On the weekend of May 1-3, I went on a trip to Munich because I had a 3-day weekend and I heard that several other people were going. It turned out that everyone else decided to go because of Frühlingsfest, a much smaller spring version of Munich's famous Oktoberfest (as in only 2 beer tents instead of 14). Unfortunately, I joined kind of late, so I had to find a different hostel, but it worked out fine.
We got in at around 3:30, and after checking into the hostels we went to the Theresienwiese, the area where Oktoberfest and Frühlingsfest happen.
However, we decided to to wait until the next day to partake in the rides and various other attractions there, and I went with a subset of the group to the Augustiner Keller, a beer garden associated with the oldest brewery in Munich. It was an interesting experience, particularly because the default beer size is the Maß, or 1 liter, and because we were surrounded by several tables where people had people had clearly had multiple ones.
The next morning, I went on a free (+tips) walking tour of the city. It started in the Marienplatz, next to the town hall. The town hall has a glockenspiel with animatronics that the tour guide referred to as "the second-most overrated tourist attraction in Europe."
I was not surprised to learn that most of the best stories from Munich's history involve beer. For example, the statue of Mary was added after the people of Munich got the king of Sweden to leave during the 30 Years War by paying him with 600,000 barrels of beer.
One interesting thing I saw was a memorial dedicated to Michael Jackson that had commandeered a statue for some composer. Apparently he has a loyal fan base there?
At one point, we were shown a memorial dedicated to the people punished by the Gestapo for using an alley to avoid walking past a
Of course, one of the most important buildings that I saw was the Hofbräuhaus, the restaurant for one of the largest breweries in Munich. In the fall, it regularly gets 35,000 visitors a day. I was somewhat amused to hear that while he lived in Munich, Mozart once got so drunk there that he was banned from it, especially in light of how drunk many people were.
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| In München steht ein Hofbräuhaus: Eins, zwei, g'suffa . . . |
I think one of my favorite stories was related to the St. Peter's Church. One time, one of the crosses fell down during a storm. Two drunk men saw it and decided to go climb the tower during the storm to reinstall it. They did that, but installed it facing the wrong direction, where it has stayed to this day. Naturally, they decided to celebrate their success with more beer, while still on top of the tower in the rain. Unsurprisingly, one of them fell, but he was able to grab on and avoid dying. His dropped beer stein fell to the street below, but did not break. One of the priests saw this and decided it was a miracle, so the beer stein was on display in the church for 15 years.
Of course, I also learned about Munich's darker history. It was the place where the Nazi party was founded, and the location where the failed Beer Hall Putsch happened. The first concentration camp, Dachau, was located nearby. Munich was heavily bombed during World War II, and still occasionally has disastrous episodes with the thousands of unexploded bombs buried underground. However, it seems like the city (along with the rest of Germany) has done a lot to try to reconcile with its past. There are something like 30 memorials around the city, including this one commemorating people who were punished by the Gestapo for avoiding a memorial to the Beer Hall Putsch.
After the tour finished, I wandered around for a little while trying to decide what to do, then went to the Residenz museum (the former royal family's home in Munich). It is quite a lovely place.
I think something that quite clearly demonstrates the wealth of the Wittelsbach family is that they built an entire new, quite grand, wing when one of them was elected Holy Roman Emperor that even included a bedroom just for show.
After going through the Residenz, I went to the tower of the St. Peter's Church to get a good view of the city. I would want to attach pictures of the entire view, but my panorama software has started crashing whenever I attempt to load any pictures, and the Google+ auto feature apparently has decided that when I uploaded something like 20 pictures shifted slightly from each other, I really wanted 3 picture series and not a panorama. So here are some things I saw.
- The Theresienweise. There's also a ferris wheel behind the church tower.
- The Viktualienmarkt, with the Maypole. Apparently, it was successfully stolen a few years ago by a group that wanted a designated table at Oktoberfest as ransom. I'm not sure there has ever been an answer to the question of how they got something that large out of the city without being noticed.
- The cathedral. It was one of the few buildings not damaged or destroyed by bombers during World War II, largely because it was a very good way to identify Munich for subsequent bombing runs.
- The English Garden, one of the largest urban parks in the world. In front of it is the theater, which was once saved from a fire using beer because the water was all frozen.
After that, I joined the rest of my group at Springfest, and went on a lot of rides.
Sunday morning, I was intending to get up early to go on a bike ride at the English Garden and then go to the Deutsches Museum, but part one of that plan fell through when I woke up 2.5 hours later than planned due to one of my roommates sounding like he had a chainsaw with him, and due to the fact that it was raining. On my way to the Deutsches Museum, I discovered that Munich residents might laugh if I said, "Ich bin ein Amerikaner," because there is apparently some pastry called an Amerikaner.
The Deutsches Museum is kind of like a combination of Museum of Science in Boston and the Smithsonian Institute (especially the Air and Space Museum). Its collection includes things like electrical equipment, airplanes, and musical instruments. The 2-3 hours I spent there was nowhere near enough time, but I had to leave earlier than I liked to get to the bus on time.
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| Obligatory picture of string instruments |
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