Second Munich Walkabout - February 2009
The last Saturday in Feb, I did some more exploring and went on a three hour walking tour of Munich, seeing the places where Herr Hitler made a name for himself. The meeting place was Marienplatz in the centre of Munich at 10:45am and, true to form, I was inappropriately attired. All week long we’d had snow and very cold weather, so, it was boots, Arctic coat, and I was dressed for the cold. Yep, you guessed it, brilliant sunshine and a relatively tropical 8 degrees. In the shadows of buildings I was fine, but out in the sun, I was melting like a mammoth on the beach in Barbados.
I’m not one to complain, as you all know, so I grinned and bore it like the English gentleman what I is. I’m not going to go into lengthy details here of all the things I saw and learned on that trip, for two main reasons:
OK, so there are four reasons. What? You keeping count and have woken up all of a sudden? Jeez. Some folks, you just can’t please. Anyway, I’m sure most of you won’t even be reading this…
I’m not one to complain, as you all know, so I grinned and bore it like the English gentleman what I is. I’m not going to go into lengthy details here of all the things I saw and learned on that trip, for two main reasons:
- No one cares
- It would take way too long to write
- You would never read it
- Some of you may fall asleep over your computer keyboards and wake up with QWERTYUIOP across your foreheads.
OK, so there are four reasons. What? You keeping count and have woken up all of a sudden? Jeez. Some folks, you just can’t please. Anyway, I’m sure most of you won’t even be reading this…
So, here is a short bit about Munich
- Munich has recently been voted as the best city to live in, in the world. Lucky for one, is that…
- His Popeiness the Hole was the Bishop of Friesing before he became infallible.
- The Hofbräuhaus, scene of a bit of a fracas back in the day, now has a Hard Rock Café right across the road. That would be the American’s revenge I guess. Ah, the pulled pork sandwich...
- Speaking of pulled pork, The Hofbräuhaus didn’t used to have toilets. It had a vomitorium, and channels in the floor, so that the chaps could drink till they puked, then unbutton the flap in the front of their lederhosen, whip out the sausage and, well, you get the idea. At the end of the evening, they would wash out the bier barrels and use the water to sluice out the drainage channels. Nice. Classy. Aromatic. Pikant, as they say here.
- 70% of Munich was destroyed in WWII. Most of what is here now, actually dates from the 1950s onwards, although it was built to look exactly like it had before the war. Some enterprising locals had sensed what was coming during the ‘30s and went out taking photos of Munich, so that they would be able to rebuild it exactly as it had been before Adolf’s boys got started.
- It is actually illegal here to refer to Kristallnacht (that was when the SA – the Brown Shirts, Hitler’s bully boy goons - went on a rampage around Munich smashing the windows of all the Jewish-run businesses, to such an extent that when the sun came up there was so much glass in the streets that it shone like crystal). Or to perform a Hitler salute, for that matter. But, you can buy Pepper spray in shops. And switchblades. And flick knives. And blades that could gut a sperm whale. Oh yeah, guns seem to have a certain amount of legality too.
- The Old Town Hall (Das Altes Rathaus) was rebuilt in the 1960s. The New Town Hall (Das Neues Rathaus) was finished in the early 1900s, but designed to look much older. So, the New Town Hall is, technically, older than the Old Town Hall.
And this weeks question is where have I stolen that line from? And, beware, giving the correct answer will tell me your age :-/
Munich is actually 70% new, but much of that has been rebuilt to look old. The ‘new’ buildings are often mostly glass, so that business can be seen to be transparent. Kooky, eh? One strange thing is that there are no skyscrapers here. I could be wrong, shocking maybe, but nevertheless a possibility, but I think I am right in saying that the tallest building in Munich are the twin towers of the Frauenkirche, just off the Marienplatz. Weirdly, these escaped the bombings during the war, although the church itself suffered major damage. The towers survived purely because the bomber pilots used them as landmarks and, had they destroyed them, they wouldn’t have been quite so successful in their raids.
So, there you have it, my little creatures of the night. A brief introduction to the city. There is a lot of history here in the bier capital of the world, most of it is not something that Germans are proud of, and it all has to do with a short, obnoxious Austrian bloke, with a stupid mustache, who took a fancy to the area. There is another tour of the city that specifically covers The Third Reich, which I intend to go on in a few weeks. I’ll bet you’re all thrilled at the prospect of my update after that one, aren’t you?
Possibly the most enjoyable part of my tour around the city was that our guide, an American name of Matt, who spoke with a great deal of knowledge and passion and made the day so much more interesting, took some of us to a little hole in the wall place down near Isartor to sample some local cuisine. For 6€ you can get a bottomless bowl of Bavarian stew and a bier. I managed three bowls, cos it tasted so damn good, and I’d been walking around for three hours; the record is nine bowls, apparently. Must have been an American…
So, there you have it, my little creatures of the night. A brief introduction to the city. There is a lot of history here in the bier capital of the world, most of it is not something that Germans are proud of, and it all has to do with a short, obnoxious Austrian bloke, with a stupid mustache, who took a fancy to the area. There is another tour of the city that specifically covers The Third Reich, which I intend to go on in a few weeks. I’ll bet you’re all thrilled at the prospect of my update after that one, aren’t you?
Possibly the most enjoyable part of my tour around the city was that our guide, an American name of Matt, who spoke with a great deal of knowledge and passion and made the day so much more interesting, took some of us to a little hole in the wall place down near Isartor to sample some local cuisine. For 6€ you can get a bottomless bowl of Bavarian stew and a bier. I managed three bowls, cos it tasted so damn good, and I’d been walking around for three hours; the record is nine bowls, apparently. Must have been an American…