MUNICH – Germany (Tues 25 Aug)

Went into the ‘Saturn’ store on the way into town, four floors of electrics, electronics, gadgets and consumables. And they had the CD I have been looking for. We have been a little under whelmed by the amount of recent local music that we have heard on our travels. We have listened to the radio throughout and mostly it is just the same that we get at home without the kiwi content. I was expecting more local sounds without reverting to the folksy stuff. But anyway back to this CD, we heard some sounds that we liked by a German group on the plane on the way over here, and we finally found it in a store. Yet to listen to it, but we found it. Of course if we had been really keen, we could have searched iTunes and downloaded it months ago.

On our stroll into town we came across a few more groups of buskers. The quality of buskers in Munich really is very impressive. But getting back to the story, there were three Mongolian men playing Mongolian music. One had a … cello of sorts, one had a … double bass of sorts, and the third had a horizontal harp type arrangement that he was hitting with sticks like a xylophone. The bellies of the cello and double bass were like square packing boxes, and they each had only two strings. But added to the sounds of their instruments, they were making the most unnatural sounds and accompaniments with their mouths. We have heard these sounds before in this type of music, but we always thought that they were produced by instruments of some kind. Very cool.

We climbed the tower at St Peters, but this isn’t as impressive as you are led to believe, but it does give you a good overview of the city. Once down stairs we went inside and visited the holy relics. At the second alter down on the left there is a glass case containing a whole female skeleton, gift wrapped in very fine transparent silk, that is adorned with gold braids, gemstones and holding a gold quill. The glass eyes looking out of the skull were a bit spooky. But this is the Roman martyr Munditia, the patron saint of single women. Also in this church (which seemed a bit odd), was a bronze plaque remembering those killed in the first world war. I guess it was the bass relief of the German helmet that looked out of place.

We spent most of the day mooching around the city (having a quiet day) and ending up at the Englischer Garten and the beer garden by the lake. We stumbled over the nude sunbathers this time around. And nude was definitely the preferred form of ‘un’dress. Those even semi clothed were definitely the minority. What seemed odd to us was that there are crowds of sunbathers on both sides of the narrow stream that runs through the park, one side is clothed, the other side is not. We read a news article that somewhere in Switzerland (we think) they were having problems with too many nude German hikers. It seems the Germans have a problem with clothes.

Anyway, on to the beer. What has surprised us is that we thought that with Munich being the home ground of beer and everything beer related, that it would be cheap … it isn’t. The other thing is that there seems to be a definite quaffing mindset where it is expected that you will order beer by the litre gross. Anything smaller doesn’t count. This beer drinking preoccupation is not a genteel sport in any way, shape or form, it is all about quantity. That’s not to say that they don’t have good beer, I have developed quite a liking to their weissbier, and Justine their lager.