By the time we reached Munich, we were starting to get tired of being in move-move-move mode, and the number of pictures I took fell precipitously as a result! Our time in Munich was just a jumble of random activities and last minute Christmas market mop-ups.
Hofbrauhaus: Surprisingly, one of the highlights of Munich for me was the Hofbrauhaus. We stopped in for a late lunch and while I anticipated it to be a terrible Disneyland-of-Beer type tourist trap, it was a pleasant mix of tourists and locals. I order a “Radler” (beer with lemonade) that came in a whopping one liter portion size and succeeded in drinking a third. Severin ordered a beer the size of his head and at one point toward the end of our meal, bragged to me how close he was to finishing it. I had to break it to him that in the same amount of time, I had watched the German guy sitting behind him drink three and was well into his fourth (but seriously though, the Germans are professionals.) We had a lovely sausage and bread platter and “Obazda,” a Bavarian cheese-and-horseradish spread.
Museums: We went to two museums in Munich (one of them accidentally) and they were both two of the best museums I have ever been to. I had read that Munich had a pretty interesting Egypt museum, so we hoofed it to the other side of town and walked into the “Glyptotek” which sounded like maybe it was Egyptian? We meandered in and found a lot of Greek & Roman stuff, but paid anyway. For your future reference, a “Glyptotek” is a collection of sculptures and has nothing to do with Egypt.) The most memorable pieces at the Glyptotek were the partial reconstructions of two pediments (i.e., the statues that are assembled in the triangle formed at the top of a building) from the Temple of Aphaia on one of the Greek Islands. They were full of movement in spite of the fact they are marble statues made more than 2300 years ago.
Egypt Museum: We eventually did find the Egypt Museum, which was AWESOME. It has probably done the best job of any museum I’ve ever visited of integrated new technologies to improve the experience. We were given tablets and headphones to walk around with the museum with, and GPS would sense what exhibit you were in front and tell you a little about an item and let you explore it a little more in-depth. Frankly, there are still some kinks to be worked out in the tablet experience as sometimes the GPS thought we were in front of another item or the software would just be buggy generally. And the content could be improved. They also had a section of the Book of the Dead that was probably 30 feet long posted on the wall. Beneath the book of the dead was a TV screen that slid on rails, so you could slide the screen under whichever part of the book you wanted to explore; the screen would show the section of the book you were under and you could click on it to get translations of the hieroglyphs or learn about what the story was saying at that particular point in the book. At the end of the meander through the rooms they had a projector up and you could scroll through time and an animated graphic would show the ebb and flow of the Egyptian empires. It was really neat! However, coming from a place where some of the antiquities were taken away from their original homes, I did feel a little sad they were not “at home.” But the Germans are taking great care of them and letting lots of people enjoy them, so that’s a pretty good outcome.
Wealth, Wealth, Wealth: There were a few blocks of Munich that were very, very posh with some very upscale boutiques having private parties in the evenings with lots of leggy women. As we strolled by Severin and I debated how long it would take us to spend $100,000 (on stuff we’d actually want) on the block. Probably not as long as we were thinking…
Glockenspiel: Munich’s Rathaus (town hall) has a fantastic glockenspiel. It is two-level wedding scene. The floors turn to show a parade of characters, including two knights jousting. On the second pass, one of the knights cracks the chest of the other and tips him backward (See photo below– the red and white stripes are a blanket on the horse, and you can see the knight is tipped backward after being hit.) The bottom story has men twirling in circles. It was quite elaborate!
