Munich

Munich is one of the most comfortable big cities in the world. It's over a million people, but it still retains some of that small-town Bavarian charm. It's culturally rich but modernized, and it has a great transportation system (two levels of subways, trams, buses).

After returning from Italy, we spent the week surrounding Christmas in Munich, housesitting for one of Eri's colleagues. Standing in front of the royalty's former summer palace. I bet they'd be pretty pissed now if they knew it was open to the public.



A view of Marienplatz from above. We climbed a tower in the nearby Peterskirche to get a better view, although it was really foggy that day. Marienplatz is the main city center in Munich, and during Christmastime it's filled with vendors and shoppers. Although it's nearly empty in the picture, a few days before it was completely packed with people.

Just off of Marienplatz is Augustiner, which is one of Munich's oldest breweries. It was founded in 1328 by monks--actually, the name Munich (or München, as they call it) is from the German word for monk. The city was originally founded by monks who brewed beer, probably in the 8th century. At the restaurant we had pumpkin soup, hazelnut soup, and schweinebraten--baked pork, with a piece fried pigskin on top. Quite tasty.

The Bavarian parliament building.

In Germany, they love their schwein. Eri may have taken this a little too much to heart.

Late one night, as we were taking a stroll a giant came out of nowhere and grabbed Eri with his white, plastic-looking hand. Apparently he was under the impression that one of his pigs was being harassed... But a few liters of beer and everything was cleared up.

A random cathederal. There's a lot in Munich (southern Germany being historically Catholic and northern being more Lutheran).

I'm not sure what this building is, but the reflection is cool.

I had lunch one day at a Turkish deli.

The Isar River runs through the southeastern part of the city.


Funk! RIP James Brown, 1933-2006.

Note: Crazy Geisha Sushi Bar.

A view of the Deutsches Museum from across the river. It claims to be the world's largest museum of science and technology. It's filled with sailing ships, planes, space suits, and numerous exhibits on physics, chemistry, mining, and dozens of other topics. Plus it's free to the public from 4-5pm. Unfortunately, we lost all the pics of the inside.

The only picture that remains is one from the musical instrument collection (which is extensive). It's a Bass Sax ("Tubax") made by local instrument maker Benedikt Eppelsheim. I tried to visit their factory, but sadly they were closed for the holidays.

Other activities with lost pictures:

We attended the midnight Christmas Mass at the Frauen Kirche. For Germans Christmas officially starts on midnight, when the baby Jesus appears in mangers. We stayed for some of the music, but it was really packed and we didn't want to stand there for hours. We went back the next day for some more music, which started with an interesting organ piece but then moved into more boring mass music. Eri actually fell asleep, so I figured it was time to go.

We also visited the Pinotech, a Modern Art and Design Museum. We thought it was supposed to be free, but I think we just slipped past the security guards. There was a large collection of Surrealist and Dadaist art (Eri's favorite), which was pretty interesting. There was also a large exhibit involving different colored flourescent lights arranged in various ways. I thought it was, for the most part, uncreative and pretty stupid.