Bikes In Munich

Munich is a good place to bike, and we see tons of them everywhere. Unlike the USA, however, where just about all the bikes you see are made by one of the "major" brands, there are many peculiar/interesting bike brands to be seen here in town. A sampling:

I could have gone on snapping photos all day, there are so many to choose from.  I have to say that I did feel vaguely guilty taking pictures of people's locked up bikes -- like a thief casing the joint before the heist, or something like that.

Last Couple of Days in Munich

Sunday night: couple of final Mittenwald photos: awaiting dinner at an outdoor cafe...

... and discovering an interesting poster on the main drag:

Monday:

We packed up our stuff in Mittenwald, got everything into the car, and headed for Garmish-Partenkirchen. Overcast and raining the whole way, so it was a good thing that we'd gotten all of our outdoor activities in beforehand.

In the car we listened to our current book on tape, "I am the Messenger" by Markus Zusak -- an entertaining story. We returned our rental car with no hassles to speak of and got our stuff over to the train station to wait for our ride to Munich. Train arrived in plenty of time to get all of our luggage on board, etc, so we had nice seats.  Spirited card game en route ("Oh Hell") mixed in with reading the international edition of the New York Times (the Int'l Herald Tribune no longer exists, it's been replaced with this new NYT thing).

Ethan and Lydia also for some reason decided to strike up a spirited conversation partway through the ride on matters related to sexuality and sexual orientation -- it was interesting to hear them debate. Meanwhile, I could tell that the young German guy in the seat across the aisle from us was trying very hard to listen in on the conversation (he was fascinated, it was pretty obvious).

Got in to the main station around noon, unpacked at the hotel (Eden Hotel Wolff), which seems to be nice. I made us reservations at a vegetarian restaurant called "Prinz Myzhkin" (sp?) that is a few blocks south of Marienplatz. We were all pretty eager to be eating something with a lot of green vegetables that didn't taste especially German, so this seemed like a good choice. I had Massaman curry with peanuts, potato, and carrots; Lydia had spinach crepes, Ethan had a japanese noodle dish, and Amy had Samosas. It was a pleasaant meal, very laid-back.

[Ethan's drink is not beer, despite the mug and the appearance...]

Curry, yum:

... and noodles:

After that we had an extended shopping expedition: Ethan looked for a couple of new pairs of pants, Lydia searched for shoes, and Amy wanted to look at loden-coats.

Lydia finally settled on a pair of brown oxford-like shoes, very elegant and a bit formal, from a smallish shoe store called Bagat. I'm actually kind of amazed that it actually happened, since she had a very specific idea of what she wanted and had turned down numerous other possibilities.

Amy (also concluding a lengthy shopping odyssey) found a coat that she liked at Lodenfrey, a department store here. She also had specific things in mind -- she wanted a coat with a hood (not easy to find) with a specific length.

For Ethan we visited (among other places): Superdry, Gant, Tretter, even the following place (the picture does not lie- this really is the name of a retail establishment):

Finally at H & M, Ethan was able to find something that he liked, however we also managed to get separated from Amy and Lydia. Ethan and I were in the men's changing room when Amy stopped in to try to find us -- she yelled out "Ethan, are you there?" and Ethan yelled back "yes", but apparently his reply was drowned out (Amy never heard it, there was too much other stuff going on). Eventually after a certain amount of searching around we decided to head back to the hotel, where we reunited.

Dinner at Broeding (sp?) a fancy place that Amy had picked out a while back. Smallish dining area but extremely gourmet: smoked salmon with braised leeks, arugula, and horseradish cream, then beef shoulder with chanterelles and roast potatoes, and finally a hazlenut mousse/partfait thing with cherries and pineapple. Very tasty (the wines were quite good as well).

We had taken a cab to get to dinner, then decided to walk back. The stroll was interesting in two respects. First, the time it took on foot was just about the same as the time in the cab (traffic was very heavy). Second, the route back took us by a big youth hostel, which was swarming with young people -- we fell in with a group of youngsters from the USA and UK and listen in on what they were talking about. 

Tuesday:

Last day on vacation here in Munich. It is fun to relax and explore, but I think all of us are starting to think about returning home to sleep in our own beds and get back to our usual routines.

After breakfast we headed out to the Hauptbahnhof and got on a train to visit the museum and memorial at Dachau, the former concentration camp. Dachau is ridiculously easy to get to -- from the Munich Hauptbahnhof you take a train for about 20 mins, then hop off at the town train station (Dachau is a town as well) and then take a bus for another 10 minutes to reach the site.

We arrived a little after the 9am opening; it was already starting to get crowded even at that hour (our bus was packed). A good eighty to ninety percent of the visitors to Dachau are German school groups, which leads to a a rather odd sort of cognitive dissonnance -- somber visitors from abroad (mostly Americans, mostly older people, but a few families) alongside Germans teenagers doing the things that teenagers do together in big groups (laughing, chatting, taking selfies, goofing around, etc).

We spent about three hours there, although I think we probably could have stayed the entire day if we wanted to take in every last bit. The museum and the short film were the most interesting parts, the grounds and the buildings didn't really do all that much, given that so much of the original construction there had been torn down and then reconstructed later.

I feel as though I learned a fair amount about the Dachau camp itself -- I hadn't realized how many different categories of "undesirable" types were there: in addition to Jewish people there were also Poles, Russian prisoners, homosexuals, communists, dissidents, etc. There was even a group of men who had been fighters in the Spanish civil war (against Franco) -- they had wound up imprisoned in France and had then been transferred to Dachau later during the war.

A very grim/sad/chilling/creepy place, but in an odd way, also somehow sort of "ordinary" in a sense, tucked in and among the leafy Munich suburbs. In the film they had footage of Dachau residents coming to view what was actually going on inside the camp that they'd been living beside (taken at the time that the camp was liberated by the Americans).

We had a quick noodle lunch after getting back to Munich at an Asian place that Amy had spotted on one of our travels to/from the city center. I was glad to have a meal with a relatively short duration (with the more established restaurants it can be difficult to get in and out without spending 60, 90, 120 mins).

We split up for the afternoon -- Amy and Lydia headed off to an art museum, while Ethan and I hit the hotel gym (rode the exercise bike for an hour, then lifted weights).  I think we will shoot for a quiet evening tonight, nothing special planned.

Munich

Wednesday:

Flight out was on Iceland Air, which was a new experience for all of us. Overall it was fine, nothing to complain about. The plane was a new-looking Boeing 757, and the seats were not too bad. The in-fight entertainment was a weird mix of Icelandic films and TV shows (with English subtitles) and regular American films and TVs. When you turned on the TV set it would make you watch a sort of promotional piece, five minutes of advertising to inform you of all the wonderful things you could do in Iceland (and encouraging you to book a flight with a multi-day stopover).  We got to Rekjavik airport around 2am Boston time, went through customs, and made it into the next leg of the flight to Munich. The Rekjavik airport is small by international standard but very sleek and modern looking.

Thursday:

Got to Munich at 1pm local time; very warm! Mid eighties. We had booked seats on the Lufthansa bus, so we took that to the main train station in town and walked to the hotel from there.

ART hotel Munich is maybe a three or four block walk from the train station-- good central location. The "art" in question is mostly of the modern variety -- posters and sculpture sprinkled around various place in the hotel. It's a nice place to stay; comfy rooms, A/C, and a nice breakfast.

We sort of muddled through our first day, since everyone was pretty jet-lagged. Once we had a chance to shower and get unpacked, we headed out for an expedition to see the Victualienmarkt, the an open-air market in the city center. It was nice -- good looking produced and baked stuff, not to mention a smallish beer garden. We poked around the shops for a while and then eventually sat down for a bit on some of the benches.

Marienplatz -- here is the famous Glockenspiel:

On tour:

A closeup:

Your truly:

I thought this was an interesting mini-statue, so I snapped a picture of it. [We learned later on from our bike tour guide that the smallish angels on the side of this statue are supposed to be represented as attacking various sins/scourges -- the snake that this one it turns out to be a representation of the evil Heresy (a.k.a. the Protestants)]

Stopping at the biergarten:

In Victualienmarkt:

Dinner was at Zwickl, a cafe quote close to the market. The specialty was a kind of meatball ("Pflanzerl"); Amy ordered a vegetarian Planzerl plate, I had veal meatballs, Ethan had Osso Bucco, and Lydia had a pasta dish. Food was good; very tasty (Amy's dish was the most interesting). After that we slogged back to the hotel (20 min walk or so) and collapsed into bed. Whew.

Friday:

Amy and woke up around 2:30, then tossed and turned for a while and finally got back to sleep and woke again at 7:30. Kids slept through until 4:30, then spent a while in their room and went down to breakfast at 6:30. Lydia tells me that they definitely enjoyed the breakfast (she told me that "Ethan went back to two of everything"). We made our was over to the train station around 9:30 to collect our bikes for a bike tour with a local outfit. Tour started at 10am; it was mostly Americans with a few Irish folk and others mixed in. On our way through the train station to find the bike rental place:

Getting kitted out:

We asked for helmets, but the rental place wasn't really set up for that -- they scrounged around and found a bunch but they were all too small for our heads. This was kind of a problem for me, since I had expected to have a helmet to keep the sun off my bald spot. I improvised with a bandana (looks ridiculous, but prevents suburn effectively):

On the tour:

There were two themes for the tour: King Ludwig of Bavaria (who built many of the interesting buildings we saw) and Hitler (who used Munich as a base for his operations, and who came to power while living there). This path runs past a Ludwig-constructed art museum and across a square that Hitler used for book-burning of all things:

The bikers:

The bikes were good -- city bikes with good tires and internally geared hubs. Not cheap.

This fellow on the statue looks as though he is calling out for something or someone...

We later encountered this statue... same guy as before? In which case, perhaps he had been calling out for his horse?

Lydia looking laid-back and urban:

Schwalbe tires, some of the best you can buy for urban biking:

This was a memorial to the victims of the Nazis:

Found this in the middle of a city square. "StadtLesen.com" could be translated as "City Reading" -- and that is indeed what was going on.

Interior of a church just off the same square:

The royal residence (interior portion):

A photo while riding:

Entering the English garden (which is quite large and very nice):

Selfie while biking:

Still in the English garden:

The Chinese Tower -- this is next to one of the biggest beer gardens in Munich -- has more than 7000 seats.

Ethan on the wheel:

The main river running through the city is quite cold and swift, and there is a section where they channel it through the park -- due to a lump on the riverbed it has a standing wave, which of course attracts surfers:

The Bavaria administrative offices:

The last bit of the tour took us to the Hofbrau house, which I wasn't really all the interested in seeing (we walked in and walked back out in about 20 seconds). A shot on the inside:

Amy taking photos outside:

Our group was cycling along back to the train station when we encountered a van with this graphic -- very eye-catching for some reason:

The tour finished up successfully; we decided that we would extend the bike rental for a few more hours, have a quick lunch, and then zoom back over to the English garden to swim in the river there. We snatched a few sandwiches from a kiosk at the station and brough them back to the hotel, lock our bikes, and had lunch in the kids room. Ethan and I got our bathing suits on, then we headed out.

Alas, this is where things started to go off the rails a bit. We discovered after riding for maybe 1km that Lydia's bike had a flat tire -- yikes. At that point Amy decided she would take Lydia back to return their bikes to the rental place (Lydia had really wanted to relax back at the hotel as opposed to more biking); Ethan and I continued on.

The swimming was terrific -- in the park they essentially have channels or offshoots of the main river that flows through town. The current is very strong and the water is cold but not totally freezing. The way that it works is that you hop in at a certain point and just get swept along by the current for a good bit, then you hop back out, walk back up the river, and repeat. Photos:

Definitely one of the best "inner city" swimming experiences I've had. Meanwhile, the main grassy parts of the park were absolutely covered with sunbathers -- very popular on a Friday afternoon.

Ethan did a couple more river transits, then we cycled for a bit more and located an ice cream stand. Ice cream is weirdly inexpensive in Munich -- all you need for a small cone is a couple of euros (good deal less than at Rancatore's in Lexington).

We eventually made our way back to the train station, returned our bikes after getting the "ok" from the owner, walked back to the hotel. At that point I found out from Amy that the bike rental folks had told her that they were unable to offer her a refund without having my credit card (she had returned their bikes early, and we had paid by the hour). So I trudged back to the train station and waited in line again to talk with the rental guy. At this point he said, OK, I can give you a refund -- let me just give you cash, that would be easier (apparently there weren't actually any "credit card problems" after all). He gave me some euros, I walked back to the hotel again, and then when I talked with Amy I discovered that she had returned the bikes two hours early, whereas the bike guy had refunded me only one hour's fees. Grumble.  At that point I decided it would not be worth the extra hassles... score one for the rental guys...

After showers and some down time we took a cab back over to the Virtualienmarkt and did some shopping, then had dinner at "Buffet Kull", a seafood place.  We were a bit warm (our table was parked partway inside and partway outside), but the food was good. Amy and I had "charfish" (very tasty, served with grilled scallions and tomatoes), Lydia had "gilthead", also quite good (served with a nice big plate of sauted spinach, right down Lydia's alley). Ethan had a chicken dish of some sort.

 We then walked our way back to the hotel, window shopping along the way... long day.