Museums

One of the things I like most about Munich is the consideration the city gives to bicyclists. In Munich, the roads are narrow and the sidewalks are wide. There are many areas in which cars are prohibited. However, bicyclists get their own lane everywhere. On the sidewalk, there is a separate lane for bicyclists, sometimes painted red, sometimes marked by a different asphalt pattern, but that lane is THEIRS. Don't even try walking in that lane. Any bicycler in sight will ring their bells at you telling you to get out. And there are a lot of bicyclers. Every railing in the city has bikes locked to it or even just placed next to it. There are people riding around at all times of day. In the U.S., you usually only see bikers wearing those racing outfits, biking around for the exercise. But here they actually use bicycles for transportation. From old people transporting groceries to young people commuting to work.

Anyways, after a short night's sleep (this guy from brazil was a snorer), I got up early and went to check out the Oktoberfest grounds. Not much to see at this time of year, just a really large empty lot. But Patroness Bavaria was there as well, sculpted from the metal of cannons retrieved from sunken ships. Today I was leaving Munich to travel to Stuttgart, so next I stopped by the train station to pick up a train ticket. One of the unfortunate things about the train system here is nothing is in english, even crucial instructions that you need to follow such as stamping your ticket are only in german. But, one type of automated ticket dispenser does have a language select, and after choosing the parameters of your trip it tells you the cheapest ticket you can buy to get there.

As soon as the museums opened, I was there. I saw two of the three Pinakothek museums (1 Euro Sunday does exist!), the old museum (middle ages to 18th century) and the new museum (18th and 19th century). I didn't have time for the audio guide, and little did I know the names and descriptions were all in german, but it wasn't too hard to figure out what I was looking at. In the old museum especially, about 90% of the paintings were about one of five things: the birth of Christ, his crucifiction, dogs or lions hunting a boar, still life involving flowers or food, and portraits of rich people. I think I need more education to appreciate it, which I will hopefully gain later in the trip.

Next I went to the Residenz, the former residence and center of power of the Bavarian kings. Bavaria is southern Germany. It was a huge palace with every room decorated by frescoes on every available wall and gold wooden scrollwork covering anything that wasn't painted. Quite fancy. The tour culminates in the great hall, supposedly the largest and most grandiose renaissance hall north of the Alps. Even the decorations had decorations.

With that, I concluded my stay in Munich, leaving on a four hour train trip to Stuttgart. Munich was really a great city with a lot of character. Walking around at night felt perfectly safe and the metro system can take you anywhere once you figure it out.

P.S. I hope pictures will be forthcoming in a future post. The internet connection I had in Munich was barely sufficient to check email.