What to do with another day in Munchen? Outside the NW part of town is a huge botanical garden a few tram stops past the former royalty's summer house. I wanted to go in the morning
to enjoy the weather and have enough time to spend there. In the blah city of Munchen there
is a jewel in the botanical garden. The place is brimming with flowers packed into the ground
and leafy greenness bursting all over. There were beds filled with tulips in every color
possible. Some appeared to be on fire with orange while others were the palest pink.
A whole portion of the garden was devoted to pine trees and another to rhododendrons. I came across a
stream where I sat for a while to enjoy the bubbling noise. There was a section of water or
swamp plants which was quite neat. They had them in small concrete pools raised about 3 feet
off the ground. Small faucets would drip or run water into the pools as necessary for the
kind of water movement for the plants growing there. Best of all were the 10 greenhouses
filled with cacti, tropical plants and plants from the Jurassic period (the ferns were
enormous!!). It was a delightful mix of greens, textures and colors. On my way out I
realized after a few minutes walking that the shirt I had with me was no longer on my bag.
After retracing my steps back about 200m I found it lying on the dusty ground where it had
slipped off the top of my bag. Glad I found it. No more losing things!!
Even in a beautiful place like the botanical gardens, one does grow tired. I took the tram
back into town and headed toward the Jewish Museum. Since I'm in Germany I felt that I should
spend some time on WWII information. After locating the museum I parked myself outside at a
small kids play area and ate my lunch in the sun. The museum focuses more on contemporary
Jewish life than what happened during the war years. They do have an area devoted to sharing
stories from local people who lived through the war. Alas these were all in German. The
piece with a floor map of the city and these 2ft. tall and rather heavy plastic stands was
cool. Placing the stand on the spot of the city where the story happened lit up a photo on
the wall from the story. These were in English so I got a taste of what some Jewish people
did 70 years ago in Munchen.
My last trip of the day was to the National Museum for some history. One part was filled with
carved wooden creations from the local area in SE Germany over the last 6-8 centuries. They
were nice and rather intricate, but didn't interest me overly. Just down the street was more
what I was looking for; a couple floors of artifacts in an interesting building. Part of the
building was an old church which had additions built on to connect it to other nearby
buildings. Just when you reached the end of one corridor and thought that was all the museum
had, a whole other room opened up with another portion of history and tons more artifacts to
observe. Rooms full of maps, suits of armor, paintings, sculpture, and furniture kept me
busy.
By far though, my favorite piece in the museum was a carved, wooden donkey on wheels with Jesus on top.
I'm sure it had some holy use in a special religious parade, but you can't beat walking around the corner and seeing a wooden Jesus on a donkey--with wheels! Even
better, the way some people here pronounce 'danke' (or German for "thank you") sounds like
donkey. I tried not to laugh too loud since I seemed to be the only one in the entire museum
except the guards.
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