn’t exciting? Well, try contemplating exiting a high speed escalator which you know is going to propel to into a nice heap on the floor if you don’t do the fancy footwork needed at the bottom. As my life flashed before my eyes, I hurtled downward, recalling trying to learn to jump the pommel horse in Navy Pre-Flight training. I never could figure out the timing to release the handles and...you can guess the rest. If I didn’t turn loose of the escalator rail I was going to repeat the same inelegant exit. (All this is true. I just didn’t think about the Pre-Flight thing until I was writing this. Journalistic license and all that.)

Yea! I made it!

The adventure had just begun though. Using the iPhone map we exited the door and turned down the corridor between office buildings. Reaching the other end, we were staring at a large park where they were setting up for the Christmas market. Something was wrong! Frank had looked at the map backwards! (Another flashback….the youth group from St. Andrew’s had gone white-water rafting. At the camp a group of us decided to hike the boundaries. Compass and map in hand we set off, only to realize when the two didn’t line up, that we had been marching using the south arrow instead of north! An honest mistake any experienced backpacker would make, right? Oh well…….)

Backtracking to the door we had come out of, we looked around. There, big as life, was a sign pointing to the museum a half block away!

Although not a “take your breath away experience,” it was really interesting to me. There were all kinds of automobiles, trains, race cars, bicycles, motorcycles, emergency vehicles, buses, and even a camper! We spent a long time just meandering through the various areas taking pictures of those things that we liked. They even had an American export version of a VW, but it was earlier than the one we owned.

Returning to the car we figured out a way to keep me from having to navigate the escalator from H***, and headed to our next stop.

I think I mis-spoke...Our next stop was a ‘golly-gee-whiz’ experience after all! The famous Hofbrauhaus. This place is so famous the city even puts up signs showing where to park to go eat there!

You have never really lived until you have eaten bratwurst and sauerkraut accompanied by a five piece ‘umm-pa-pa’ band decked out in lederhosen! And I’ve discovered I’m hooked on MezzoMix...a concoction of half Coke and half orange flavored Fanta. I know! Sounds wonky! I told Frank I think I like it because it reminds me of Dr. Pepper without the prunes. He says it tastes completely different using American Coke and Fanta.

In front of the Hofbrauhaus, as we were leaving, was a silver statue of a panhandler sitting on a stool...until he moved. It was a street mime actually sitting on a stool, and, well... panhandling.

After eating, we tried to see the Cathedral, Frauenkirche (Church of our Dear Lady), which is a famous symbol of Munich seen on postcards and souvenirs. Unfortunately, due to construction we could not get to where I could see a clear view of the twin towers. I did get one close-up picture of one of the towers, and, if you look real closely, the shot of the market shows the twin domes in the background.

Pictures: Some of all the above except the escalator.

Reflections: I realize I’m not a big city person. Munich, with its narrow streets hemmed in by tall apartment buildings made me feel almost claustrophobic. I remember when the carrier I was station aboard went into dry dock in Bayonne Shipyard and I had a couple of months to experience New York. I could walk back then, and I walked from one side of the island to the other and all the way north to the cloisters. After a few weeks I found myself going to Central Park just to get some blue sky and nature. That must be the way a lot of the citizens of big cities in Europe must feel...on weekends there is a mass exodus to the country (or so it seems.) I think I remarked on the Rhine Cruise how amazed I was that there was a paved path almost the entire length of our cruise. The same is true of this trip. Every road seems to have a paved path beside it. And what is most amazing is seeing people walking (a Sunday afternoon stroll is typical) seemingly in the middle of nowhere!

The second thing I realize about all the big German cities is they were almost completely destroyed in WWII. For example Munich suffered 71 bombing raids. Even though they’re rebuilt and many of the old building restored, there’s still something spiritual I can’t quite put my finger on. Sadness?? It’s such a contrast to Garmisch and its environs.