Be warned: this is a long blog, grab a cool drink!

Our week in Munich has come to an end. Rod and I are currently sitting on our bed (Hamish is on his, upstairs) resting after a HUGE serve of schnitzel and pommes (chips) for lunch. Rod and I both said we could have shared one between us – Hamish suggested he didn’t need to share his schnitzel and in fact, polished off a big portion of my chips. The kid is unstoppable! We are about to go to the Transport Museum, mostly because it’s across the street from our apartment. Read on for a recap of our week!

Friday – Walking tour, Christmas market and Hofbrauhaus

Our cold weather gear had been serving us well; that was until our walking tour Friday morning. It was -1 degree and breezy whilst we waited in Marienplatz for our tour to begin. Hamish and I did laps of the Christmas market looking for hot chocolate, but alas, there were only alcoholic beverages (and at 10:30 am I felt this was a little too early even for us!). Not cool Munich – I bought some slivered almonds coated in chocolate and between the 3 of us they lasted about a minute! We joined a large group of English-speaking people and were shown some of the sites of Munich.

It started with the famous Glockenspiel in the town square of Marienplatz. The figures reenact two pivotal moments in Munich’s history: a battle victory and a wedding, with a 16 day party afterwards…or so the story goes. It was a cute little thing to see; I noticed a lady from another tour group filming the whole thing (over 10 minutes worth!). I said to Rod, imagine getting back home and forcing someone to watch your 10 minute video of some life sized puppets way up high on a clock tower that you can barely see. Still, who are we to judge someone else’s idea of excellent cinematography?

We then walked under the tower into the square beneath the Rathaus (Government building). I am sure those workers love listening to that Glockenspiel ring for 10 minutes twice a day! Our guide told us about some of the architecture, the spire and something about some of the statues situated on the building. At this point I am regretting not wearing my woollen socks. I also scour the small market stalls for hot drinks.

Our next stop is the very large and very ornate Munich Cathedral. To my untrained eye, the Rathaus looked like a Cathedral and the Cathedral looked like a Government building! Inside, the ceilings are incredible and the stained glass windows very impressive. Our guide tells us a folk story about the devil’s footprint on one of the tiles and if your foot fits you are destined to become mad for the rest of your life. Rod of course had to try his foot in this tile and of course it fit. I can confirm no change in his mental status since. Lucky it’s a folk tale! I hear one of the British girls say to her friend “I think I have overestimated the warmth of my tights today…” I don’t think it mattered how many layers you wore that day, stopping every 5 minutes for a 15 minute story was never going to warm you up. The guide can see we are struggling with the temperatures, so her next destination is in what feels like an outdoor shopping mall. To be fair, it’s out of the freezing wind, though I hear the girls from the UK state how much warmer it was in the cathedral.

Our next destination takes us to the ‘Field Marshall’s Hall’ a public place where in 1933 the socialist party, lead by Hitler, attempted a coup. Four police were killed in the uprising and the plaque below commemorates them. I leave the group to look around, get a couple of photos and keep moving. Despite my usually very warm gloves, my fingers are frozen. Hamish is a gentleman and gives me his gloves, or holds my hands when we stop so I can try and warm them up. Not to throw shade on Rod, he hugs me whenever he can too! Hamish says, “Good news – only 40 minutes to go Mum” I swear this will be our last walking tour.

We walk to the last destination which is the Hofbrauhaus – the most famous in Munich (probably the world) where Hitler held his meetings prior to (and after) the uprising. We walk up the stairs to a foyer that is perfectly heated. Again hard for Rod and I to believe Hitler had walked up those stairs and held meetings in this part of the beer hall – and we’re standing there 90 years later!

Thankfully the tour is over and we head into the brew house for lunch. I order the big beer which is 1 Litre! I need two hands to lift it. We share a platter and some sausages, then we buy a BIG pretzel – because we haven’t flown all this way to have regrets. The beer hall has a resident band playing ‘oom-pah-pah’ tunes, which provides a great atmosphere. Our tram trip home seems to take forever and Rod and I are pleased the apartment has toilets on the ground floor; cold + lots of beer puts strain on the old bladder!

For the record, no beer was consumed by Hamish.

Saturday – Deutsches Museum (by Rod)

The Deutsches Museum is the largest Science/Technology museum in Europe, so it’s on our agenda – it can’t all be beer and pretzels! I have downloaded the app and a scroll through the menu suggests we should start with the “extended highlights” tour of the museum. This will include visits to the best exhibits in most of the popular sections of the museum. It tells me to start by visiting “Theo” in the Robotics sections. As I write this (4 days later) I have not yet found Theo, or any of his other Robotics mates. Instead, we land in the “Light” section. Lots of hands-on and written material about the (still confusing) particle vs wave models of light. I keep an eye out for Schrodinger’s cat, to no avail – perhaps he is hanging out with Theo in Robotics.

We spend a lot of time in the modern and historical flight sections. Fantastic displays of actual sections of aircraft, or even whole aircraft, as well as many models and a lot of fascinating information. You could really soak up a lot of detail in here. We try not to get bogged down, though, as Theo is probably dying to meet us. Moving on we encounter sections dealing with Music/instruments, Chemistry and Astronautics, which is just amazing. The place is huge but we eventually find the rooftop restaurant for a spot of lunch. Another bun-fight as we try to claim a table. It’s packed and one can only wonder how busy these places get in high season. Most places we have been on this trip have been crawling with tourists. Everyone seems to be traveling these days.

Sunday – Olympic Stadium (Rod and Hamish) – Dachau (Belinda)

When we arrived in Munich, I booked a tour to the local concentration camp Dachau. I had chosen not to visit Mauthausen whilst in Linz – after the Terror Museum in Budapest, I’d not the emotional strength for it. However, in order to remember and honour the people who had lost their lives in the Holocaust, it is a small sacrifice for me for one day. Rod and Hamish have planned their day and Rod will write about this below. We travelled into the city together and the boys dropped me off at the tour operators shop with a plan to meet back there at 3:30 pm that afternoon. Our tour groups were split in two – my group was about 15 people and our guide Jake (an amusing, sarcastic, former teacher and very well-liked American) led us to the hauptbahnhof. Dachau is a small town about 20km NW of Munich but is of course known for the camp and we used public transport to get there and back. Whilst on the platform, we all introduced ourselves (name, country of origin) and I discovered two Australian couples – one from SA and one from the NT. It was really nice talking to them throughout the day and hearing about their travels and their lives back in Australia. Jake collectively called us “Team Aus.”

Dachau is the oldest camp in Germany. It was set up in 1933 for ‘political prisoners’ (this could be anyone!). In the 30’s, the inmates were treated like prisoners, with days off, personal effects and letter writing allowed. This all changed when Germany invaded Poland and the Nazi’s ramped up work camps and death camps. Dachau was a work camp, a training site for the SS, was run by the SS and was the main camp of over 100 work camps in Germany. It was brutal and I don’t need to go into the details of how the inmates were treated – the mostly men, were literally worked to death. It wasn’t hard to imagine the harsh conditions as we stood on the parade ground in the cold with no protection from the strong winds. The camp was liberated by the US armed forces in 1945 and their accounts are well documented. Check out a movie called ‘Lee’ about a US fashion photographer who became a war correspondent – she photographed the Dachau liberation (I haven’t seen it, but have heard about it).

Hamish and I wave goodbye to Belinda and get on a tram (literally right outside the cafe door) towards the Munich (1972) Olympic Stadium. The tram deposits us a short walk away, through lovely gardens, from the stadium. It’s pretty chilly/breezy, but a bit sunny and not as cold as previous days. We get to the stadium to find most of it fenced off, but we eventually find the (only, barely noticeable) entrance. It only costs 6 Euros for the two of us to enter and we quickly find the toilet! We then slowly complete a lap of the stadium, through and over the terraces. You can’t get down to the track or into any of the internals, but it presents a fascinating view of the arena. It still looks quite modern, due to its interesting design. It is not a walled stadium, but is built into the landscape as a key part of the surrounding Olympic area. Along the way there are displays and a “video kiosk,” where we watch a rather odd 20 minutes of mixed footage from the games. There is minimal commentary, not even mentioning the efforts of Mark Spitz as he is shown swimming towards his 7 gold medals. The Jewish hostage saga is shown in part, but it is assumed the viewer knows what happened here.

After exiting the stadium we find we can walk across to and enter the swimming pool arena. The warmth is most appreciated. There is a crowd watching a water polo game to keep us amused and toasty for a bit before we push on. The whole Olympic complex is built into the surrounding parklands, complete with lakes, plazas, amphitheatres and the Olympic Tower.

We walk and tram our way back into town for a prearranged 3:30 meeting with Belinda. Now, dear reader, understand that I do not have internet here without free wi-fi. At about 3:45 there is no sign of our beloved, so I trek into the hauptbahnhof (free wi-fi) to check my messages. Sure enough, Belinda has been delayed. So we have another hour to kill, which then stretches to an hour and a half after checking for another message. After a couple of trips back and forth to Maccas and the labyrinth of shops at the hauptbahnhof for some shopping we head back to the rendezvous point, at one point passing an older lady who staggers from, presumably, too much Christmas cheer. We walk on and wait. I then, belatedly see another message, suggesting we meet at the dreaded hauptbahnhof! We hastily head back only to find Belinda giving triage/first aid to that same old lady, now suffering from a PFD. “There’s mum!” shouted Hamish as I blithely stride past. We had never really seen Belinda in action and she is amazing! Handling and calming the injured, talking with other passers-by/helpers who have other native tongues, helping with the hand-over to Paramedics and just calling the shots really. Well played Belinda!

Monday – Rental Car – Herrsching am Ammersee (Lake)

We have booked a rental car for the last part of the European trip and we walk/train/walk to the pickup point. It’s a relatively smooth process, (even though we don’t have passports as a form of ID) – Hamish and I go into the local Lidl to get some drinks and snacks for the car trip to the lake. When we return, Rod is sitting in the car getting acquainted with the new interior. We do a check of the vehicle for existing scratches/dents and discover it’s an electric car! What’s that about old dogs and new tricks? Something new for us to learn in the next couple of weeks.

We drive to a lovely lakeside area and walk around before getting some excellent Italian food for lunch in a restaurant way posher than we were expecting. Oh well! Hamish loves to test the water to see how cold it is – ‘very cold’ is his answer. No joke, we can see the Swiss Alps in the distance.

Tuesday – Tucherpark (or English Garden) – Schnitzels – Transport Museum

Rod has found a park on the other side of the city so we set our sights on this area. The weather is sunny and it’s nearly 10 degrees – wonderful! We walk around the lake and it reminds me of the Lake Benalla walk, except for the threatening signs warning of death if you ice skate, sled or play curling. They don’t muck about here with their public signage! We all decide we need a schnitzel for lunch as we’ve not really indulged in this local food. We have luck with the 3rd cafe we come across, which is outdoors and occupied by three men and two dogs. I order us all schnitzels – the young woman says she’ll let us know when they’re ready and we can come and get them from the counter. She literally yells at the top of her voice, something in German – we take that as our cue our food is ready. As Hamish says, “The schnitzels look big, but they’re full of air…” I’m not worried about the schnitzels, it’s the 1/2 kg of chips on the plate that has me worried!

What’s next?

Tomorrow we head for the last of our micronations, the one that started it all: Liechtenstein. We are staying one night (in a hotel costing 1/3 of our entire week in Munich!) then driving to Strasbourg to settle in for Christmas. After seeing the Swiss Alps in the distance yesterday, we are really looking forward to staying in this tiny country in the mountains. Good luck with the last of your Christmas shopping and those of your in Australia, keep cool! Ciao!

Oh and for the record? the transport museum is open twice a month, every second Sunday.