Deutschland, Part 2 (Munich)

It must be admitted that our arrival in Munich was the low part of the trip. Traffic was terrible and was not easy to navigate from behind the wheel of a 9-seater van. The hotel was somewhat difficult to find and the streets were crowded and felt narrow. When we finally found the hotel, they had no record of our reservation. Jane got down to business, negotiating with the desk clerk in polite but somewhat terse German, and Dad, Mom, David, and I ferried all of our bags from the van to the hotel, which did not provide parking. Then Anthony and I took off on a frustrating voyage through the heart of the city, sampling several parking garages over the course of an hour before we found one that was high enough to accommodate the van, and scratching the roof and the left rear fender in the process. Oops. Tempers were running high by the time we got back to the hotel. Happily, things were all downhill from there.

After a beer on the pleasant patio of our hotel, we set off to walk through the old center of Munich, a walk we repeated the following day. 

The old Rathaus, or city hall. Every few hours, people gather in the square to watch the Glockenspiel, or mechanized  performance of figurines set to music, which was handcrafted hundreds of years ago. It plays out in the upper part of the square tower on the right edge of this picture.

Munich is very aware of what tourists want to see. I've never seen so many people dressed in traditional German costume, all of them employees of touristy restaurants and shops. This band, completed with pint-sized dancers, appeared out of nowhere to play polka music in the square.

We wandered into this lovely church.

Jane and Anthony enjoyed it less than I did.

Jane did, however, enjoy the massive pretzels available at the Biergarten under the Chiniesiche Turm, or Chinese Tower, in the city's largest park. We saw some locals threading a forearm through the pretzel in order to free up hands to carry mugs of beer back to their tables.

Mom enjoyed the beer.

David enjoyed being incognito.

After refreshments, we walked by this artificial river in the park, where surfers take advantage of the waves created by fast-moving water through an uneven channel. They lined up on either side, and when it was their turn hopped out into the waves and rode back and forth until they fell and were carried out of the wave.

Jane, who does not like heights, did not join us for the trip into the tower of a large church. She missed a lovely, 360-degree view of Munich from above, as well as a very narrow, winding staircase.

Munich has a great outdoor market where one can buy exotic fruits, truffles, baked goods, sausages of every description, honey, and really almost anything else. 

David and I went into the famous Hofbrau Haus, strictly for research purposes. This is a Mass locker, a place to store your liter-sized glass safely behind a padlocked door so that it will always be in the beer hall when you want it. There were a lot of these lockers in the Hofbrau House, and every one of them was completely full.

And a happy ending: For those of you concerned about the fate of the van, a lucky accident ensured that the problem of the damage to the paint was easily resolved. When the guys at the car rental agency asked my father, whose German is minimal at best, about insurance, he told the them that his credit card would cover him in case of an accident. He told them this in English, and held up the card to make his point. Reading his gesture, rather than his words, the agent dutifully charged him, via his credit card, for insurance, and so the scratches on the van were not a problem when we returned it to Berlin about five days later.

Next stop: Mittenwald!