Munich was a great city, totally worth seeing. I kinda regretted I wasn’t able to make it to Berlin on my trip, because I heard great things about Berlin, but Munich was definitely a city worth seeing.
München actually means “by the monk’s place” so this city was built by monks. The city is in Bavaria. It is a war-ridden city, because it was bombed during World War II. Most of the buildings are repaired, but not exactly repaired to it’s original glory as it was before WWI and WWII. Unfortunately, I was only there for 2 days, and didn’t have enough time to visit Olympia Park nor the BMW museum (sad day…), and we were there a week before Oktoberfest started -_-
I loved things about every city I’ve been to, and for Munich, I would love to have an academic life there. (as well as drive a BMW) Lol, that city was loaded with beautiful German cars, every car I saw on the street was gorgeous, and was was practically drooling over ever car I saw. 🙂
We went on a tour of the city, seeing the major historic places of Hitler’s regime. I apologize, my memory isn’t as clear as it was in September… but I’ll do my best to spill out all my memories of this city.
So this pedestal is the absolute center of the city, the statue on top is made of solid gold… but it’s heavily guarded with security cameras, so stealing is out of the question. There are 4 (children) angels each killing a respective monster (If I recall correctly: dragon, snake, lion, and chicken). The chicken is the only symbol I remember, was representative of the plague. The angel slaying the chicken is representative of the people conqueror of the disease. The center of the city of Munich is called Marienplatz, and there’s the clock tower on the top right. Apparently the clock tower is the biggest tourist trap of this city, it rings twice a day, and the little statues within the clock tower dances around (like in any old clock). I didn’t see it, but apparently it is a disappointing display.
To the right, is the one of the greatest churches in the city of Munich. Apparently, during the bombings of the city in World War II, a bomb fell into this church but never went off. It was a miracle from God!
Well there are more stories about this church… such as the mysterious footprint in the photo below. No one knows who’s footprint it belongs to, some people speculate it’s done by the architect of the church but others say it’s the ‘footprint of the Devil’! So the tale goes like this:
This church was built about the same time as the Notre Dame was built in Paris, France. But at this time, the city of Munich didn’t have money. So the building manager goes off to make a deal with the devil to get this church built. The devil agreed that he’ll help in getting funds for the church, if the church was built with large columns blocking the windows to prevent the light of day entering the church. Once the church was finished, the Devil came and inspected the building, and was angry because light was still able to enter the church. So the Devil stomped his foot into the ground and made a everlasting imprint in the church floor… aha, convincing story? not really but fun to tell tourists.
One last thing about this church, the photo to the right is a tablet of the current pope. I didn’t know this but… the current pope is from Munich, Germany, and Munich is his hometown. And fun fact… Munich (and the rest of Germany) are famous for their great beer, and usually the pope has a favorite wine. Since the current pope is from Munich is favorite drink is a beer. His favorite beer is called Augustiner
AUGUSTINER BRÄU MÜNCHEN BIER is actually really good. I went on a pub crawl in Munich, and tried all the best German-Munich brewed beer, and yes German beer is the best beer I’ve tasted. I have to agree with the pope, Augustiner is excellent beer, the best I’ve ever tasted. Cheers to Augustiner, and the pope!
Alright lets continue touring the city before getting to the beer gardens. I think all the cities in Germany has something called a Maypole (right), which is a tall wooden pole decorated with the symbols of the city. So the tradition is that if a Maypole of the city was taken down and stolen by a neighboring city/town, the city who lost their Maypole has to throw the other city who stolen the Maypole a party. There was a story once, at one of the German airport (I forgot where), there was an airport Maypole (for tourist reasons). One day, the airport’s Maypole was stolen, so the police was contacted. Turns out the police department was the people who stolen the airport Maypole. I guess they expected higher pay wages or something lol.
Okay, now on to the beer gardens. Everyone knows that the biggest beer festival in the world takes place in Munich. Yep, Oktoberfest, and as Wikipedia states it is a 16-18 day festival running from late September to the first weekend in October with 5 million people attending every year. The history behind it was that it was a wedding party on October 12, 1810. The wedding was for Prince Ludwig and Princess Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen. There was a horse race, and it was so successful that it was renewed the next year. It became a tradition and moved to late September because it was warmer weather. Unfortunately I visited a week early before the festivities started, but I wouldn’t have been able to stay because I started school the time Oktoberfest started. But I walked through the grounds, and here are a few pictures of the grounds below.
Well other beer gardens I visited was the Chinese Garden (Left photo). It wasn’t operational because it was raining when we visited, but apparently it is one of the largest beer gardens in the world. I also visited the Hofbrauhaus, the beer garden that served steins of beer, 1 liter worth, instead of your regular pint glasses. Insanely huge amount of beer, but all the boys didn’t think so lol. Another fun fact about the Hofbrauhaus is that the Nazi party was formed there (over a beer lol). Also that the 2nd floor built on a tilt, because back in the old ages, men who drank their beer, were too lazy to stand up and relocate to pee, so they would pee in their seats. The floor is built on a tilt to wash all the men’s urine, out… which is really disgusting… but you can’t can’t do anything about men and beer…lol
My favorite part about the city is that people have a deep appreciation for music, and there will be many street performers playing lovely classical music out on the streets. My favorite street performer is this guy(left) Bringing out a grand piano for his performance. That’s pretty hardcore.
Well Munich took a major part in World War II, and most of buildings in the city today is not the original but remodeled, since most of the buildings were destroyed in the bombing. Also there was a concentration camp near by the city and I felt it was important to visit and learn about behind horrors of Hitler’s regime. Here are a couple of photos from the concentration camp.
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