Our first mission today was to get some yoghurt to go with breakfast. This doesn’t sound difficult, until you add a few obscure translations. What we ended up getting was a … kinda yoghurt (well it had that on the container), but it was the consistency of thick milk and was extremely salty making our breakfast uneatable. We found out later that it was Turkish yoghurt, but I have no idea what they do with it, they certainly don’t have it with muesli and fruit. The perils of food shopping in a foreign country.
Our next mission was parking. We parked out on the street last night (free until 9:00am), with the understanding from the hotel that we would be able to park in their garage for the next three days (at a cost). We went to ask where we needed to go to put our car in the garage, and we were told “the garage is full, you cannot park there.” After some persistence we managed to negotiate with staff and guests who were leaving, that we could fill one of the spots that they were vacating. In the scheme of things not a difficult thing to do, but it involved going around and around with discussions. This hard line, ‘black and white’ response that you get so often here is probably what is responsible for their reputation. So different to what you normally get at home especially in the hospitality industry. We tend to try and find solutions rather than put up ‘brick wall’ responses. But when you dig a little deeper they are more than helpful.
Anyway, on to more important things, our Free Walking Tour of Munich. This is the third time that we have done these free tours and once again we were not disappointed with the quality of the information, and the entertainment value of these tours. We delved into the recent history with the origins of the Nazi party here in Munich, the resistance to Nazism and their memorial, the Beer Hall Putsch, the square where the rallies were held, the Hofbrauhaus, New Synagogue, the Glockenspiel, the street of the ‘Kristallnacht’ (Night of the Broken Glass), plus, plus, plus.
We heard many interesting stories along the way like the one about the origins of Octoberfest being a royal wedding celebration where the whole town was invited, and lasted three days. This party has continued annually every year until now with next year marking two hundred years. The population of Munich grows from 1.3 million to 7.0 million for the festival. Of the six breweries that are permitted to supply Octoberfest, 30% of their annual production is consumed in the two weeks of the festival. The beer hall tents are as big as aircraft hangers, and most interesting of all the Australian government (which normally has no presence here) sets up a temporary embassy for those two weeks. This is just a desk, a phone and a flag, with a queue of Aussies who have lost their passports during their drunken escapades.
We also heard about Henry the Lion who in 1158, on receiving the Bavarian kingdom went out and blew up a bridge as celebration. This was the bridge that the previous occupants had charged a tax to cross. But Henry wasn’t completely heartless, he built a new bridge, diverted the salt route (which was the gold of its time), across the new bridge. He then proceeded to introduce a tax to cross his new bridge. As you can understand there were a few grumblings about this and they finally can to an agreement, that 30% of the levy would go to the church for 150 years. Well the 150 years came and went and the church kept collecting, and this wasn’t discovered until 1938 when it was discovered during an audit. The interesting fact here is that the church never owned up to collecting the revenue, and has never had to pay back it’s 630 years of excess revenue.
We also discovered the different way Munich has of remembering it’s resent past, compared to Berlin. Berlin has huge monuments that people have to look at every day. Their philosophy being that if we are confronted with it everyday we will make sure that it doesn’t happen again. In Munich it is a lot more subtle, with small plaques that you can walk over without noticing, a memorial on a wall with no explanation about what it is, a row of gold cobblestones down the middle of a street commemorating the Nazi resistance, with no explanation. The memorials and reminders are all there, but you need to look for them to find them. Their philosophy being that if you know, you will find.
Our guide was an Australian guy who ahs been in Germany for a few years studying and he said something that appealed to us and that we could relate to. He said that after a year of traveling around he became jaded with ‘more history’, ‘just another old church’, ‘just another statue’. Then he realized that every statue represents a person, and every church represents a people of that time. I think this is a good thing to remember when traveling.
We gathered a wealth of information during the three hours both recent and historical, and we finished in the only way that would be fitting, the whole group in a beer garden having a beer and stew for lunch.
From here we decided to go for a walk through the Englischer Garten, a huge garden in the middle of the city. Soon after entering the garden you meet a wave. No really … as you follow the small river it emerges from under a bridge and forms a reasonable size permanent wave that people surf on, despite the no surfing and no swimming signs. Very cool, totally unexpected and right in the middle of the city.
As we walked back home we went into the Theatinerkirche. What was surprising here was that it had a very small minimalist alter and the entire inside of the church was white, except for a large black pulpit half way down the church. The whole inside was very elaborately carved, decorated … and white. It had almost a sepulchre feel to it.
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