My Trip to Munich

(p.k.a. (possibly known as)
A Series of Unfortunate Events)

Looking back on it, my trip to Munich was pretty cool. Kristen and I saw almost everything we wanted to see, and enjoyed almost all of it. Plus, our hotel was really nice and we got a discount. :)

The two of us left Strasbourg Friday night, and didn’t get to the train station until about 10 minutes before our train was supposed to leave. The train ride was pretty uneventful, and after getting to Munich, we found our hotel with no trouble. Saturday morning, after breakfast at the train station (which was very close to our hotel), we attempted to find Schloss Nymphenburg, but after wandering around the area for maybe 45 minutes and finding nothing convincing, we gave up. We decided to walk back to the center of the city to visit some museums, but we ended up getting almost utterly lost in Munich. Of course, this afforded a view of Munich that most tourists don’t see – the industrial area, the train tracks into the city, and then finally, we ended up in the old, pretty buildings of center city. Quite a contrast. After lunch at a beer hall, we went to Residenz, the home of the Bavarian Dukes, Electors and Kings from 1508 – 1918. I don’t know much about Bavarian history, but Residenz is quite a spectacular building. Sadly, for me, we didn’t have enough time to explore all the rooms before the museum closed, but we saw most of it. Kristen and I then went to Marienplatz, where the Altes Rathaus and Neues Rathaus (old and new town halls) are located. Every day at 11 am and 5 pm, little figurines come out of the tower of the Neues Rathaus for a little show, but for some reason, they didn’t on Saturday. Bummer. As we left Marienplatz, we stopped by Frauenkirche, another main sight of Munich. After a little R&R at our hotel (as we had walked for almost the entire day, both of us were moaning the condition of our feet), we headed back to Marienplatz for a big and hearty German dinner, which filled our tummies quite contentedly (and emptied our wallets not-so-contentedly). After dinner, it was sufficiently late enough that we didn’t feel too lame going to bed.

Sunday morning, our feet still not recovered, we again had breakfast at the train station (we’re also cheap), and went to Königsplatz where some of Munich’s most famous museums are located. First was the Glyptothek, where King Ludwig I’s collection of Roman statues is located. The theme of the statues was the Trojan War, which I especially enjoyed, having taken Latin for so long in my prior life of high school. Second was Alte Pinakothek, housing King Ludwig I’s collection of Renaissance artwork. That particular museum was humongous, though, so I think his collection might have been expanded on. Another curiosity about Alte Pinakothek – as far as Kristen and I could tell, the left and right sides of the museum held the exact same paintings, in exactly the same display, just mirrored. Three languages pointed to one side and three to the other, and we were wondering if that corresponded with the audio guides you could buy, and that was the only difference. But then there’s the question, were half the paintings just copies, and half of them were real? And if so, did we see the real ones or the copies…? Progressing forward in art history, we traveled to the Neue Pinakothek, where you can find King Ludwig I’s collection of 18th – 19th century artwork. Of the art museums, I liked this one the best. We also tried the Pinakothek der Moderne, which has modern art on display, but the museum didn’t really grab us and we left pretty soon after entering. King Ludwig I of Bavaria decided to build the Alte and Neue Pinakotheks to house his art collections, but he was unfortunately no longer alive to help with the building of the modern art museum. I forget the exact dates, but I know he ruled Bavaria during the 19th century. And a perk about visiting museums on Sunday – entry is only 1 euro. We paid 4 euros to see 4 museums – yay! We found a little café for lunch, where my limited German unfortunately didn’t help much and it took over 5 minutes to figure out that Kristen wanted tap water and not bottled water. We then journeyed to the English Garden, where we were searching for the Japanese Treehouse (which I think we passed right by and just weren’t looking in the right direction.) After walking around for a little, we decided walking (at least for me) was too painful, and we might as well sit at the Starbucks at the train station and relax for a bit before our train. This was the only time I allowed my feet to rule over my willpower, and we took a taxi back to the hotel to get our bags. I had a little conversation in German with the taxi driver, but only sort of. He spoke too quickly for me to understand what he was saying, though I did understand a little about the building I had asked about. I think it was some sort of municipal building of Munich, but it was very pretty (as befits a city hundreds of years old). Having relaxed at Starbucks, we boarded our train for Strasbourg. For the most part, our train ride was no problem. There was the interesting hour or so that we didn’t have seats, as we had sat in reserved seats when we boarded the train in Munich (though all of the seats showed that they were reserved at some point in the journey), but after Stuttgart, we found seats and rode the last 2 hours of the 4-hour ride in comfort.

And now, two hours later, I’m sitting on my bed, typing up my post in a Word document, and crossing my fingers that when I wake up tomorrow, my feet will have recovered from the weekend…

However, it was a fun trip, I saw a lot of awesome things, and it was much easier to travel with just one other person than 6. So, it was all in all successful, with a couple of bumps in the road. :)