Writing this piece about Munich has been
difficult. On one hand there is the "light" Munich which is a
beautiful place filled with people and shops and food and beer
halls, and on the other is the "dark" Munich which is very dark,
indeed. Knowing some of its recent history, it was at times
difficult to deal with, and even some of the "light" spots have some
dark smudges.
Munich is a big city, no doubt about it. Both in
population and in size, it's only a little smaller than Philadelphia
but it doesn't have the "big city" feel to it. There are local
ordinances prohibiting buildings from being taller than the church
spires so there are no skyscrapers. The center of Munich is the New
Town Hall (or Rathaus which is a great name for local government!)
built in 1904 at
Marienplatz. It's next door to the Old Town Hall, a 15th
century building, which was almost completely destroyed in World War
II and has since been rebuilt. The whole area around Marienplatz is
pedestrian only. It became so during the Olympics in 1972. The
shopkeepers at the time raised the roof because, they said, their
businesses would go down the tubes with no vehicular traffic. They
were overruled, probably by the occupants of the Rathaus. Today the
place teems with almost 10,000 shoppers per hour and shopkeepers
have now wised up and ask for their streets also to become
pedestrian only. The rats seemed to know what they were doing.
After the war, German cities were faced with
questions about how to rebuild. Some chose to wipe away everything
and start over but Munich chose to rebuild what was there and looks
more like an "old" German city.
Near our hotel we found the Church of Johnny
Unitas. I suppose it's not that
Johnny Unitas but that's what it said. Or maybe it's Joanne
Unitas. Here's
the front of the church and the name is enlarged in the upper left
of the picture.
We had lunch one day in the
Viktualien Markt (sic) not far from the Marienplatz. This is an
outdoor market with lots of stands to buy produce, crafts, and, of
course, ample quantities of schnitzel and beer. You could spend
hours in this small area just watching people and sampling the
wares. In fact, one night when Lynn was otherwise engaged, I came
back here for a cheap and nourishing dinner. And more beer.
The most famous beer hall in Munich is the
Hofbräuhaus. The place is enormous and covers many floors of the
building. It's been there for more than 400 years. They have a live
band playing what's called
oompah music. (We were there on a raucous Saturday night without
the camera so the video is from a quiet Sunday morning at 10 a.m.) The tables are picnic style holding five to seven
on a side depending on the size of the
tuchases involved.
Don't look for a table where you can sit alone; just squeeze into
any available spot. Everyone else at the table is immediately your
friend. The beer here is their own brew and one buys it in liter
mugs. That's a little more than a quart. The mugs are substantial,
too, which they have to be. People make toasts about every other
minute and there's a lot of clanking of mugs together but these
things never break.
There is a little gender discrimination going on
in the Hofbräuhaus. The ladies' room is not equipped, as the men's
room is, with a vomitorium. Yes, a vomitorium. The thing is a big
sink, like a tub next to a washing machine, made of stainless steel
with a wider than ordinary drain. I didn't see it put to use but in
a place that serves 10,000 liters of beer a day in liter sized mugs,
it doesn't take a lot of imagination to see that the thing serves
its purpose.
There was an old man, about 85 if he was a day,
sitting next to Lynn. Being at least a tiny bit tipsy, he went on
and on and Lynn finally interrupted and said she spoke only English.
"English!" he said. "Okay!" And then he continued on. A German man
across the table asked if we understood the old guy because he
didn't. He told us there are countless German dialects and this guy
was speaking something unknown to him. The next day we saw the old
guy at an outdoor café with two younger (than him!) woman, maybe in
their 50s. We wondered if they understood his sweet-talk or if they
were just amused.
The Hofbräuhaus is one of the places I referred
to as "light" with some dark smudges. This is the place where Hitler
started to address large audiences. Munich is where the Nazis began
to take power and even after Hitler became Chancellor, the capital
of Germany was Berlin but the home of the Nazi party remained in
Munich. One day we walked a few blocks northwest of Marienplatz to
an area near Königsplatz. This was it. There was
Fuhrerbau,
Hitler's Munich headquarters which today houses the city's College
of Music. Across the street was the
building
that contained the party headquarters. This building is also
currently used but the greenery around it seemed overgrown and the
place had an evil feel to it. Most of the Nazi buildings in the area
have been razed. Across the street from Fuhrerbau is an open area on
Königsplatz. Recently, Paul McCartney and others have performed
concerts there but in the 30s this was the area in Munich used to
burn books. It rained as we walked back to the hotel. I was glad.
There was one more thing, from a recent
historical perspective, to see in the Munich area, about 15 miles
north in what is today a very pleasant and reasonably affluent 'burb. I have heard about this place, and others like it, all my
life but as unpleasant as the idea of going there was, I had to see
it for myself.
Dachau.
See all my pictures of Munich.
See videos from Munich. |