2 Months of München – A letter to Pop
Hello Pop,
Greetings from Deutschland! We are currently in the middle of a week-long heat wave that has arrived at the start of summer.
I have included some photos from the Deutsches Museum – which is a transport, science and technology museum, only about 1km from our apartment. We got yearly admission cards because you can definitely not cover the entire museum in one day. There is so much to see there: boats (including a full U-Boat in the basement!), primitive and modern airplanes, zeppelin history, space modules, historical musical instruments, printers, glass making machines, electricity generators …the list goes on.
I was going to write on the back of some of the plane photos, but you are probably right across them already! I haven’t included a photo of it, but there is a really cool, complete, German fighter plane in there too (an early Messerschmitt Me). There is also another dedicated transport museum across town, with heaps of planes, cars, trains etc. but so far we have only been to the beer garden outside of there.
Our apartment is across the road from the VW dealership, and as I write there is plenty of loud clunking happening as cars are loaded on and off the truck. This happens almost daily. We decided that it would be a reminder to get out and do stuff, and not hang around the apartment.
We live just down the road from the Gasteig – which is the cultural center of the city, with symphony orchestra concerts and events. Back in the old days, it was the site of the Bürgerbräukeller which is quite famous for some Nazi related events like the Beer Hall Putsch and the attempted assassination of Hitler in 1939. There’s a plaque down there of where the bomb was placed to try and kill him very early on. The Bürgerbräukeller actually survived the WW2 bombings and only got knocked down in 1979. It was one of the few, as most the stuff here is a reconstructed/repaired version of what it looked like before the allied bombs came raining down. They actually found a bomb recently (2012) in Schwabing and had to detonate it. She was a bit bigger than they expected though (550 pound) and sent a fireball into the night sky, shattered all windows in the vicinity and resulted in several small fires on surrounding rooftops!
One essential for Munich is definitely a bike. Biking is the best way to get around Munich, as it has lots of great biking infrastructure and respectful drivers. Sarah and I got bikes from a flea market on the outskirts of town in a place called Riem. My bike was travelling quite well for a couple of weeks and I loved riding it to work every day. One Sunday, when riding in the English Gardens with Sarah, one of my pedal cranks starting coming loose and later that day I also got a flat tire! It was then in need of some proper servicing. So we took it to “Guten Biken” and discovered that the place is run by some Aussies from Ballarat and a New Zealander. When I put my bike in they invited us along to their annual BBQ – what good timing! Beer was supplied by a local private brewery and BBQ salads provided by the café next door. We met some great people and definitely had too any beers. My bike is now up and running again, and we are back to being kings of the road!
Sarah is still doing plenty of running preparing for the Berlin Marathon, but it is hard work for her in the current heat wave. We’ve also been running together at night to avoid the heat. People watch as we go past with clip on coloured lights! Personally, I’m running because two months of fine beers have started to take a bit of a toll on the waist line. Also not helping is the fact that groceries are also pretty cheap – so we’ve always got a fridge full of cheese, salami and chocolate (things that are more expensive in Australia, but not necessarily good for you).
We went to Salzburg, Austria for a weekend trip (as you can do from Munich) with Sarah’s Mum and saw the many sights. The city is most famous for Mozart, and we went to the house he was born in and the house that he grew up in. There were some really interesting instruments and lots of history in there. Lots of quite surprising stuff too like the fact that Wolfgang Mozart was only 1.5m tall and wildly considered to be quite ugly. The Mozart family were big fans of Bölzlschiessen (shooting darts at decorated targets with an air rifle) for some family fun. Indoors! In the dancing hall they had some Bölzlschiessen targets on display, which are usually satirical or poke fun at one of the shooters. There was one passage that I have to include, because I thought it was hilarious, where Wolfgang wrote to his father specifying the form of Bölzlschiessen target he would like the family to use during his absence:
“Concerning the targets, if it is not too late, please do this for me. A small man with light hair, stooped over, revealing his bare arse. From his mouth come the words, good appetite for the feast. The other man should be shown with boots and spurs, a red cloak and a splendid, fashionable wig. He must be of medium height, and precisely in the position that he can lick the other man’s arse. From his mouth come the words: oh, there’s nothing to top that. So, please, if it can’t be this time, another time.”
This, from the Mozart!
We packed heaps of other things into the weekend including: biking around town on a Sound of Music tour seeing various settings from the movie and hidden sights of the city, going to the top of Untersburg by cable car and taking in the intermittent views from the cloudy tops of the mountain and walking through the Salzburg fortress that looks over the city. Salzburg is also church mad, with 49 churches in a relatively small town. We visited one: Salzburg Cathedral (see donation card). In terms of big open space inside, it is the biggest church I’ve ever been in …and that includes all the Italian ones we’ve visited!
We have recently had some visitors, a school friend of mine called Daniel who moved to Estonia to live with his girlfriend and newly born son. He rode his motorbike from Estonia to Germany, doing about 500kms a day and taking in the sights – he loved the trip and reckons it’s the only way to see Europe! One of Sarah’s school friends, Rachel, and her partner Brett, also visited at the same time for a couple of days. We gave them the best around-town tour and they covered most of the main sites in the few days that they were here.
When Dan arrived on Wednesday we all went out to a good local beer hall and had traditional Bavarian dinners. Dan kept the table very amused with stories of about his Estonian in-laws, how they do things in Estonia and his travels down through Eastern Europe. During his trip he camped most nights in the various forests and parklands, which is legal in those countries – a lot of the land belongs to the people. He told of one night, camping 50 metres off the road, and hearing a vehicle outside his tent and then a loud bang. He thought he might have been on someone’s property and had a peek out of the tent but saw nothing and there were no more sounds. When he got out of the tent a few hours later in the early morning he discovered 3 fire trucks, some ambulances and police cars back at the road-side – some guy had crashed his van into a tree and the emergency services were still there cutting him out of the car. Crazy!
Rachel and Brett are on a Europe tour and had just come from Venice – that is one place you don’t want to be during a stinking hot heat wave as there are no shady trees anywhere! They are having fun travels and really loved Munich. They especially enjoyed the German efficiency and good service that was lacking and frustrating them in Italy! We took them down the river, to a beer garden and to the best ice-cream in town (run by a Brisbane expat, would you believe!). Being a big fan of bread, Brett loved the pretzels at the beer garden – so we nicknamed him “Brott” (‘Brot’ being the German word for bread).
You might have picked up that we’ve been drinking plenty of beer here in Munich and visiting many beer gardens. That’s due to three things: the weather has been very sunny, the beer is very good and the beer is very cheap! On most occasions in the beer garden, we have a Maß (pronounce: mahss) – which a 1L size beer.
The night at the beer hall, along with dinner, the table also ended up having 29 1/2L beers and two rounds of shots, so it was quite an entertaining night. I still went to work the next day, but it was a long day indeed.
The paperwork to get sorted for work took a while, some considerable effort and some waiting – the Germans love their paperwork. Otherwise work has been pretty relaxed and I’m doing much of the same stuff that I do back in Australia; it is just much better with the benefit of talking to the Sony people immediately and during work hours, instead of those long after work conference calls! We’re up on level 5 (the top floor) and it stays quite cool up there, so that has been good. They like to go out for lunch and there are plenty of places in the vicinity: Greek (with complementary Ouzo before the meal), Turkish, Thai, two Italian restaurants and traditional Bavarian are just some of the many options. Today I opted for some salad from the make-it-yourself salad bar in the supermarket downstairs, being in dire need of some ‘lighter’ options as of late.
There was an after work event last week where we watched a new artist showcase, a singer called Balbina. It was a mini-concert on the third level terrace, with free beer and food (…it’s hard to keep out of trouble in this place!) it was really cool and a great balmy night for a rooftop party. My Sony boss, Hans, was talking about how they never go out anymore because they are all getting older and have kids now. Then he went home after two beers to go pick up his kids! I kicked on with some of the Sony people who were free for the night.
So we’re here, living and going quite well. Hope all is well at home!
Love from Reece and Sarah