Astray in Europe
or: A Couple of Naïfs Take a Trip
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“So Munich continued the tradition from year to year, decade to decade, generation to generation, and century to century. Today, it's known and imitated worldwide as, Oktoberfest.” |
ARRIVING in Munich on a sunny, but relatively cool (that is, not scorching hot) Monday morning, we grabbed a quick bite and a cup of coffee at one of the snack stands on the midway of the Hauptbahnhof (main train station) then went looking for a cab. After a long night on the train from Rome, we were tired but eager to see what adventures Germany would present to us. The entrance to our hotel looked like an ordinary store front in a busy, narrow street, but the lobby was in the style we had come to expect of the Mercure chain: subdued colors, highly varnished wood, and marble highlights bespeaking not warmth and comfort but aggressively contemporary budget-level business travel.
We checked in and took the tiny elevator to the sixth floor. Like most of the elevators we had encountered, even in buildings that couldn't have been more than a couple of decades old, it seemed to have been inserted as an after-thought into a flue next to the stair well. Entering our room was like entering a Victorian operating room. (You've seen them in the movies: all sterile whiteness, usually with a large window as the main source of light.) OK, so it wasn't all sterile whiteness, but a dazzling morning light flooded through the nearly floor-to-ceiling window and ricocheted off stiff white window drapes, white-painted walls, and crisp white bed clothes. Even the oak veneer furniture and dark blue carpet seemed to glow. Outside under the clear sky, the panorama of drab office and apartment buildings was...well, not altogether unpleasant even to the travel-weary eye.
Our first order of business was to call lost-and-found at Roma Termini just to see if by luck someone had returned my wallet, which we believed had been stolen in the subway between our hotel and the train station. Given the meagerness of my Italian and a wooliness in my hearing that I hope is age related, I was not confident about negotiating this call on the phone and in Italian. However, the person I talked to spoke excellent English and was able to assure me without hesitation -- though perhaps with a hint of surprise at my naiveté -- that my wallet had not been returned. No luck here like that we had on our second day in Rome when a wonderful restaurant waitress actually hunted us down in a nearby souvenir shop to return the credit card I had left on our luncheon table. (See Chapter 4.)
As it turned out, the loss of the wallet, though vexing beyond measure, was not the disaster we had at first envisioned. My passport and driver's license, traveler's checks, a second credit card, and a few greenbacks were in my money belt. (In a fit of uncharacteristic foresight, we had bought money belts and wore them under our clothing every waking hour. Every now and then, when train conductors and hotel clerks demanded to see our passports, we would have to go into weird contortions to dig them out and they would be limp with sweat. Even so, we persisted, and in this instance our perseverance paid off.) Furthermore, my smaller euro bills and my copy of the one credit card we were using were in a money clip that I carried in my left front trousers pocket.
So as far as we could determine from a mental inventory of the wallet, I had lost a couple of 100-euro notes (too large to fit into my money clip, which was designed for greenbacks), but no credit cards or anything else immediately critical. Our main concern was the loss of my Medicare and other cards that carried my social security number. We were willing to grant the thief a hit of his (or her) favorite recreational drug courtesy of my foolish absent mindedness. (We figured I had put the wallet in my hip pocket instead of my front trousers pocket just before setting out on the Rome Metro.) But we didn't like the idea that someone might be able to use my social security number to "steal my identity."
Having confirmed that the wallet was indeed lost, I called the American consulate in Munich to report the loss and get some advice on what else we should do. The person I talked to, an American of course, was very helpful. After making sure that no credit cards were involved, he said there wasn't much else we could do until we returned home. Then we should call the three credit rating agencies and alert them to the possibility that someone might try to use my identity. He said the agencies would flag our accounts and alert us if anyone tried to open a new one using my social security number or name. With this, we tried to put the pickpocket incident behind us. We showered off the travel grime, and stretched out for a snooze.
By early afternoon we felt rested and ready for Munich. Guided by a good map of the city center that we had found in a brochure provided by the hotel, we set out. Within three or four blocks we passed the train station, an ATM, a post office, and a large cyber café, so we congratulated ourselves for having lucked into this good location (in contrast with our less serendipitous first day in Rome when we found ourselves stuck in a touristically arid district near the outer belt.) (See Chapter 4.) Another three or four blocks, and we were in the Karlsplatz (Karl's Square), which our guidebook said was the entrance to the historic city center. The fountain at the center of the square was in striking contrast with the baroque of Rome's Trevi, which we had visited just a day or two previously. This fountain consisted only of some three or four dozen jets of water squirting from the concrete surface of the plaza as though so many ordinary garden hoses had been buried there and someone had forgotten to turn them off. The jets were arranged in a circle perhaps thirty or forty feet in diameter and were aimed toward the center, not into a pool, but into a slight depression in the concrete. This arrangement created a refreshingly cool splatter and misting that clearly was appreciated by the loose crowd of folks standing nearby.
Being both hungry and eager to see the sights, we pushed onward through a high archway with battlements and pointed arches that, frankly, looked like a poor imitation of a medieval gate because of its clean lines and smooth surfaces. (We later found out that the Karlsplatz was laid out as recently as the 1790's on the site of one of the original medieval gates to the city. So we were right about the ersatz design of the archway. In fact, it probably dates from 1972 when the pedestrian way / tourist center / shopping mall we were about to enter was organized.)
We entered a broad pedestrian way lined on both sides with shops, department stores, cafés, and restaurants. According to our map, this street would lead us to a square called the Marienplatz at the very heart of the city. As we walked along, we saw that the cafés and restaurants had co-opted large chunks of the pedestrian way for terrace service, but the street was so wide that there was still plenty of room for the passing crowd.
The Neuehauserstrasse pedestrian way near the heart of Munich's city center
Many of the tables were occupied by people at lunch and/or drinking beer from liter-sized mugs. They were shielded from the sun by colorful canopies and patio umbrellas. We noticed that some of the tables were covered with table cloths while for no reason that we could see, others were left bare.
Also in the pedestrian way were numerous temporary booths or stands where we could have bought not only snacks and souvenirs, but necessities like garden produce and clothing. At one stand, a hawker was pushing a line of knife sharpeners with an energetic patter and dexterity at slicing and dicing that, if he had spoken English, we could have seen and heard in any county fair in the U.S.
A huckster pushes his line of knife sharpeners without which no kitchen is complete
A few steps farther along, we came upon a young man playing classical music on an "instrument" that consisted of a small table full of water goblets of different sizes and containing various levels of water. He kept the goblets in tune by dribbling a little water into one or another from a large syringe that he held in his mouth. He created a complex and pleasing sound by delicately rubbing or just lightly touching the rims of the glasses with his finger tips. Yet further along an artist was reproducing classical paintings with chalk on the paving stones.
An artist creates fleeting copies of masterpieces in the middle of a pedestrian way
Tourists were easy to identify because of their packs (back, shoulder, front, or fanny) and their cameras. They marched eagerly along: couples, families, an occasional small tour group following a guide. But mainly, the crowd looked like local people: office workers and store clerks on missions, young mothers with strollers, etc. No bikes, in-line skates, or skate-boards here, although in most of the side streets and courtyards, bikes were parked in bunches everywhere. Such wheeled traffic was kept to the secondary pedestrian streets and the motor ways, most of which included bike paths.
At the Marienplatz, the large and medieval looking Neues Rathaus (New Town Hall) dominated the square with its soaring clock tower. We did not yet realize this was the famous Glockenspiel. We learned more about this most cherished of Munich landmarks the next day when we took a guided tour. On this first look, we were impressed by the flamboyant gothic architecture of the building and its window-boxes of bright red poppies that contrasted sharply with the weathered grays of the elaborately carved stone.
The New Town Hall really is relatively new despite it's medieval appearance
We strolled on into narrow side streets past churches with towering steeples and other buildings with charming and colorful "old world" architecture. We allowed our curiosity to guide us into quiet courtyards and through narrow pedestrian ways cut through the three and four story buildings.
Interesting treatment of the exterior of a building
Some of the courtyards were only a few feet square, mere junctions for two or three walkways radiating from them. Others were more expansive, lined with shops and cafés, and landscaped with flowerbeds and shrubbery. Occasionally, in the largest, the tables and chairs were shaded by the branches of a large deciduous tree (ancient oak?).
By mid afternoon we were somewhat footsore and hungry when we came to the famous Hofbräuhaus (court, as in "royal court," brewery). We thought this was the place where Hitler started his "Beer Hall Putsch" back in the 1920's or 1930's, but we didn't see any signs marking it as such. It was an unprepossessing three story structure of white stucco trimmed in terracotta brick with a steep tile roof and an arcade over the sidewalk. We entered and followed the sound of music through a large room filled with mostly empty picnic style tables to another larger hall with more tables and the bandstand at one side. As in Neuhauserstrasse, some of the tables were covered with cloths, others not. We sat on a bench at one of the covered tables where we could both see the band and have a view of most of the other tables.
Our server was of Southeast Asian extraction, as were most of the servers we saw. Even so, the men wore the traditional Bavarian waiter's uniform of white shirt, black tie and trousers, shirt sleeves rolled just past the elbow, and some with black vests. The women wore dirndls, the traditional peasant dress consisting of a white low-cut blouse, a black mieder (a tight fitting bodice with colorful stitching and beads), and a flaring calf-length skirt, also black with decorative stitching.
We didn't feel like eating anything as greasy as a bratwurst, so we ordered a cheese plate and a half-liter of beer each -- something the waiter recommended called Münchner Kindl Weissbier (loosely translated as Munich Kid White Beer). It was a redish dark beer, a little too sweet for my taste, but light and very good with the huge plate of assorted cheeses we discovered we had ordered. We were among only a few customers scattered about the room. In a bandstand at one side of the room, the musicians (drums, electronic keyboard, tuba, coronet, and a saxophonist/clarinetist) were jamming. They were all in their fifties or older and wearing lederhosen, but the traditional "oompah" music one naturally associates with Munich beer halls and lederhosen wasn't their only skill. For example, they played some swing that was very good. Every once in a while they would break out in a vocal number in the oompah style that no doubt, when the place was crowded with tipsy merry makers, would get the place jumping. But at this slow time of day most of the drinkers were middle-aged tourists and family groups.
A family consisting of father and pregnant mother with three boys, the youngest under two, the eldest no more than five, were at a table near us. They were eating sandwiches from an insulated picnic bag they had brought with them, the adults washing them down from liter mugs, the children with some sort of canned soft drink.
The sign over the arch says, "Thirst is worse than homesickness."
At the table nearest the bandstand an elderly lady sat staring into space, her back against the wall, a half empty liter mug before her. Every now and then she would pick the mug up with both hands, take a long swig, set it down, wipe her mouth with the back of her hand, and withdraw again to her inner world. A group of tourists who appeared to be in their twenties came in, and we could see that they asked if they could sit at that table. She signified apparently that she would be glad to have them. One of the tourists tried to strike up a conversation with her but failed, so after that, they ignored her.
We ordered a giant pretzel to soften the impact of all the cheese, and this along with our half liters of beer made a very adequate luncheon. On the way out, we passed a rack of small, padlocked cages just large enough to hold one fancy beer stein each. It struck us as an odd and somewhat paranoiac phenomenon -- one of those unfathomable cultural quirks that make foreign travel fun.
We walked out through the courtyard beer garden, which was doing more business than the interior rooms although there was no band, and continued to explore the town. Around every corner we came into another pleasant street scene or interesting sight. The streets, mostly stone and brick in this neighborhood and dedicated primarily to pedestrians, wound about haphazardly as they had in medieval times. Finally, as the afternoon drew late (although the sun was still near mid-afternoon level for us still-not-fully-acclimatized Midwesterners) we decided we had done enough for our first day in Munich. We looked for a place to have a light but substantial enough meal to serve as dinner, and call it a day. We wandered into the square of the Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady), where the great mass of the church building with its famous twin steeples sat in the center surrounded on all sides by smaller buildings housing shops and offices. The steeples of this cathedral, topped by rounded domes that some call onion shaped, others "Welsh bonnet," are a landmark nearly as famous as the Glockenspiel. Although the building was heavily damaged during the war, these steeples remained standing, proof of the skill of the 15th century craftsmen who built them.
In the shadow of the steeples opposite the church's front entrance was the small terrace, or beer garden, of a place called Killian's Irish Pub (which in fact served an Australian menu). Feeling a bit contrarian in this capital of German beer making, I decided I wanted a Guinness, so we sat at one of the tables in the beer garden (again, some had table cloths, others not). We chose one of the covered tables and ordered beer (a lager for Minnie) to go along with a club sandwich to split between us. As we expected, the sandwich was more than ample for both of us. The Guinness was served cold even though the server, a young round-faced man in his twenties, did seem to have a bit of an Irish, or maybe an Australian, brogue. German beer is great, especially in Munich, but for my money nothing beats the bitter taste of Guinness stout, even when it's served cold.
The next morning, we were rested and ready despite the perverse tendency of our dauendecker either to smother us or desert us. These thick down comforters consisting of big bags loosely filled with down, one for each of us, were the only covers we had. I remembered encountering them when on leave or overnight passes during my tour with the Army. They were as warm and snuggly as sleeping bags on cold nights, but since they weren't bags, they tended to migrate to the floor as one slept. On moderately cool nights when a top sheet and a light wool blanket would have done just fine, they were downright suffocating (except of course, when they were on the floor). We were a little surprised that the Germans, who seemed to pride themselves in their ultra-modern, high-tech civilization, retained them as standard bed clothes in this age of near universal air conditioning. But then, too, it was a reminder that Europeans, like us, retain much in their civilization that is both charmingly archaic and practically obsolete.
The hotel breakfast buffet included the entire gamut of breakfast fruits (served whole, sliced, chopped, juiced, and possibly in other manifestations that we didn't recognize); eggs in almost any format; cereals of many kinds both hot and cold; more varieties of breads and rolls than we had thought existed with a nearly equal plenitude of jams, jellies, butters, and other spreads; and of course, a huge selection of sausages, bacons, hams and cheeses. We filled our plates and selected a table in the dining area where only a half dozen other diners, mostly business people, were taking late breakfast before charging, we presumed, into the corporate feeding frenzy. A middle-aged businessman at one table managed to emanate the petit-bourgeois arrogance of his kind while sipping his coffee and reading his paper. At another table, a younger man who looked more like a student, held his cereal bowl to his chin and scooped his cornflakes into his mouth while out of the corner of his eye reading a brochure spread open on his table. A busboy brought us a pot of coffee, and after figuring how to operate its overly complex system for retaining heat, we poured and had an excellent meal.
With that, we stepped out into a fine balmy morning on Senfelderstrasse and set out to find the office of a touring company we had seen advertised in a brochure from the hotel lobby. Since our homework had been woefully inadequate, we knew almost nothing about the city and thought a tour might be a way to see at least some of the most important sights in the short time we had there. The office was in a remote corner of the train station. There was just enough standing room for perhaps two medium-sized adults between a short counter just inside the office door.
The touring company office was economically equipped.
The space behind the counter was slightly roomier, but still cramped. It was furnished with a junky desk holding a computer monitor and keyboard, a cheap swivel chair, and a case of metal shelves where stacks of dog-eared paper, an umbrella, an unattached computer keyboard, etc., had accumulated. The young man behind the counter explained in nearly unaccented (American) English that the cost of the tour was nine euros each, plus one for the subway, and it would start at 9:45. We paid and went out to the waiting area where there was a little island of a dozen or so seats in the middle of a large empty space that appeared to be a kind of auxiliary to the main station. One of the seats was occupied by a teen-age boy.
We sat down and soon got into a conversation with the boy. He said he was from New Jersey and had sailed over with his father and a family friend who owned a private boat. (He didn't use the word "yacht.") He said they had landed in Italy, but didn't like it very well; they liked Germany a lot better. We told him we had liked Italy all right, though it took a little getting used to, and that we had just arrived in Germany.
Our conversation was interrupted exactly at the appointed time by the arrival of our guide, an American (from Litchfield, Illinois) in his late twenties with a red goatee and a casual, laid-back style.
Our tour guide
Two other couples who had been loitering in the far corners of the room joined us, and he introduced himself as Jason. He briefly described the tour, made sure everyone had paid, then led us to the nearby entrance to a subway station. Underground, he explained that the Munich subway and bus system was very efficient, clean, prompt, and all that, but to strangers it could be somewhat daunting. To illustrate his point, he directed our attention to a nearby bulletin board.
A bulletin board with information on ticket prices. "A hearty welcome to Munich's transportation and price network."
He said the blocks of bright colors overlaid with concentric circles and crisscrossing lines, along with the eight or ten explanatory placards next to them showed how to go anywhere on the Munich bus and subway system quickly, easily, and at little cost. He didn't say, but it occurred to us that all we would need was a spare hour or so to figure it out -- if we could read German. Since we couldn't, a couple of years to pick up the language and delve a little deeper into the culture would probably be about right.
Compared with Paris's and London's straightforward though somewhat complex systems, and Rome's simple two lines crossing at Roma Termini (not to mention St. Louis's ten-year-old one-line Metrolink), the Munich system looked like the labyrinth of Minos. Among other less apparent factors that contributed to the complexity was the scaled ticket prices that allowed people traveling shorter distances and those traveling during slow periods to pay less than long-distance and rush-hour travelers. In Rome we paid one price and could ride all day if we wished as long as we didn't leave the system. Jason assured us it would be well worth the trouble of learning how to use the Munich system, be we knew we would have time to see only a small part of the city center, so decided right off that we wouldn't bother.
Our group, consisting of a middle-aged English couple, a younger Scandinavian couple, and the boy we had met while waiting, validated our tickets under our guide's supervision. (There were machines to stamp the tickets as in Italy and France, but no turnstiles.) We then went to the platform to await the next train, which arrived in a couple of minutes. We boarded and rode two stops to the Marienplatz station.
As we exited the station, a young couple and a tall Australian man in shorts and floppy brimmed hat joined the tour. Jason led us to the middle of the square and gave us a brief lecture on Bavarian history. The Marienplatz, he said, was the site of the original city almost from its founding by the Holy Roman Emperor in 1158. The city was called "Munich" (the monks' place) because there was a monastery at the site. It became the capital of Bavaria, which since the time of Charlemagne (who died early in the 9th century), had stubbornly maintained its own culture and political independence as much as possible separate and distinct from the rest of Germany, i.e., Prussia. For example, even today we would see the blue and white colors of the Bavarian banner more often than the black, red, and yellow flag of the German Republic.
He then pointed out the Glockenspiel and assured us with an air that implied it was something we definitely would not want to miss, that we would be at this very spot in the Marienplatz in time for its noon chiming. From the Marienplatz, we walked a couple of short blocks to the open-air produce market called the Viktualienmarkt. This is Munich's biggest "farmers'" market. Near the center of the large, irregularly shaped square was a 100 foot pole, the Maibaum or "Maypole" (literally, "May Tree"). It towered over three or four real live trees that shaded the tables of a beer garden. The rest of the square was occupied by rows of vendors' stands, with more shops, boutiques, and restaurants on all sides.
The Maibaum was made from the trunk of a single tree. It was painted white with a spiraling blue stripe, barber-pole style, and was rigged with a half dozen spars from which wooden painted plaques hung. The spars were shortest at the top and gradually longer further down so as to resemble a kind of two-dimensional abstract pine tree. The plaques depicted various activities related to the making and marketing of beer. Periodically, Jason said, the citizens of one or another Bavarian town or village, sometimes at quite a distance, manages to kidnap the Maypole and carry it home. After a triumphal celebration involving copious quantities of beer, they call up the Munich city fathers and arrange a ransom for it. The ransom usually consists of -- guess what -- a mug of beer for every citizen of the kidnappers' community. As to how anyone could manage to sneak a 100- to 150-foot log through the narrow winding streets of downtown Munich and into the hinterlands without attracting the interest of an occasional cop or night watchman, or at least a homegoing drunk leaning on a light pole, our guide could not say.
At the beer garden, a handful of people were still at their mid-morning pint (or liter) of beer, which Jason explained was not only acceptable, but customary in Munich. He also explained the covered and uncovered tables that we had noticed in the beer gardens. The covered tables were for patrons who wanted service by a waiter. If you sat at a bare table, you were expected to serve yourself. You could bring your own food and drink, whether from home or purchased from some nearby vendor. The rule was applied rigorously, he said. People seated at the bare tables were scrupulously ignored, those at covered tables would be asked to move if they brought any food or drink of their own.
On our way out of the market place, Jason pointed out several small fountains surmounted by statues of human figures, some holding musical instruments. He said these were in memory of famous cabaret performers of the past. They eloquently bespoke the spirit of Munich, he said. Where other, more ordinary cities would have erected monuments to big-shot politicians, war heroes, or saints, Munich wanted to ensure that future generations would remember the greatest stars of the beer-hall circuit.
Ya gotta love a town like that!
Our next stop was the Alte Peter (Old St Peter's), one of several churches that we had passed the day before. Jason said he couldn't lead us through it because guided tours were not permitted during services and one was going on at that moment. However, he said, there was no reason we couldn't go in on our own through a nearby entrance at the east end of the building that looked like a service door. He said he would wait for us on the other side and reminded us to be quiet, men to remove their hats, no flash photos. In other words, to act like decent, civilized adults.
We entered and walked quietly across the nave. This church had been seriously damaged in WW II as demonstrated by some before-and-after photos on a glass enclosed bulletin board just inside the door. But it had been restored as nearly as possible to its pre-war condition, and it was an appropriately awesome sight. At the far end, a scattering of worshippers sat in the ancient looking pews, heads bowed as an unseen priest's chant echoed from the high arched ceiling. The impression was of whiteness and light. All structural surfaces -- the ceiling, the pillars and arches along each side of the nave, and all walls -- were white. Gold-plate and wooden statues were mounted high up on each of the pillars. The altar was a huge elaborately carved and ornate work in dark wood with gold highlights.
When we rejoined Jason outside, he told us we could come back after the tour and climb the steps to the top of the steeple. From there, he said, you could see the Alps on a clear day. However, there were 300 steps and no elevator, so we knew we would not be up to that after two-and-a-half hours on our feet with the tour.
A thousand years ago, Alte Peter's location on the highest point in the old part of the city had been the site of one of the first Christian chapels among the Germanic tribes who were still being converted to the new religion. The chapel was replaced in the 11th century by the first actual church to be built at what is now the center of Munich. In the 13th century, this church was replaced by a grander structure in the gothic style, but that was destroyed in a great city fire in 1327. Some sixty years later, the church had been rebuilt with two steeples and the city's first municipal clock.
As he told us this story, Jason pointed out the present single steeple that features not one clock face, but eight: two on each side of the square tower. He asked us to note that all four of the clocks visible from where we stood were exactly in time with each other and intimated that this extravagantly redundant chronological exactitude, like the efficient complexity of the subway and bus system, illustrated a certain characteristic of the German spirit.
You can be pretty sure it was 7:25 in Munich when this picture was taken.
The forerunner of the current single-towered church was built after a lightning bolt splattered the twin-steepled medieval structure. Then it was modified and improved from time to time according to the dictates of the current style, whether 17th-century baroque or 18th-century rococo, till it attained its present form. Which, of course, is a post WW II structure, as Allied bombing had been no more sparing of the modern single steeple than Cyclopean bolts had been of the ancient double steeple.
Our next stop was the Hofbräuhaus. Of course, Minnie and I had already visited it, but this time we learned a little more about it. As we had thought, it was the place where Hitler earned his initial fame with the Nazi party. Jason said the actual meeting room where Hitler spoke was on the second floor, but there wasn't time for the tour to go up there. The band was playing and there were only a few beer drinkers as on the day before, but Jason assured us that in the evening and especially on weekends the crowd would be elbow to elbow.
He stopped at the rack of imprisoned beer steins and explained that they belonged to a club of "regulars." He said annual membership dues to the club were only about three dollars, but membership was by invitation from a current member only. Each member had his (he didn't say whether there were any female members) own personally designed stein and the only key to the padlock that kept the sticky fingers of ignorant tourists off. He also pointed out an elaborate placard hanging from the ceiling over a nearby table. It featured the Bavarian coat of arms and had a small plaque suspended from it with the word "Stammtisch" painted on it. He said this indicated that the table was one of several permanently reserved for a group of the "regulars." Casual visitors could use these tables, but if the "owners" happened to stop by for a quick liter or two, the interloper would be asked to move.
Beer drinkers' heaven
He also mentioned a law governing the quality of beer brewed in Munich, which in its elegant simplicity seemed to contradict our growing feeling that Germans like complexity. This law, first promulgated for all of Bavaria in 1516 and enforced to this day in Munich, forbids the use of anything other than the core ingredients of barley, hops and water in the brewing process. Maybe the brewing of beer is too important to fool with.
From the Hofbräuhaus we went to the Residenz palace. This huge complex and its associated garden occupies the equivalent of about two city blocks in the center of the city. Since 1385, when it was only a small moated castle, it was continuously rebuilt (after sieges and such), remodeled, restored, and expanded right up through World War II, when the Allies bombed it to bits. Now, it has been restored as much as possible to its prewar condition. Our guide led us through arches, passageways, and courtyards explaining that though the building houses magnificent museums and theaters, he could only point them out in passing because a complete tour of the palace would require a couple of full days. During the war, most of the art works that had been collected in its museums over the centuries were moved to secure locations such as caves and man-made caverns in the mountains, and so survived. Included in the complex are a couple of museums, a world class concert hall, a grand theater in the style of the 18th century, and the Residence Treasury that holds much of the jewelry collected by Bavaria's rulers.
A contemporary sculpture on display outside one of the Residenz museums.
Passing through one courtyard, Jason pointed out the trompe l'oeil decoration. The walls were painted so realistically to look like elaborate stone-work that we had to look closely to perceive the "eye trick." (The objective eye of the camera, however, was not fooled, as the accompanying photo demonstrates.)
To the naked eye the walls look like fancy masonry work
This style was imported from Florence, to which German artists and architects of the 18th century turned for inspiration. In another courtyard, chairs were set up in neat rows in readiness, Jason said, for a concert that evening. He advised us that we could buy tickets at a kind of "Tickatron" in the Marienplatz if any were still available.
A serene palace courtyard ready for a concert that evening
We exited from the maze of interior courtyards in the Residenz through one of the arches of a long arcade into the Hofgarten (court, or palace, garden) and walked around a corner of the palace to the Odeonsplatz, the scene of much satanic pomp under Hitler. Opposite the palace, on the western side of the square, was the ornate dull yellow facade of the Theatinerkirche, (not a theater, a church) and at the far end was the Feldherrnhalle (Officer's Hall).
Jason tested us a little by asking if we saw anything unusual about the Theatinerkirche. Someone said it looked a little out of place there, but no one ventured more than that. Jason then explained that it was designed in the baroque style of the 17th century by an Italian architect, and a hundred years or so later, it was redecorated in the rococo style, again by Italians. He said some folks think the yellow color, the low steeples topped by ornate cupolas, and the elaborate design inside and out bring a breath of Italy to Munich. The only "German" feature Minnie and I could identify was the superabundance of clocks: two on each tower. No doubt, there would have been four, but two faces of the towers weren't readily visible from the street.
Tourists stroll where Nazi bombast once reigned
Although the striking facade of the Theatinerkirche would easily have dominated most public squares, in this setting it was overshadowed by the Feldherrnhalle at the south end of the square. Some 100 feet across the front, 70 feet high, and 50 or 60 feet deep, open on the sides and front with high arches, it looked to our unpracticed eyes like a bandstand from hell. Jason said it, too, had Italian connections, having been modeled after Florence's "Loggia dei Lanzi," but we couldn't see much of a "breath of Italy" about it.
Our impression that it looked like a bandstand was confirmed when we learned that it occasionally serves as a backdrop for open-air concerts by the Munich Philharmonic orchestra. The "hell" part of our first impression wasn't altogether inapt either. During the Nazi period, there was much parading and massing of troops in this square because the Feldherrnhalle was one of the chief shrines of their goofy mythology. It was here that Hitler's "Beer-Hall Putsch" was brought to a bloody stop by Munich police and troops of the Bavarian army. Since the structure was built in the 1840s to honor the generals of the Bavarian army, we found it somewhat ironic that Hitler made it famous by dedicating it to the memory of a gang of thugs.
Saying that he would be conducting another tour the next day which would focus on the Nazi influence in the city, Jason titillated our interest by pointing out a small bronze plaque in the middle of the sidewalk at one side of the Feldherrnhalle. The lettering was in German, of course, but the date was clear to all of us: 9.11.1923. He explained that the plaque memorialized four policemen who were killed putting down the putsch that occurred not on September 11, but on November 9, 1923.
"To the members of the Bavarian State Police who lost their lives in opposing the National Socialist putsch on 11/9/1923: Friedrich Fink, Nikolaus Hollweg, Max Schobert, Rudolph Schraut"
He also told us about the four bronze lions, dark green in color (except their snouts, which were a shiny copper) that were posted along the other side of the street at widely spaced entrances to the palace. He said that during the Hitler era, anyone walking past the Nazi memorial at the Feldherrnhalle had to give the Nazi salute. To express their resistance to the Nazis and their loyalty to the monarchy, many people would then cross the street and discretely rub one of the lions' snouts, which therefore gleamed a bright bronze color in contrast to the typical deep green caused by oxidation. After the war, Munichers continued to rub the snouts for good luck. But of course, being German, they weren't comfortable with anything that simple. So they made rules: if you rub one snout, you have to rub all four, else your luck would be bad instead of good.
Our next stop was Max-Josephplatz, a large public square notched out of one corner of the Residenz palace. Near the center was a bronze statue of Max-Joseph himself mounted on a fifteen-foot pedestal. Max-Joseph and his successors through the 19th century (except his two great-grandsons, Ludwig II and Otto) were forward looking, liberal rulers. They concentrated on establishing Munich as a cultural, political, and economic hub, and Bavaria as a prosperous state with contented inhabitants. They built a durable economy, a robust national infrastructure, and a parliamentary system of government with an independent court system. They permitted a free press, and encouraged a compulsory, secular education system.
King Max-Joseph says "hey" to all us tourists
On a personal level, they were bourgeois kings who eschewed the fancy uniforms, troops of cavalry, and other trappings so popular among European royalty at the time. They dressed, acted, and walked about the streets of Munich like ordinary (though extremely wealthy) businessmen. The statue in Max-Josephplatz illustrated this point. No stern general here on a rearing horse waving a sword and leading a phantom army into imagined battle. Instead, the king is portrayed as a round-faced, slightly balding fellow, a little past his prime but fit looking. He's wearing a business suit as he sits casually on a sturdy but ordinary low-backed chair. A mantle draped over his shoulders and hanging to his ankles looks less imperial than snuggly. He cradles the scepter of state casually with his left arm and raises his right hand as though to say "hey" to a passing neighbor.
They were enlightened rulers, but it was the wacko black sheep of the family, Ludwig II (Max-Joseph's grandson), who became the most famous. He built several of Bavaria's famous "fairy-tale" castles, including Neuschwanstein (the one you saw in Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang). He was considered mentally incompetent to rule because, among other foibles, he was a recluse who refused to get married and propagate the royal line. He drowned with his doctor under mysterious and suspicious circumstances in a large pond in one of his palace gardens.
But to get back to Max-Joseph, his most famous achievement was the 1810 wedding reception for Crown Prince Ludwig (later Ludwig I). The party was such a success that the king threw another one for his son's first anniversary. And his second. And so on. This was an attitude that was bound to strike a resonating chord in a city that cherishes monuments to its cabaret performers, so Munich continued the tradition from year to year, decade to decade, generation to generation, and century to century. Today, it's known and imitated worldwide as, Oktoberfest. In recent years, upwards of six million visitors from all over the world have come to join in the fun. Japanese families plan vacations around it; Emirati sheiks hop over in their private jets; and a large portion of the crowd sitting at long trestle tables and soaking up beer in the colorful big-top tents consists of Americans singing old "Bavarian" favorites such as "Country Roads," "Livin' on a Prayer," and "New York, New York" in the traditional rhythms of the "oompah" bands.
However, Jason didn't dwell much on Oktoberfest. Instead, he introduced us to a historical character who has become one of our favorites: Lola Montez. Lola was a wild and crazy Irish lass who parlayed her glib mendacity, exquisite good looks, quick and ferocious temper, and moderate talent as a dancer, into a life of adventure, a world-wide reputation as a performer, and several fortunes through which she burned as rapidly as she acquired them. Her shtick was mainly a deliciously naughty program called "The Spider Dance" in which she danced the story of a country lass who tries to rid herself of a spider that has run up her dress. She died at 40 of a stroke while living modestly in New York on money she had made as a touring lecturer.
She entered Bavarian history in 1846 when during a gig in Munich, the king, 60-year-old Ludwig I (Max-Joseph's son), fell under the thrall of the scandalously famous twenty-five-year-old. Within a few months Lola was proclaiming not only that she was the king's official mistress, but that he was going to promote her to the rank of countess. The people of Munich hated her for her arrogance, her total scorn of their bourgeois moral code, and the fact that she was shacking up with a bunch of radical students even as she allowed the king occasionally to lick her bare foot. (He kept a life-size bronze casting of her foot on the desk where he did the country's business.)
Admittedly, to the jaded eye of the 21st century, this behavior seems only mildly scandalous, but to the good burghers of Munich at the height of what the English called the Victorian period, it was more than enough. They rioted a couple of times and finally forced Lola to flee to Switzerland disguised as a page-boy. The King, once out of range of the dancer's entrancing charms, came to his senses. But by then it was too late. Within a few months, he was forced to abdicate.
From Max-Josephplatz we walked through narrow streets and hidden courtyards back to the Marienplatz in time for the Glockenspiel's noon performance.
Jason said these balconies in a tiny inner courtyard are the only example of Bavarian style architecture left in Munich's city center
The crowd wasn't much denser than at other times, but quite a few people were standing around in clusters waiting for the show to start. Some edged closer to hear what Jason was saying as he filled us in on some of the background of the Neues Rathaus and the Glockenspiel. First, he explained that despite its neogothic facade the "New Town Hall" is actually only about 100 years old. It was built in three phases, the first starting in 1867, and the last, the part with the Glockenspiel, completed in the first decade of the 20th century.
The Germans think the Glockenspiel is the most famous carillon in the world, but I personally think Big Ben is better known. Even so, the English clock doesn't have the amusing life-size clock-work figures featured in Munich. Each day at eleven, twelve noon, and five o'clock the figures do a show that combines spectacle, music, history, and suspense. Then, at nine in the evening there's another little show, but we missed that.
The history begins with the 1568 festival celebrating the wedding of Duke William V of Bavaria. Not surprisingly, in a city where a couple of hundred years later the high-toned wedding of Ludwig I would start evolving into the world's biggest kegger, the duke's wedding was the European social event of the century. Kings and queens, dukes and duchesses, princes and princesses, archbishops and concubines, marquises and marquisas, knights and ladies -- in a word, nearly every European bigwig and wannabe who could lay hands on a carriage and a horse to pull it swarmed into Munich for a few weeks of drinking, dancing, and fighting. The men broke lances and bones in the jousting lists while the women broke hearts and reputations in the stands as one of the last large-scale knightly tournaments in Europe unfolded to the amusement of thousands of beer-swigging Bavarian commoners.
The Glockenspiel represents all this with some dozen brightly painted figures that move and twirl about in a large niche in the Neues Rathaus tower while upwards of four dozen bells ranging in size from seven-inch 22-pounders to 50-inch half-tonners musically jangle and clang. At the climax of this part of the show, two knights on horseback, one in the blue and white of Bavaria, the other in the red and yellow of Austria, do a slow-motion joust. On the first pass, neither is unhorsed, but they turn and "charge" again, and this time the Austrian symbolically bites the dust by tipping back in his saddle. The throng of Bavarians and their foreign sycophants cheer in the square below.
At this juncture, the Austrian knight seemed to be in hot pursuit of the Bavarian hero
Then the figures in another niche a level below the wedding party come to life. They represent the celebration of the end of a plague. It seems that some time in the late middle ages after a plague had ravaged the city for months and finally abated, the surviving coopers (a major craft in a city built on beer) danced in the streets to celebrate. The Glockenspiel shows us the coopers in leather aprons dancing, again to the music of the carillon. The dancing stops, but the music continues for some time, and some of the crowd starts to leave.
However, Jason has advised us that the climactic moment has not yet arrived. When the music finally stops, there's a pregnant pause, and then, in the third part of the show, a brilliantly polished copper rooster emerges from a little niche above the stiff and mute wedding party. With a mechanical flap of its wings, the rooster issues a triumphant "ki-ki-ri-ki-ki!" (Which to our American ears sounds just like "cock-a-doodle-doo.")
We waited for the rooster's triumphant conclusion to the show
Everybody heaves a sigh of jingoistic satisfaction, and returns to souvenir shopping and beer drinking. My notes do not indicate that Jason explained the symbolism of the rooster. (He may have.) Is there a connection between poultry and beer?
He did tell us the story of the clock's restoration after the war. It was severely damaged, and of course the German economy was a wreck, so the Munichers couldn't afford to fix it up right away. Then a U.S. Army corporal rode to the rescue by scrounging up the needed paint and whatnot. In return, the grateful city granted him his one wish: to ride on one of the horses during the joust. According to our guide, he was the only person ever granted that privilege.
The tour was both interesting and entertaining, and although it required two-and-a-half hours on our feet, we decided to do the Nazi tour the next afternoon. By this time, we were both tired of standing and in significant need of a rest room. Jason advised us that in Munich the public rest rooms not only were scant, but usually shockingly unsanitary. The cleanest restrooms, he said, were in McDonald's and Burger King, both of which had shops near the Marienplatz. We weren't surprised that the American fast-food stores would be there, but it was a bit of a shock to learn that in this squeaky-clean city, they apparently provided the only public restrooms that rose above the dubious standards of the few other cities we had seen.
With that taken care of, our next objective was lunch. (We weren't in the mood for a Big Mac.) We started back to the Hofbräuhaus to try the chicken and potato salad that Jason had recommended, but as we wandered through the streets and courtyards we came upon a place called Guglhups Courtyard Restaurant with unoccupied and shaded tables on its terrace.
Lunch in the pleasant surroundings of a quiet inner courtyard
Our waitress was a hefty middle-aged Bavarian lady costumed in a dirndl and little white cap, glasses hanging on her ample bosom by a string around her neck. We ordered Moselle wine and since the menu was all in German, began to try to decipher it with the help of our dictionary. However, after a few moments, and without our asking, the waitress brought a menu in English. Minnie ordered French onion soup and I had the Münchener Weissewurst. The soup was as expected. My two wursts, pallid and slightly indecent looking in their small bowl of hot water, came with two packets of mustard and a couple of crackers.
I lifted one onto my plate and tried to peel off the very thin casing using knife and fork, but that seemed unnecessarily difficult. So I squeezed some mustard on top of it and ate it casing and all by cutting off cross-sectional bite-size bits. The casing actually had less substance than the casing of an average bratwurst at home, in fact, was no more noticeable than the casing of a skinless hot dog. Both the wursts and the mustard were very mildly flavored, but quite tasty, especially with the smooth white wine. However, I sensed I was probably violating some kind of protocol as I ate because out of the corner of my eye I caught a woman at a nearby table watching me with a sympathetic smile as though to say, "poor ignorant American tourist." We found out much later on the train to Frankfort that indeed that probably was exactly what she was thinking.
But for the time being, it was a very pleasant meal in very pleasant surroundings. The waitress was kindly and helpful, though she spoke no English, and the air in the enclosed courtyard, which at first was a little stuffy and humid, became more temperate as the shade of the buildings extended to the opposite side of the courtyard and a slight breeze developed. It was the ideal place to spend a sunny summer afternoon.
After lunch, we returned to our hotel to rest. We had considered trying to get tickets to the concert in the Residenz courtyard, but realized that by late evening we would be much too tired to be able to appreciate the music. In fact, we spent the rest of the afternoon in our room and managed to get a little done on the journal, which was getting further and further behind.
For dinner we walked toward a park identified on our map as the Old Botanical Garden in the expectation that there would be restaurants and shops in that area as well as in the area around the Marienplatz. Heavy clouds had damped out the sun, and the temperature was falling, so we didn't want to wander too far from the hotel. We passed a couple of places before opting for a moderately upscale, yuppy looking place called Tizia's Café Restaurant Bar where people were having happy-hour. There was a terrace at the back of the restaurant and a small garden with shade trees, flowers, and a little fountain. This little oasis was surrounded on three sides by glass-faced, six-story office buildings. On the side where we were walking, a chest-high hedge separated it from the street.
We entered through a gate in the hedge, but the only tables not occupied had reserved signs on them, so we went inside and took a table at the plate glass window that gave onto the terrace. It was kind of like sitting on the terrace, but inside and lacking the informality of a canvas umbrella stuck into a hole in the center of the table. A stylishly coiffed, dark haired waitress (or female maitre-d') in a well-cut navy blue dress brought menus and in a very businesslike manner took our order for glasses of Moselle (again) and bottles of water. After a while, another waitress, a younger black woman, came to our table and helped us with the menu in her adequate but halting English as we ordered a small Caesar's salad between us, and Minnie ordered a turkey entrée while I had a dish based on pork medallions.
When the waitress came to set our table, she dropped one of the napkins. In apologizing, she asked us what the English was for napkin, and then for table cloth and so we chatted a little. She said she was born in Kenya and had come to Munich from Berlin. She said this was her first day on this job and she wished she were back in Berlin, where, she said, the people were friendlier. She also said she had no desire to return to Kenya, which was where she learned her English. We thought that if the people in Berlin were friendlier than the folks we had encountered in Munich, Berlin must be a very friendly place indeed.
As we finished the "small" Caesar's salad, which as we had expected, was more than enough for two, and started on our entrées, the sky was becoming more and more threatening. We heard thunder, saw a little lightning in the distance, and the wind began to freshen with a few drops of rain. People started coming inside and soon were rushing in as the wind grew stronger and the restaurant staff dashed about lowering umbrellas and closing awnings. One of the umbrellas blew down and overturned a table as it went.
However, everything was quickly stowed, and all the customers were soon seated inside imperturbably continuing with their drinks and their talk. A big, blond, athletic-looking guy in a T-shirt and jeans, ear-ring, shoulder-length hair, diamond ring, and expensive looking watch, politely asked if he could take one of the spare chairs from our table explaining that the one at his had something on it. He was at a small table with a female counterpart, tall, slender, good-looking, dark hair, well dressed, deeply interested in whatever line the jock was laying on her.
At another nearby table two computer jock types in their thirties were with a young woman in a mini-skirt -- one of the few we had seen in Munich. We guessed that the guy sitting next to her was putting the moves on her when at one point he found an excuse to reach across the table for something so he could place his other forearm for a significant second on her bare thigh. On the other hand, maybe they were married, or engaged, or just young, of the 21st century, and "together."
At any rate, everyone was having a good time despite the storm, and we enjoyed it all. When we finished, it was still raining, so we asked our waitress to call a taxi. It was a good day. Very enjoyable. Very interesting. And we were glad we hadn't bought tickets to the concert.