On A Colt, The Foal Of A Donkey

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.

Law And Order-ing Food

Arriving in Munchen (Munich) was not as exciting as I'd expected. My guidebook says that no trip to Germany is complete without a trip to the fabled city of Munchen. Well I beg to differ. Similar to Frankfurt, Munchen is a rather modern town. There is little history to be found about the town which I would call fabled. Sure there are museums and city parks, but nothing that really gave me a history lesson about why Munchen has been so important.

I began my explorations with lunch in the Hofgarten park near the Residenz Palace. Outside the gate to the garden was a 5 piece band playing classical music and selling CDs titled something with the "4 piece band." Why then were there 5 playing?? The music was a great backdrop to my outdoor meal similar to what I had in Heidelberg (cheese, bread, hot dog balls, tomato, yogurt). I'm a fan of these tasty nutritious meals outdoors that are inexpensive.

From the garden I walked around the huge palace to the entrance. Inside were 90 some rooms waiting to be explored. Better yet the ticket price included an audio guide so I could actually get some history. The Munich Residenz served as the seat of government and residence of the Bavarian dukes, electors and kings from 1508 to 1918. It was also part of the Wittelsbach royalty and bears architectural features from the Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo and neoclassical eras. It seems strange to me that part of Germany was still being ruled by kings in the early 1900s. I suppose I thought it was the country it is today ever since the US became an entity. The palace was a vast array of huge rooms filled with lovely furniture and many paintings, some framed and some on the ceilings. My favorite room had green fabric on the walls with stars and lines woven into it and a lime green fabric on the furniture. Everything was simple and elegant. I can't remember the guy's name who this room was designed for, but I do remember that the furniture was specifically chosen because he liked to keep things simple. The other striking decorations were the ceiling paintings which depicted essential things for knowing how to properly rule a nation: law, justice, war and peace. One series showed a ruler receiving tablets of law from heaven akin to Moses. In this time period law was seen as divine order and not to be trumped by human creations or inventions. Another depicted an old man robed with a mirror showing the past, present, future and a necklace with a golden heart. This was to show that wise counsel should be taken from someone older with knowledge of the past/present/future and who considers the heart as well as the facts in matters of importance. At the end of the tour was a long hall of the royal family line portraits. One I particularly liked showed that you certainly don't have to be pretty to be a princess.

After such a stimulating adventure I walked around the area to get a feel for the town and also to seek out a place to eat dinner. I wandered through the Viktualmarket where you could find just about any kind of food item in a market stand--fish, meats (raw, cooked, dried), veggies, fruits, sweets. I think there were even flowers and a pharmacy of sorts. It was an overwhelming mix of sights, sounds and smells. People swarmed all over in odd directions being drawn by the sight of one thing and the smell of another. Being a pedestrian area, there are usually restaurants galore. I found one with a menu that seemed to convey spatzle which I had been wanting to try. For dinner I enjoyed the spatzle with cheese, salad including potato salad/mustard dressing on greens/red cabbage coleslaw, and for dessert apple strudel with a warm vanilla custard soup over it. I sampled an unfiltered lager for my beverage which paired nicely with my meal, the smoothness of the beer matching the bite of the cheese on the spatzle. I managed to waddled my full stomached self back to the hostel and prepared for my day trip to Augsburg.