Part three: Munich

Friday, August 20, 2010.

Jumped out of bed at 9:05 am, cleaned up, said my goodbyes and a deep hearfelt “thank you” to Sven, and aimed to make the 10:58 am train to Munich.

Dropped €6.40 during my final visit to the Reichelt grocery store. I‘d be traveling for at least six hours, so I stocked up: three chicken drumsticks, two bread rolls, and enough mystery meat for two sandwiches. Usually, I eat meat of any sort less than twice a week, and it is almost always fish or poultry. I haven’t eaten this much meat in years. It’s a theme.

It was a beautiful, perfect day. Sat next to an inoffensive little kid on the train for about two hours, and then was able to jump into a window seat across the aisle.
I was happy that I happened to be sitting in the ruheberich ("quiet zone") section of the train. This was obeyed for the most part, until some people started playing a loud board game at about 2:15 pm. Read, wrote, ate, watched green green green Germany fly past the window, and paid attention to the handy speed display, showing maximum intercity cruising velocities of exactly 225 kph (140 mph). We often went much slower, though.

As we passed a wind farm, I counted at least seventy-five windmills. This made me think of the song Windpower by Thomas Dolby. Then we stopped in Leipzig, and this made me think of the song Leipzig, by Thomas Dolby! I checked my luggage to make sure that all my submarines were present and accounted for, lest Mr. Dolby’s song One Of Our Submarines Is Missing also get stuck in my skull today. I thought about other songs that had been going through my head all week. The chime on the Berlin U-bahn sounds like a tiny two-note fragment of Strawberry Fields Forever. It is only two notes, but the interval and the rhythm made me think Beatles every time the U-bahn doors closed. This would have been more appropriate on the Hamburg U-bahn, I think. Of course, there is good ol’ Laibach. Every time I saw something super-Germanic or saw the word einer (meaning either “one” or "of a"), I thought of their tune Geburt Einer Nation (Birth of a Nation; this is actually their mutation of the Queen song One Vision). Naturally, Can and Kraftwerk were present on my internal soundtrack too, these being two great German bands from the 1970s who I have always liked. Upon arrival in Munich, I walked to the GHotel (Landwherstrasse 77), where I paid €175 for four nights. The hotel is west of city center, walking distance from the Hbf. There are a lot of people of Turkish or other related nationalities selling doner kebabs in the neighborhood. There are lots of small markets here, more of them than this neighborhood, or any neighborhood, would seem likely to be able to support. One guy was chillin’ in front of a cafe in black shirt and trousers, trying to look bad-ass, like a 1970s Al Pacino, except he was just a random ghetto Turkish guy. Checked into the hotel, and asked for a quiet room. Discovered that my room was directly above a small but noisy (and smoky) patio. It was also the first room directly around the corner from the elevator. People in an adjacent apartment building were playing techno music. St. Paul’s church, a few doors down the street, chimes loudly on the quarter hour. Rowdy British footballers on the street were getting ready to go watch the match. At no time in history has a request for a quiet room been more thoroughly denied. The Turkish(?) front desk girl was unable to give me another room. So I got settled in, and tried to relax for a bit. If not quiet, at least the room was clean and modern. Laundry day: washed my socks, wifebeaters, and a pair of jeans in the sink. Sat down and tried to find everything on my to-do list on my map, so as to know what is close to what. Found most of it. This is truly Bavaria now, distinct from the northern parts of Germany which I had been visiting to date: my city map has a dozen little beer stein icons on it, showing where the main beer gardens are.  This is the traditional part of Germany, center of Bavaiarn culture and all of the iconography assoicated with Germany.  Visiting Munich is perhaps akin to visiting the New England states in the U.S.

My local pal Jöchen, a documentary filmmaker, was in Italy, so I wouldn’t see him until my last night here, if at all. He’d given me a short list of things to check out, including a restaurant called Pacific Times (Baaderstrasse 28) that I might want to include in Destination: Cocktails. I got on the local U-bahn at Theresienwiese and took it over to Gärtnerplatz, a short trip away, south of the city center. Jöchen had told me to check out all of the festivities around Gärtnerplatz, and he wasn’t kidding. On a pleasant Friday evening, there were dozens of people picnicing under purple skies on a big grassy circle in the middle of the intersection of four major roads. Sitting all around a big fountain, they all seemed to have elaborate picnics, with yummy looking piles of cheese, huge baguettes, and lots of wine. Traffic was very light, and few cars circled the little park area as people enjoyed themselves. Still more people were hanging out on the steps of the opera house (also called Staatstheater or State Theater) just across from the circle.

Onto Baaderstrasse, I liked the antique stores along the way, and the first of the many designer dirndl shops that I saw in southern Germany. The traditional costume of Bavaria is sometimes seen in Hamburg and Berlin, but once I got to Munich and beyond, I saw much more of it. The men’s and women’s clothing - tracht, collectively - is worn here with no sense of irony. I was fascinated by all of the high end couture dirndl shops I saw. A few shops along Baaderstrasse wanted several thousand Euro for some truly fine garments. This is not kitsch for waitresses in tourist restaurants; this is serious fashion. The dirndl consists of a bodice, blouse, full skirt and apron; most of the shops sold them either separately or as an ensemble.

I like this part of town. It is a little bit more upscale than the areas I usually haunt, but it also feels more like old Europe than anything I saw in Berlin or Hamburg.

Arriving at Pacific Times, I had a great conversation and a few drinks with Andy, the bartender/owner. He opened the elegant restaurant in 1997. It feels like a colonial home on a French Tahitian plantation in here. Andy is a friend of Jöchen’s, and upon my request, he made me a Rum Runner “Jöchen’s way”.
•St. James Royal Ambre,
•Havana Club Barrel Proof(!),
•dashes of Apppleton and Bacardi Dark,
•Tia Maria,
•pineapple,
•Fee’s aromatic bitters,
•orange bitters,
•Garnished with a lil’ orange peel, a lil’ lime peel, a whole cherry (not mariscino), and some mint.
The drink was quite solid but was free-poured and was maybe a touch heavy on the Tia Maria.
Not sure if all four rums were necessary. Neither Appleton or Bacardi is interesting enough to be nescessary.  A bit more of the St. James and Havana Club will allow these two great rums to shine.  Why dilute them with crappy Bacardi?

Met an Austrian guy and his French girlfriend. They were nice. They ordered a Rum Runner just because mine looked good. It was. They had an appetizer platter (“mixed starters”) that looked quite impressive. Most of the entrees here are €10 to € 20, and originate from all around the Pacific Rim. Most of the cocktails are €7 to €9.

Back through Gärtnerplatz, lots of people are still hanging out. The little circular park was now jam packed. I recognized some of the same picnicers. Seemed like cool crowd. Lots of people were also still hanging on the steps of the opera house.

Deciding that it was high time I visited a proper Bavarian beirgarten (beer garden), I walked half way across the city to the Augustiner beirgarten. The walk was fun however, as it was a festive Friday night and there were people out having fun all over town. Getting a little turned around, I stopped at a random hotel for directions. The concierge gave me a better map than I had, but advised me that Augustiner was probably closing up (it was going on 11:00 pm). I went over there anyway. What else did I have to do? This improved map also has little beer mug icons showing where the beirgartens are.
That’s Munich for you.

When I arrived, a lot of people were filing out through a stone and iron gate, but I went in. The place is basically a huge yard, on ground that is not entirely flat, and is covered with the roots of giant trees. Hundreds of picnic tables are positioned under these ancient shady trees. The grounds were mostly empty by this hour, with plenty of sets available. They were still selling beers in giant glass steins for €6.80. That’s ten bucks for a beer... but it was a full liter. Still no bargain. A third of it was foam, but I was thirsty from the long walk, so I sucked it down pretty fast.  A small electric flatbed truck was hauling away steins by the load.

Stumbled home the long way, seeing the city at night. 
Began counting my steps at one point, thinking that every step was a calorie and that every penny was a calorie.
So a €6.80 beer contained 680 calories and needed 680 steps to burn off.
This was all complete nonsense.

In bed a little after 1:00 am.


Saturday, August 21, 2010

With earplugs deeply entrenched in my ear canals, I slept in today, and got up at 11:40 am. I really needed the rest.

Today’s mission was to begin my exploration of Munich on foot, and to eventually make it to yet another art museum, the Haus der Kunst (House of Art).
Along the way, I checked out the center of Munich, including the Odeonplatz and Marienplatz (St. Mary’s Square), which are very close to each other.

Odeonsplatz is a beautiful square bordered by the Italianesque Feldherrnhalle, plus the Theatinerkirche (kirche = church), and the Hofgarten, a former court garden.
From this square, Ludwigstrasse - one of Munich's most monumental streets - leads to the Siegestor, a large triumphal arch.

Marienplatz is the heart of the city of Munich.
In the Middle Ages, the square used to be a market, as well as the place where tournaments and festivities took place.
In 1807 Marienplatz's market moved to the nearby Viktualienmarkt, but the square still continued to be the city's focal point.
Important public events such as tournaments or executions were still held here.
The square was originally known as Schrannen but it was renamed Marienplatz (St. Mary's Square) as a way to ask Virgin Mary to protect the town from a cholera epidemic.

Near Odeonplatz, I walked by Marstall, a venue for experimental performing arts, modern musical theater, and progressive dance.
I liked their juxtaposition of classic and very contemporary architecture (pic to right).

Making my way further northeast from there, I walked through the Hofgarten (an Italian style Renaissance garden dating from 1613), and then along Prinzrgentenstrasse (Prince's Regents Street).
The Haus der Kunst is here, as well as the Bavarian National Museum and some other cultural institutions.
Also in this area is the southernmost entrance to the Englischer Garten (English Garden), a massive green space that dominates northeastern Munich.

I assembled my usual lunch from Tengelmann markt (Triftstrasse 10): sandwich materals, water, and a banana for €4.23. The sandwich ended up being kind of huge.
I munched it on a bench in the park, watching two little kids kick a soccer ball around, as an old man romanced a woman twenty years younger than himself - but twenty years older than me - a few benches over.
They strolled off, leaving me to my lunch. Although it was a hot but beautiful Saturday, this particular corner of the park was abandoned, except for me and the soccer - sorry, that’s fussball - kids.

Most of the rest of the park was very much filled with people, however. A series of rivers run through the park, which is in a wide but shallow valley.
These rivers are interesting because they flow northward from the southern end of the park, right near where I entered, along Prinzrgentenstrasse. This is fine, except for the fact that the source of these rivers doesn’t seem to exist. Massive quantities of water shoot out into the park from a tunnel underneath Prinzrgentenstrasse and then flow through the park, but there are no other rivers or waterways for quite some distance. The Isar river is perhaps a kilometer away.
There must be an underground canal that feeds water into the Englischer Garten from the Isar.
Well, anyway, there is a fair amount of water pressure shooting out from this tunnel, forcing the water upstream and through the park.

The point of this is that under the bridge, there were a dozen guys with surfboards each taking a ride of perhaps thirty seconds on the water shooting out of this urban pipeline.
They had themselves coordinated well: after one guy’s ride finished, a fellow from the opposite shore would have a turn. A line of surfers on each shore alternated diving in for a quick ride that was over almost before it began.
Given that the next nearest surfable body of water is the Adriatic Sea, about five hundred kilometers away, this is the best these guys can do. I no longer pity my friends in Milwaukee who surf Lake Michigan.
They’ve got it much better than these poor guys in their wetsuits riding the aqueduct under a city bridge in Munich.
But, that said, they drew quite a crowd of observers, and my friend Jöchen assures me that they are doing this every weekend.

Further downstream, as the shallow water flowed under dense green trees, teenagers and twenty-somethings splashed around and rode floats, in spite of rather intimidating signs warning them not to do so:

(“Bathing forbidden, mortal danger”).

Just steps from the park entrance is the Haus der Kunst, which, to my dismay is a hyper-trendy exhibition space showing a lot of the self-consciously “edgy” conceptualist work that I find to be so tedious.
Fortunately, the Bayerisches (Bavarian) National Museum was very near to there (Prinzregentenstrasse 3).

This place wasn’t especially high on my priority list, as it seemed like it might be rather dry: “a large collection of European artifacts from the Middle Ages until early 20th century. Medieval armor to pottery, from furniture to porcelain, a rich collection relating to arts, crafts, and folklore”.
Well, I took a chance and went inside. My first impression was that the place really, really sucked. I discovered three rooms full of medieval or Gothic wooden sculptures, and that was the whole place.
This for €7?
Determined to get my money’s worth, I examined the collection twice, but I really wasn’t that interested.
It was then that someone told me that I was basically in the annex building for temporary exhibitions, and that my €7 included admission to the main building, just down the block.
Oh.
Yeah.
I knew that.
Sure.

After all of that, the Bayerisches National Museum ended up being pretty cool. There is a whole lot of stuff inside that straddles the boundaries between art museum, natural history museum, decorative arts, and historical society.

I liked:
creepy wooden sculptures of skeletons taming lions...

beautifully detailed scale maps/models of Bavarian cities in the 1560s-1570s (made by Jakob Sandthner)...

weird hairy saints surrounded by angels...

ornately decorated boxes made with tortoise shell and mother-of-pearl...

similarly decorated furniture...
bejeweled (beschmucked?) swords...
life-sized (if you will) statues of Greek gods...

a taxidermy monkey well-dressed in fine 17th century threads...

many suits of armor...

a big collection of finely crafted board games...

a chest decorated with thin slices of a polished geode inlaid in the wood...
some paintings...
a temporary exhibit of 17th century haute couture rendered in porcelain figures...
tapestries (ca. 1545) showing the beheading of Paulius...
and more than 115 antique musical instruments (some of which I could not identify).
The wooden bassethorn, a crazy orgelleri, and a very ornate bass-viola de gamba were super cool. Wish there was some sort of way to hear the sounds these things make. A tempting book, Musikinstrumenten des 16. bis 18. Jahrhunderts im Bayerischen Nationalmuseum (Music Instruments from the 16th to the 18th Century in the Bavarian National Museum), is only available in German.

The museum was also hosting a special exhibit of things made from bones, mostly religious icons, plaques, brooches, and the intact skulls of a rhino, elephant, hippo, walrus, baby elephant, and narwhal.
There was a lot more in there too.
Something for everyone, I say.
It should be noted that none of the signs here are in English, at all, so get the audio guide if possible.

The museum was nearly empty, even on a Saturday, probably owing to the great weather outside.
I decided that I needed to be outside too.

Deep within the Englischer Garten is a beirgarten surrounding a five-story tall Chinese pagoda.

Yes, a German beer garden in an English garden with a Chinese pagoda.
 
Whatever.

There were thousands of people out there, filling the hundreds of communal picnic tables almost to capacity.
As is the case in other beir gardens, no one hangs out alone.
Based on my experience so far, no one in Germany goes out alone, at all, ever.

The huge crowd were drinking their big full liter steins of beer (€7.80), eating huge bretz’l (=pretzels; €3.70), bratwurst (€2.90), cheesecake, and enjoying delicacies like herring-on-a-stick (the whole fish, head, scales, and all, rotisseried for €9.90).
I saw many big plates of traditional food that looked great.
Lots of people had brought elaborate picnics.

A volksmusik (folk music, or “oom-pah”) band played from the third floor of the pagoda.
The bandleader conducted a toast at one point, which everyone in the huge crowd participated in.
The only song I recognized was Roll Out The Barrel.
You can see the clarinet player stepping forward to take a solo in the picture.
The band all had their tracht (traditional garb) on, as did many of the customers.
A table of six teenage girls next to me were all wearing dirndls, completely without irony, although one had a lip piercing, and two of them had Converse All-Stars on their feet.
A few guys had their leiderhosen on too.
This seems to be a popular place for bachelorette parties too, there were a bunch of them going on.

It was super hot outside now, and I was dying of thirst, but it was too early for beer, and all of the food here was pretty expensive.
I couldn't find any water!
Instead, I got a small radler (€3.60), which is a popular drink made of half beer and half lemonade.
I made some notes while I tried to sip it, but I was so thirsty that it went down fast.
Three long pulls and it was gone.
I also had to pony up €1 as a deposit on the glass stein.
They gave me a plastic token which I was able to trade back for my Euro.
I guess this keeps the shadies from walking around collecting empties and trading them in for other people’s deposits.

When a generic rock band took over the music (guitar, bass, and female vocals, with pre-programmed electronic drums and keys), I split.
The walk back through the vast park took me past dozens of picnics, people sunning themselves, games of frisbee and soccer, and more people illegally swimming in the waterways.

Back to the Marienplatz area, I admired more designer dirndls in the window of Galeria Kaufhof (department store), and spent a little more time checking out the historic buildings.

The square is dominated by the Neues Rathaus (new town hall), built between 1867 and 1909 by Georg Joseph Hauberrisser, in Flemish Gothic style.
The original Old Town Hall (or Altes Rathaus) was completely destroyed by fire in 1460.
Between 1470 and 1480, the old town hall was rebuilt in Gothic style by Jörg von Halsbach.
The building was completely destroyed again during the second world war, but rebuilt afterwards following the original 15th century plans.

A famous carillon gives the tourists a show every day at 11:00 am, noon, and 5:00 pm. Animatronic (if I may) figures dance around the interior of a clocktower as the music of tuned bells fills the air. Quite a big crowd gathered to watch.

From there I walked just a few blocks down the street towards an Aston Martin dealership, although my destination (: Cocktails) was just across the street: Schumann’s American Bar (Odeonsplatz 6-7).

There are two types of bars in the world: those who make the bulk of their income on Saturday nights, and just one, in my experience, that is run by a man who is (shall we say) so self-assured that he has been known to close on Saturday nights, if for no other reason than to avoid dealing with the large crowds of tourists, amateurs, trendies, and poseurs.  Fortunately, he was open tonight.

Naturally, Schumann’s has an extensive collection of booze behind the bar, but perhaps the most impressive thing of all, especially for any Italian pirates who may be reading this, are the seventy-five bottles of Campari on the wall. They’re all lined up like Roman columns, except that they’re red, and made of glass, and are relatively small from an architectural point of view. Schumann’s is a Campari lover’s paradise. And guess what: this is one of the only places in the world where you may be served a drink containing the out--of-production and increasingly rare other Campari product, Campari Cordial. Schumann’s report: fourteen bottles left in his stash.

Schumann is also a man of taste when it comes to food: he called Chicago the number one dining town in the world.  As I savored my Campari, I found myself making conversation with a Japanese man named Takaaka Nakano who had arrived at Schumann’s on sort of a pilgrimage. This we had in common. He was eating a hearty-looking meal, but this we didn’t have in common. A bowl of common potato chips sat on the bar; I indulged in that as he ate. I asked my Japanese friend if his meal was good, and he said yes.
So I asked him if it was amazing.
He hesitated, and then said yes.
So: almost amazing.
Give it a try.

Wanting to get a few quotes from Schumann for the book, I asked to see him.  Eventually he emerged from the kitchen, strode over, stopped abruptly in front of me, and stated: “Schumann”. Simply, matter of factly, coldly. No warmth, no invitation. No hello; he just stated his name and then stood there expectantly. The unspoken next words might have been "what do you want, you have three seconds". We shook hands, I said, warmly, friendly, I am Jame... And before the “s” in “James” was out of my mouth he interrupts me: “Back in five minutes!” and strode off. A bit later, Schumann returns! Back from the kitchen, he was more friendly this time, and we had a chat about his business for a while. Well, I can’t afford to drink in places where Aston Martin customers dine, so once my research was finished, I dashed off to look for something far more Germanic. I ended up in a festive square full of people in a very touristy part of town - the Hard Rock Cafe is here, in fact. One can't get less traditionally Bavarian than the plastic Hard Rock, but right across the square from there is Hofbrauhaus, the Hofbrau beir-owned temple of beir and ersatz Bavariana. This place is huge. As much of a cash-trap is it is, I found it strangely fascinating too. Endearing. For those of you who are into tiki, all I can say is that it is to Bavarian culture what the Mai Kai in Fort Lauderdale is to Polynesian culture. Except for that Hofbrauhaus is in Bavaria. A temple of Bavarian kitsch. The top floor was full of hundreds of middle-aged locals watching a performance consisting of guys dancing around on a stage with some sort of short whips (or long riding crops). Almost every seat was full in the huge performance hall. More people ate and drank on the middle floor, on which I discovered historic framed photos of the place. The ground floor was chaos. Both the indoor space (decorated in a stony gothic style) and an outdoor garden were packed with revelers. A band on a tiny stage crammed into a corner were playing local favorites. A guy on drums, another on accordion, a hot girl on French horn, and then some other horns (sans hottie: the remaining brass was manned by old fat guys). Nearby, a huge medieval iron torture rack is actually a stein storage center, with each stein having its own number and key, presumably for regulars.Alas, my poor camera had died again.

This place was too crazy, too obviously touristy, and too expensive for me, so I ran back to the hotel to drop off the camera and some other stuff I’d accumulated all day, and then followed the beer logos on my map to the second of Augustiner’s beer gardens (this one at Landsbergerstrasse 19), supposedly open since 1328. Unlike their vast outdoor beirgarten (at which I’d arrived late last night), this location was more of an indoor restaurant - not unlike a much (much) smaller version of the Hofbrauhaus I’d just left.

However, on this extremely pleasant night, almost no one was inside. It was hot and stuffy in there. Everyone was crammed into a small patio on the upstairs floor. It was a much quieter scene, and seemed to be more populated with locals. I picked a table, and made some notes on my recent activities while enjoying a Mass Hell beir for €5.10.
I struggled with the menu, reading it carefully for quite a while, but surprising myself with the number of words I could now decipher. Then the waiter offered me an abridged English version. Fewer choices, but the same prices.
Yes, I compared them.
Settled on #1208: a plate of two schweinsbratwurst (sausages) on a bed of sauerkrat, “mit einer scheibe brat” (=”with a plate of fries”, basically) for €5.40. The sausages were indifferent, the kraut was slimy, and the rye bread served on the side was kind of stale. 
I was in a festive place full of happy people, but the environment didn’t feel right to butt in and join any of them. Four drunk nerds were going table to table talking to people. One is Japanese. Hm, maybe it is okay to just barge in on people here. After my meal, I wandered the short distance back to the larger outdoor Augustiner garten (the one I’d been to the previous night) and had a small beir for €3.70.

It was Saturday. I needed adventure. I had walked across a big bridge over a large collection of railroad tracks to get to Augustiner. This was near the Hbf, so all the train lines were converging here. As I walked back over the bridge, headed back towards the hotel, I found a mall in the train station. Lots of trendy looking kids, all dressed up, were going into the mall, walking through it, and emerging out the other end. There was a club over there called Neuraum “für freunde der nicht” (“for friends of the night”; at Arnulfstrasse 17), and the kids were all queued up to get in. All slender, all dressed to the nines.

The only business open in the mall was a pizza place. The workers were making pies like mad, in anticipation of the coming post-club rush. The seating area was closed and all of the tables were covered with pizzas ready to cook. I liked a huge nine-panel mural in the mall, displaying a black and white photos of the city as seen from above. A huge monochrome map of Munich, with only one building in red: the one I was in. I was able to find my hotel.

I sat outside, just enjoying the perfect weather, now that the hot afternoon had cooled off, and watching these kids.  The moon was three-quarters full with one big star visible, and it was nice to just relax on a bench and watch the younger people do their thing. They reminded me of my pals and I, nearly twenty years ago, when we used to get all dressed up and go to dance clubs. I asked a bouncer for a cocktail napkin on which to write some more notes, and he was a complete dick about it, for no reason at all. I’d forgotten how self-important people who work in the trendy club industry can be. All I wanted to do was grab a scrap to scribble on, and the guy was a thorough asshole.
Denied.

Anyway... arrived back at the hotel at 1:15 am.


Sunday, August 22, 2010

Up at 10:15 am.

Some random guys are talking and smoking right below window. What is most peaceful about the GHotel, Munich? Is it the guys in the apartments next door who blast techno music all day and then throw loud parties deep into the night? Or is it the bar on the corner, with the same four Russian guys sitting on the back patio, seemingly twenty-four hours a day, talking loudly? Or is it the small patio behind the hotel where people are smoking all day, and where the sound of the tv in the hotel lobby is clearly audible? No, it must be the church 100 meters away that chimes loudly every fifteen minutes, beginning very early in the morning. After checking email in the lobby (no free wi-fi here), I got out of the room at twenty to noon.  This whole neighborhood is completely closed up on Sunday; a lot of Munich is. Every convenience market, every doner kebab shack, every shop is closed. All of ‘em. There were no people at all on the streets. I started thinking of that tune by The Specials: “this town, is becoming like a ghost town...”. Wandered around the block, and satisfied myself that I wasn’t going to be able to get food anywhere near here. Then I boarded a train bound for Schloss Schleisseim, a complex of palaces at the northern edge of the city. (schloss = palace). The ride was fairly long, and the train was delayed for a while, just one stop before my destination. I couldn’t understand the German announcement. The train car was mostly empty. The only guy sitting near me was a tall bony fella with a big nose and missing teeth and swollen joints, who looked like he might the person who plays the “village idiot” character in movies about medieval times. He translated for me in a deep throaty voice. When I got out of the station it was quite hot in the sun. The first thing I noticed outside the station was a statue of a guy who looked more or less like the quintessential village idiot in movies about medieval times. I guess I’d met a local celebrity on the train. You never know who you’ll meet. Why is there a statue of this fool by the train station? I hiked over a hot tarmac overpass, and then into an intermittently shady residential neighborhood. That’s “shady” as in “lined with trees”, not as in “lined with criminals”. No food in sight. Finally, I saw a tiny bakery, and bought a croissant with a few thin stripes of chocolate on top and also a sort of Danish with a little bit of cheese baked into the center for €2.25.

Made it to Schloss Schleisseim (Maximilianstrasse 1) before 1:00 pm, to discover three palace buildings on the huge grounds, each with a different admission fee. They were €3, €4, and €2.50 in order of the tour. But you can see all three on a combi-ticket for €6. Clearly, that’s the deal. Buy two, get one free.

The first palace (Altes Schloss = Old Palace) is a bust.
There is almost nothing left from its days as a royal residence.
All of the rooms are white boxes, free of architectural interest.
The place is now more or less a sterile and dull museum.
There are a few rooms that provide a history of Prussia, full of historical artifacts that I have no personal context for understanding. No English text at all.  I did like a big hat and some jewelry and tableware from 1935.
The rest of the place is devoted to Christian handicrafts.
Folk art. Textiles, wooden dioramas, needlecraft, stuff like that.
More kitchy than folksy though.
Some Mexican Day of the Dead figures here are kind of cool, but in general, I have little patience for the overwhelming amount of art in the world depicting Christian mythology.  
85% of this place consists of just that. 
I whipped through it all pretty fast, and moved on to the considerably larger -- and much more interesting - main palace.

This second place was pretty cool (all of the photos on this page are from the second palace).
Built between 1701 and 1704, it is by far the largest of the three buildings, and was the main residence of Max Emmanuel (1662 - 1726) during the years of his rule.
I don’t think he was the king, but clearly he was an important local ruler.
One of the signs calls him an Elector.
The palace is over the top, all baroque and rococo, and is fairly impressive.
There are a lot of paintings in the rooms, and some of the original wallpaper or tapestries (as appropriate) remain, but there is no extant furniture at all (except for a few beds in the bedrooms).
It is weird to see so many of the rooms with the walls decorated, but completely empty of furniture.
The context would be so much better if the furniture were here.
Ceiling frescoes in many of the rooms are by Charles Dubut, Franz Joachim Beich, Johann Baptist Zimmermann, Cosmas Damian Asam.
In room #4 are eleven paintings by Jacopo Amigionio, made in 1723-1725 showing the ruler’s victory against the Turks.
Hidden cupboards in the gold leaf-encrusted walls used to store captured Turkish flags.
Room #22 at the end of the palace is the Galerie Raum, containing another dozen paintings, mostly religious subjects.
Room #20 is called the Large Cabinet with another dozen paintings.
Next to that is Room #21, a small room that is being restored, with scaffolding all over the place.
Super elaborate marble work covers all of the walls.
It is a prayer room.
The marble was made in 1629 by Wilhelm Pfeiffer and was moved here in 1724.

This palace was also used as a location for two classic films that I have seen: Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory, and Alain Resnais' Last Year in Marienbad.
Of course, I want to go back and re-watch these now that I have been here.

One of the guards, a Russian man in his fifties, was screaming into his cell phone - while he was at work as a museum guard - for at least ten minutes.
I could hear him all over the palace.
It was horrible. 
He finally ended his phone call and then he noticed me.
He decided to start doing his job, so he stalked me for a while, following me from room to room with no discretion or subtlety. His eyes were on me constantly.
This sucks.
What a jackass.

The third building - Schloss Lustheim (the summer house) - lay ahead: far, far ahead, across a vast garden.
The walk must be a half mile.
Munich is considerably warmer than the northern parts of Germany.
It was hot today.
The garden was pretty, but I did try to take a route along a row of shady trees.
As I walked the long way across the rear gardens towards the summer house, past fountains and manicured flower beds, and swans, I decided that the main palace was easily worth €4 to visit, so the with the €6 combi-ticket, I got a €0.50 discount on the third palace (normally €2.50), and the lame first one was free.
May as well check the others out while you’re here, right?

Schloss Lustheim was built from1684 to 1689 by Emmanuel “to celebrate his victory over the Turks at the gates of Vienna”.
He was due to marry Habsburg princess Maria Antonia (daughter of the emperor), and this was due to be their hunting lodge and summer residence.
It now houses an important private collection of early Meissen porcelain.
The collection was assembled by Ernst Schneider (b.1900), and was bequeathed to the German state upon accidental death of his son in 1968.
Porcelain doesn’t thrill me a ton, but I gave it a chance and did find a few things I liked, such as an orchestra made up of porcelain monkeys.
A lot of the work here employs Japanese or Chinese motifs, naturally.
You get that with porcelain.

By 4:00 pm, I had trudged, in the summer heat, all the way back through the gardens, past the main schloss, and was hiking through the residential neighborhood back to the train station.
The trains only run every twenty or thirty minutes on Sunday afternoons, but I got lucky with a four-minute wait (and no breakdown this time).

I was back at Marienzplatz by 4:45 pm, where I joined the throngs of tourists having fun on a sunny summer day in one of the big crowded plazas at city center. 

Checked out the Rathaus, and also the Rathskeller, a cool old restaurant in the basement of the Rathaus.
As I walked back out of the Rathaus courtyard into the main plaza, a huge(er) crowd had gathered.
They were all looking up at the clock tower.

It was 4:59 pm, and the big show was about to start: the carillon atop the tower started playing a melody right at 5:00 pm, but people were ignoring the music: they were waiting for the big wooden figures below the clock to start moving around.
About three minutes later, they did.
Wooden knights on horses joust with each other before twirling dancers whirl around.
When the figures stop, the carillon continues, and the whole show is over in about ten minutes.
 
But the music isn’t limited to the Marienzplatz.
I heard klezmer music on the streets: accordion, clarinet, and an upright bass playing Summertime.

I walked over to the Asamkirche (Asam’s Church) on Sendlingerstrasse.
It was built beginning in 1733 by Egid Quirin Asam and Cosmas Damian Asam.
They built the place as their private church; their house is next door.
The church is also known as Catholic Church of St. Johann Nepomuk (Czech patron saint of protection from floods).
Having outgrown the "spiritual training wheels" of organized religion decades ago, I am not the guy who needs to visit every church in Europe.
But impressive architecture is impressive architecture no matter how you slice it.
This place is small and unassuming from the outside, but inside you get this:

   

The pic on the right is looking up at the ceiling. 
There were no guys in weird robes or funny hats preaching inside, and no one asking for money or telling people not to take pictures, as encountered in so many of the huge churches-cum-tourist attractions in Europa.
Out of control.
This was my token church visit for my Germany trip and it was worth it.

After strolling past Whiskey Shop Tara, I hiked over to Trader Vic’s (yes, another one!) located in the Bayerischer Hof (Bavarian Court) hotel (Promenaderplatz 2-6), which is in a rather ritzy neighborhood.

In front of the hotel, there is a statue of some clearly important guy.
It is Orlande de Lassus (1532 to 1594), a Franco-Flemish composer of the late Renaissance, and one of the two most famous and influential musicians in Europe as of the end of the 16th century (the other being Palestrina).
You have to be fairly important to get honored with a big bronze erection like this one.

People have left offerings all over the base of the statue: photos, flowers, candles.
All of this junk completely covers all four sides of the statue base and then creeps up the pedestal towards the feet of de Lassus.
Clearly this important guy has not been forgotten.

Upon closer inspection, not a single one of the many, many objects placed there have anything to do with de Lassus: all of the ephemera collectively celebrates none other than Michael Jackson.
Weird.
Why a shrine to Jackson here, in central Munich, and why place it all over the base of the statue of Orlande de Lassus?
Simply because they were both musicians?

Well, it turns out that a bunch of people want to construct a permanent shrine to Jakko in Munich.
Their petition doesn’t really say why it needs to be in Munich, in particular, and I can’t be buggered to research this any further.

Contrasting the Hamburg location, the Munich Trader Vic’s rocks.
This is one of the best remaining Trader Vic’s in the world, along with Atlanta, Tokyo, and Emeryville.
I took a crapload of pictures, and since the place was nearly empty, I was able to shoot most of it without getting other customers in the shots.

Vintage Hawaiian music was playing on the sound system, which segued into Iz, Elvis, and modern ukulele music.
As I was scribbling notes, sipping the obligatory Munich Sour (€9.60; Napoleon Brandy, orange juice, lime juice, orgeat, simple syrup), and trying to get the stiff of a moron of a clueless bartender to give me some info, my internet pal Evgenia walked in.

Evgenia was born in Russia, educated in Maine, and now lives in Munich. She plays piano and gives piano lessons. She also translates things between German, Russian, and English. She’s going back to school in the fall, studying (I think) IT and web design. Ideally, she would like to live in America. She enjoyed being in the States when she was going to college. Now that she’s been out of school for a while, she can’t get a visa to come back and visit. She’s content in Munich, but would rather be in Berlin, where housing is cheaper and school is free.  
She is crazy for Freddie Mercury, the deceased singer and pianist from the rock band Queen, but she leans towards goth music a bit too.  She told me that the best goth hangouts in Munich are Nerodom, Nox, and the monthly Black Opera.  We also talked about a French pop singer named Mylene Farmer (“her 1980s records are the best”), a German band called Wumpscut (“the best ‘voodoo goth’”), and a band named Unheilig (=Unholy; they’re “a little melancholy”). 

Evgenia got a Bloody Mary, and my second round was a Shark’s Tooth (€7.70).  Next we attempted to go across the street to Tabacco (sic) at Hartnmannstrasse 8. It was closed, so we went across town a bit to the Hard Rock (over by Hofbrauhaus) because Evgenia wanted to show me the Freddie Mercury costume they have on display.
She got another Bloody Mary. 
I got a hell beer. “Hell” is the German word for “brightly”, but it is also a style of beer. I just like ordering “hell beer”. I've ordered a few of them in the past week or two.
After I got home, I found out that “hell” also translates to “light”.
Ah crap.
Light beer.
Eeeevvillll!
No wonder I haven't been especially impressed with any of them...
As soon as our drinks arrived, she accidentally backhanded her Bloody Mary and sent it flying all over the place. The waiter gave us a new one.
Evgenia wanted food so she ordered potato skins. She’d never had them before and wasn’t really sure what they were. She said "is this American food?". I said: "yes, but no one would ever cook these at home, people only eat them in bars". I hadn’t had a potato skin in like fifteen years.

I wanted to move on, go somewhere else. A little change of scenery. Something more German!
A quintet were playing selections from Carmen on the street, including a full grand piano - on the street! - plus flute, violin, cello, and a bass, which was bowed.

Evgenia asked me where my hotel was, and we plotted a route in that general direction. We made our way to the U-bahn stop, and waited for a train. It came and she said: "this is your train". I asked if she was getting on, and she said her train was elsewhere.
Ah, this was her way of being hospitable.
As if I couldn’t find my own way home.
Kind of cute of her to think she needed to take care of me like that.
She wants to hang out tomorrow.
Works for me.
But, we'd had a misunderstanding: I am not ready to go home. I was up for hanging out with Evgenia some more, but I think she thought I wanted to call it a night when I suggested that we leave the Hard Rock.  But now I was on the train, and then back in my neighborhood. So, I walked around the area a bit.

In the opposite direction from the zone I have explored to date, is a space that shows up as a huge park on my map. My U-bahn stop is named after the park: Theresienwiese. It is a big green impression in the earth, a small valley, almost, but smaller than the English Garden. Walking the perimeter, one can see what is going on below, through the trees: a series of utilitarian, industrial-looking buildings are being erected, each with the logo of a beer maker on the side. Hofbrau, who appear to be the biggest brewer in Munich, have their familiar blue and gold crown logo displayed in neon atop their building. Are these breweries? No... all so close to each other, that doesn’t make sense, especially in something labeled as a park on the maps. A big truck at the entrance looks like it would hold a circus act. It says Hippodrom on the side.
My city map has little beer mug logos where all of the main beer gardens are, and this isn’t one of them.
Is there a carnival going on here?
Interesting....
I’ll come back during the day.

Nah, I’ll walk in now!
It was dark and creepy in there.
Cranes, tour busses, big construction. No lights except for one big Hofbrau neon sign atop their corrugated aluminum barn.
In this vague blue and gold glow, I carefully walked the long, long dirt road between the big half-finished structures.
They are building some sort of huge-ass festival. It won’t be ready for a while yet. I could see there was still a lot of work to do. The Hippodrom looked like a slightly Art Nouveau influenced circus tent. And then, all of the beer buildings, with construction office trailers, and construction equipment in front of them. I can’t see the end of this midway. It is really long, and it is dark here.
Something really, really huge is being built here.
This is a major construction project.
This is going to be a hell of a festival.

Oh, wait.
FESTival, dumbass.

This is fucking Oktoberfest.
It is almost autumn.
Time to start building this thing.
It is really, really, really huge.
This is going to be a hell of a party.

I was in the room by 11:30 pm; took it easy and did some writing for a bit.
Around midnight, the partiers in the apartment next door fired up their Sunday night festivities. Fortunately it didn’t last long tonight.
I called it a night shortly after they did, at 1:03 am.


Monday, August 23, 2010

Church bells woke me up at 9:00 am, but I lazed in bed until after 10:30.
Got an email from my friend Jöchen. He is back from Italy.
Hopefully he’ll be able to meet up later tonight.

Arriving at my first cultural destination for today, Schack Gallery (Prinzregentenstrasse 9), I discovered that it is closed on Monday and Tuesday, not just Tuesday, as per their web site. So, I headed all the way to the other side of town to the Neue Pinakothek museum (Barerstrasse 29), which features 18th to 20th century art. The day is grey and drizzly, but at least it is not so hot anymore. Got a sandwich in the train station for €1.95, but it was insubstantial, and frankly not as good as the ones I have been assembling by myself for less money at markts. That said, the lettuce and pickles on this sandwich are the closest things I have had to vegetables for far too long.

In Chicago, our illustrious mayor recently sold out the people in a big way. He leased the entire city’s parking meter franchise to a private company. So now, instead of the city running the meters, a for-profit corporation runs them. This resulted in meters quadrupling in prices literally overnight. Inconvenient electronic machines were placed one per block rather than having a meter at each space. The hours during which one has to pay have also been extended: earlier in the morning, later at night, and now Sundays and holidays too. Enforcement has become more brutal. For this big “fuck you” to the motorists of Chicago, Mayor Daley received a princely sum of one billion dollars. This big boost in the city’s coffers may seem like a shrewd move on Daley’s part, but the contract - which has a term of seventy-five years (!) - has an estimated value of about eight billion dollars. So, Daley gave away the meter rights for one-eighth of what they’re worth, and screwed over every car owner in the city at the same time. Today, I noticed a similar new-fangled electronic meter machine in Munich. Someone had vandalized it, scrawling “FIGHT BACK” in big thick letters across the front. Chicago, are you reading this? Still hungry. At the Tengelmann markt (Schellingstrasse 52, near the Neue Pinakothek): rolls, organic bananas (organic foods are called “bio” here), some very dark and spicy meat, and carrot juice, for €3.07. I never drink carrot juice, but it looked good. This is like the third time in my life, perhaps, that I have bought carrot juice. Maybe I am missing vitamin A or something. I really need those vegetables, apparently. Also, I usually eat meat (of any sort) around twice a week, and it is almost always fresh poultry or fish. My intake of mammal-based meat products, fresh or processed, is usually less than once a month. On this trip, I have had factory-processed pork, beef, or mystery meat almost every day. But it just seems to be what I want to eat on this trip. Meat, bread, and beer. Fucking hell. Good thing I am walking like five miles a day, at least.

Enjoyed my picnic on a bench on a shaded and pleasant terrace outside of the museum.

Neue Pinakothek museum was founded in 1858 by King Ludwig I, to house his collection of then-contemporary paintings.
This made it the first museum anywhere devoted to contemporary art.
After the king’s death a decade later, the German government began to acquire new works to add to the collection, and eventually started obtaining non-German paintings, including works by Corbet, Manet, Van Gogh, and Cezanne.
The institution became public property in 1915, was cleared out at the beginning of World War II (to protect the art), was demolished in 1948, and was finally reopened in 1981 after a a design competition that began in 1966.

Saw a bunch of great art, and  - as always - if you want more detail, click here.

Took a break at 3:30 pm. European museums are so relaxed. I have my ticket, with today’s date printed on it. So why not come and go a bit? Most American museums wouldn’t allow re-entry. They’re all so panicked that someone might pull a fast one -- I don’t know, re-sell their ticket to someone on the street or something. Or maybe just make more work for the ticket-checkers. Whatever. The same with movies, concerts, any ticketed event. So many people trying to make an extra buck, so many businesses terrified of losing a buck, and we all lose out on our quality of life because of this cash-fueled paranoia on both ends. One of the things that I really like about most of Western Europe is that people and businesses are just so much cooler about this sort of thing. Quality of life.
Why not take a break, get some air or some sunshine, and then come back to finish enjoying your visit?

Back to the same markt, I got a big water for €.47.
Drank it standing in front of the place, and then let the cool automat machine suck it into oblivion.
I love this thing, for some reason... but the one in my video doesn't crush the bottles and then blow them away with air like some of the others.

Back to the museum.
After finishing there, I walked around the neighborhood.
There is some fun architecture here, including this building that must be the favorite of every little kid for miles around...

...and this one, whose message (in the lower right corner) I have been having trouble getting translated consistently:

alles bedecken soll ein haus drum schwatzt drin geschieht nicht aus

is...
everything to cover is not a house therefore chats in it happens out
or...
everything should cover one live around chats in it does not happen from
or...
everything should cover inside a house drum talk is not for

Draw your own conclusions.
Seems to be saying “keep it on the low-down, your neighbors can hear you”.

5:20 pm.
Caught the train at Theresienstrasse, headed to Theresienweisse, my now-familiar home-stop under the big ol’ church that wakes me up every morning.
Destination: hotel room.

My pal Jöchen is back from Italy, so he and his girl will rendezvous with Evgenia and me. Must clean up and get ready to go out tonight. The jeans and socks that I washed in the sink a day or so ago are now dry, but my two favorite shirts (which are “dry clean only”) are kind of stinky. Do we go with ever so slightly smelly, or with fresh but less cool?
Traveling light tonight: the tape recorder went into the safe.
But still: camera, map, passport, money... I need a man-purse.

As a rendezvous point, Evgenia has chosen Bar Fly, a spot that she thinks I will like. Turns out that it is just a block or two from the first museum that I attempted to visit today, the one that was closed. Made it to the area a little early, and discovered that it was closed, in a permanent way. When Evgenia came by, we decided to head over to the train station, but for some reason we took a less-than-direct route. We wandered in a big circle. When we finally got to the station, Jöchen was there with cigar and skateboard but without girlfriend. I was glad we found him. Without a working phone in this country, there was no way to have contacted him.

Jöchen is a filmmaker who has been to the States a few times on his projects. He interviewed me for one of his films back in 2005 or so. Requiring a destination, he selected an Italian place whose name and location are lost to history. It was bright inside, decorated in a trendy manner, and moderately full. We sat at a table and chatted with the pleasant owner. Evgenia enjoyed an Americano (a drink, not me), I had a Negroni, and Jöchen had a mai tai. I think the owner was a friend of Jöchen; I never saw a check.

Then the three of us decided to go to Tabacco (which, you may recall, came highly recommended, but which was closed when we tried to visit after Trader Vic’s). Jöchen said his skateboard was faster than taking the U-bahn, so we made a bet. He skated off, while Evgenia and I got on the train, sharing a beer for the road (€0.83). We were delayed during our transfer. When we arrived, Jöchen was smugly enjoying his cigar and a drink at a small table outside the bar.

Tabacco is a fantastic bar. My tab shows a Carabineri, a Millionaire, and a “getranke divers” (misc. cocktail) (€ 8.50 each) and a Porto Flip (€9). Evgenia drank at least one of those, but I am sure we sampled each other’s libations.
The misc. drink was a bartender improv made of Havana Club (just the three-year-old), lime, o.j., and Amer Picon (an ingredient I have been curious about, but can’t get in the U.S., in spite of it’s name).
Porto Flip is an intriguing combination of port, bandy, egg white, cream, and nutmeg.
Carabinieri is tequila, Galliano, lime, o.j., and egg yolk. This version might have either cream or grenadine added; my notes are hard to read.
Millionaire is bourbon, Cointreau, lemon, egg, and grenadine. Might have had an absinthe wash, as per traditional recipe, but this wasn’t listed.

Jöchen had a full steak dinner, and then bought a round of Ron Zacapa served neat, and of course we sipped those. One savors Ron Zacapa.

Things get nutty from there... I have no idea why a diagram showing the three-jointed leg of a cat was included in my drink notes.

Jöchen took off, skating towards home, as Evgenia and I walked back through Marienplatz, taking pictures of a nearly full moon poking through the clouds over an ancient church. In a moment of spontaneity, I invited her to drive through the Black Forest with me, but of course that wasn’t feasible for her on such short notice.

Got to sleep about 2:40 am.

1: Hamburg        2: Berlin        3: Munich        4: Black Forest        5: art digressions

Tydirium Multimedia Left Orbit Temple Destination:Cocktails Big Stone Head Send e-mail to James Last updated: September 10, 2011

All material on this website is © Copyright 1994-2011 by James A. Teitelbaum. All rights reserved. Unauthorized use is a violation of applicable laws.

"Tiki Bar Review Pages", "Tiki Road Trip", "Tydirium Multimedia",  "Left Orbit Temple",  "Chester Century", "Big Stone Head",  "TiPSY Factor", "Johnny Clash",  "Cocktail Snob",  "Destination: Cocktails" and  "Blue Harvest Magazine" are trademarks of James A. Teitelbaum.

.