A Touch of Bavaria

On Friday we drove from Garmisch-Partenkirchen to Munich, only an hour's drive on the Autobahn. We were headed for the inner city, to the Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten Kempinski, one of the oldest and probably the most well-known hotels in Munich. The hotel is literally a five-minute walk from the Hofbräuhaus and another five minutes from the Marienplatz, home of the Rathaus and famous clock tower.

We'd arrived before 11:00 and got our room about a half an hour later. Not a difficult wait in this comfortable lobby!

 Once the bags were taken care of, we took a short orientation walk around, as we usually do, and ended up at the Hofbräuhaus.

In the courtyard of the Hofbräuhaus

It was still during a rather busy lunch hour; we finally found a table in the courtyard, and Monica got her once-every-five-years beer. And some people wouldn't even call it beer, as it is Weissbier, made from wheat instead of barley so it tastes a little sweeter than regular beer. We were planning a bigger dinner, so we only got a pretzel to go with it. One pretzel, you ask? For two people?? See below!

And to prove that she finished the whole half-litre:

For dinner, we visited another favourite place that we had found on a previous visit - Haxnbauer Restaurant, where they specialize in roasted pork knuckle. Monica's mother loved pork knuckle, but in northern Germany they are simmered instead so there's no hard crunchy crust - and, of course, no cracklings! Here's how our plates looked - and that's only a half knuckle each with potato dumplings:

We both managed to just finish, so we allowed ourselves dessert. Larry had apple fritters with a scoop of ice cream, and Monica finally got to try some plum dumplings. Jane had been talking about her version of these for a long time, but hadn't made them yet. Haxnbauer's are probably not exactly the same, but they were delicious! We'll have to make them when we get home!

On Saturday we decided that we would take a walk to somewhere we hadn't been before - the English Garden, which is Munich's public park. It is one of the largest urban public parks in the world at 1.4 square miles in total size. It has been a public park for over 225 years, and from the number of people we saw using the various facilities and just walking the pathways, it is a favourite spot for Münchners to go on the weekend.

One of the most interesting activities in the park is surfing. And we don't mean surfing the web, although there's a lot of that going on too! The Eisbach, which is not much more than a stream, runs through the park and meets the Isar River in a few places. At a couple of bridge outlets, the water flow has been planned so that it generates currents that make for a few feet of good surfing. It looks like a great spot to practice - only experienced surfers are allowed, but we didn't see any official-type checking credentials.

Here are a few photos around the park:

...and this is called 'having all your ducks - OK, geese - in
a row'!

The waterfall on the Eisbach

 

One of the big attractions in the park is the Chinese Tower, which is a replica of the original that was built in 1790. It was bombed and burned during World War II and a new one erected in the early 1950s. It is the centrepoint of the Biergarten in the park - the place where people go to get a beer and something to eat (not necessarily just a snack) and listen to the Oompah band that plays from the second level of the tower. No stereotypes here, are there? But the locals don't care; they come with friends, family and pets to enjoy their Bavarian traditions.

Another spot is the Monopteros Temple, which gives a nice view over the open fields of the park.

After our long walk through the park, not having had quite enough for one day, we walked back down through the Hofgarten and toward the Viktualienmarkt. This market is open every day except Sunday (we are in Catholic southern Germany, after all), and has permanent stalls and buildings for everything from fruit, vegetables, spices, meat, fish and baked goods. And quite a few places to get a quick bite. If we lived here, this is where we would do most of our shopping!

Looking back toward the Marienplatz. The tower on
the right is the Toy Museum.

One of the spice stalls

a flower stall

scented items  - from sachets to wreaths for the door

One of Munich's Maypoles

We decided to have a late lunch and maybe only a light dinner, so we found our way to the Augustiner Brauhaus across the way from the Hofbräuhaus. Here, Larry had a selection of small sausages on a skewer accompanied by french fries, and Monica had Leberkäs (or for the rest of the country Leberkäse), with a fried egg and potato salad. Leberkäse is usually called German-style meatloaf when it is translated on menus, and unlike its name, is made of finely ground veal and pork, and doesn't have any liver in it anywhere. No matter, both of our meals were very good.

Finally, after putting about 6 1/2 miles on our feet for the day, we took a break at the hotel. After the suite we had in Garmisch, our room, though a good size, felt rather small!

We had thought that the story of the automated toilet would be a one-off, but in this recently renovated room we found the Mercedes Maybach, or Ferrari, or maybe Rolls Royce of automatic WCs! This one, complete with built-in bidet, even had a wireless control panel on the wall with a variety of settings. And if there are two people in the room, each can set it to their own tastes in cleanliness, complete to water pressure, and even spray or pulse!! Why? We have no idea! Wouldn't think one would need an owners' manual....

That little bar on the wall is the wireless control...

  

On Sunday we went for another long walk to take some more photos and walk off some of the great food we've been eating. Part of the reason for retracing steps to the Rathaus was that on Friday they had a couple of small concert stages set up in the Marienplatz for that evening, and on Saturday the local chapter of the very controversial Alternative für Deutschland, or AfD Party, held a rally in the same place. This is a populist political party that wants to take away much of the social progress that has been made in the last 30 years, much like the current US government. It was very interesting to see that the speaker wasn't making much headway here - every time he said something, the counter-demonstrators would drown him out. Everything was very orderly but watched carefully by the riot police. There had been some physical violence at an AfD rally in Chemnitz a few weeks ago, and the police have been very vigilant at their gatherings ever since. The regional elections will be held in October.

Since all the stores were closed on Sunday, even in the busy pedestrian areas (which would be unheard of in North America) it was a little quieter and we had the chance to see things up close.

The National Theatre

Courtyard of the former Royal Residence

The clock tower of the Rathaus. The figures in
the two upper openings move around when
the clock chimes the hour.

The Rathaus courtyard

The front of the Jesuit church of St. Mark 

Inside the church

There are lots of street musicians, some are very good. But
this was the first time we had seen a full chamber orchestra,
complete with grand piano!

In between we were back in the park, and in total walked another 6 miles on Sunday.

Of course, there had to be a coffee and cake stop at least once - notice that there hasn't been much of that so far?? In this case we stopped in the hotel lobby for some refreshment before heading off again.

Coffee, a tiny bundt cake with chocolate chips, and a slice
of 'Maximilian' cake, specialty of the hotel's head
pastry chef.

 For our last dinner in Munich we decided to go back to Platzl, where the Hofbräuhaus is, and try one of the other restaurants. The Schuhbeck family seems to own every corner in this little square that isn't the Hofbräuhaus! They have fine dining, open air casual biergarten, pizza, a shop the specializes in tea and chocolate, one for specialty muesli mixtures (natural breakfast cereal usually based on oatmeal, for those of you not familiar with it), an ice cream shop...and I'm sure we've forgotten something! At any rate, we went inside what we thought would be the fine dining and followed the sign through to the courtyard, finding ourselves back where we were on Friday - at the courtyard of the Hofbräuhaus!

We stayed anyway and had a delicious meal - one would think the quality of the food would suffer a bit from the huge volume, but it didn't! And Monica even had a second half-litre of Weissbier! Larry joked that we can't come back to Munich for another 10 years now, since the next 2 five-year periods have been covered.

Tomorrow we're off, back to Vienna for two nights before flying to Krakow to join the Tauck tour. We're not planning a lot there, but our hotel will be quite close to the Stadtpark, so we'll be taking a walk around to see what it is like.