Germany: Munich, May 12 Part 1

We started our day on Monday with a small breakfast in the hotel, which was managed by a woman with a lazy eye. I only remember this because Brandon said it about 15 times from the time we arrived on Sunday until the time we left. Breakfast in Europe has always fascinated me - I just don't understand the desire to eat salmon and cheese or salami and cheese on bread or crackers at 8am. I usually settled for nutella on whatever is available because, well, why not? It is nutella, you know?

We set out early to do a walking tour of downtown Munich, which was led by a very nice British man - again, love the accent. Munich is the country's third largest city, and despite utter devastation during World War II, much of the downtown has been rebuilt to resemble former facades and the buildings are quite beautiful.

Perhaps the most striking building in Munich is the neo-Gothic Neues Rathaus, located in Marienplatz. The building's tower houses a famous glockenspiel, which is basically a moving clock. The glockenspiel consists of 43 bells and 32 life size figures, which move and dance to tell two particular stories. The top half tells the marriage story of Duke Wilhelm V and Renata - you can see them in the center. There is a joust with knights on horseback that move around them. The bottom half tells the story of the Schäfflerstanz or the coopers' dance. Apparently in the 16th century, there was a plague in Munich - people were afraid to leave their homes, but the coopers (or barrell makers) were the first to risk it - so this shows their dance. At the end, the little yellow bird at the top chirps. I thought this was pretty fascinating, considering it has been around for over one hundred years.

Two interesting tour stops were churches. The first is called Frauenkirche, which means Cathedral of Our Blessed Lady. This is a Gothic style church. There is a footprint in the back, said to be the devil's footprint from when the devil protested the building of the church - apparently, the devil believed there would be no windows, but the builder tricked the devil so he left this footprint when he stomped the ground in fury. Good story for tourism. The Pope, prior to being The Pope, used to have Mass here as well.

The second interesting church was St. Michael's Church, which is Renaissance in style and has two onion-shaped domes. It honestly looks like churches you would see in Italy, not in Germany. This is where I discovered the museum feature on my digital camera - it takes some seriously amazing photos, like this one. No blur - spectacular!

Another fun tour stop included the English Garden in the middle of the city, which is the largest public garden in Europe. This is a seriously huge green space, where people run, walk, and bike. Not to mention on nice days, like the day we spent, it's also a place where the locals sunbathe naked. Sadly, most of the nakedness was seen in older, larger, hairy men, so it wasn't much for looking. The stream that runs through the Garden even has a wave break, which is always filled with locals and their surfboards. Who knews Germans had a place to catch a wave every once and a while!

The tour covered some history of Bavaria, since Munich was the former capital, including its

former rulers and their buildings, which was interesting at the time, but now I just can't seem to recall a whole lot of it. We did also get some more World War II information, since Hitler spent a decent amount of time here. Brandon could probably give you those details, but I just can't seem to recall much of it at this point.

We ended the tour in Viktualienmarkt, which is a pretty solid outdoor food market. The plaza was also home to this maypole, which depicts for visitors all of the local sites to see.