Days 60-61: Exploring Munich

Hi Friends.

The last two days we had a great time exploring the city of Munich and some of the surrounding areas.  What better picture to represent Bavaria then the yummy pretzel :)

Yesterday we walked a few miles to visit the English Gardens which are just outside of the city.  It is a beautiful park - larger than Central Park in NY but still smaller than Forest Park in St. Louis.  For our friends who have never visited St. Louis - if you ever go - you definitely need to visit Forest Park.  It is home to our amazing zoo, art and history museums, outdoor skating rink in the winter, largest outdoor music venue in the US plus an amazing amount of outdoor space to relax and enjoy.  We were fortunate to live within walking distance during our last years in St. Louis - it really is a gem.  But, back to Munich.  The English Gardens were established in 1789 taking land from the former royal hunting grounds to become one of the best urban parks in Europe - it is twice the size of  London's Hyde Park.

Here are some pictures from our time in the park.

Feeling wise in front of a statue of Konfuzius... :)

For our friends from St. Louis, this area reminded us of the boat house - they had a small restaurant on the water and also row boats you could rent to go out on the lake.

There is a Chinese tower and beer garden.  It is the second largest in Munich with ~7,000 seats.  When we walked by there was a band playing from one of the levels of the tower.

On the way to the park we discovered a close relative who didn't know how to correctly spell the name but was apparently important to Munich University :)

One of the biggest tourist attractions is the New Town Hall and Glockenspiel in Marienplatz.  The New Town Hall was built over 40 years staring in 1867 - it is huge.  It is over a football field long with 6 courtyards and 400 rooms.  A dominant feature is the 280 foot tall clock tower including the two story 28 foot tall Glockenspiel - the largest in Germany.  Every day at 11am and noon (also at 5pm in the summer) - the Glockenspiel comes to life with a "performance" re-enacting both the wedding ceremony of an early royal family from Munich and also the barrel dances.  The top level is the wedding.  The performance starts with dancers and entertainers who are then joined by two jousters.  The ceremony ends when one of the jousters "wins" :). The bottom level is the barrel dancers.  This recreates a performance done live every 7 years in the city of Munich.  It started after the Plague to try to get the public to come back outside and enjoy life.  Basically a group of men dress up in traditional garb and perform a dance with ribbons and barrels.  Two of them are designated as Reifenschwingers (hoop twirlers).  Each of them holds a wooden hoop with an indentation on the inside of the rim to hold a small glass of wine.  They twirl the hoop without spilling a drop - and are rewarded at the end by drinking the wine.  Next event will be Jan 2026 - book your tickets now :)

After watching the festivities, we went to a great German restaurant - Ratskeller for lunch - good food and cool atmosphere.

Here are some pictures from the city - lots of fountains, churches and towers.

Another iconic site is one of their 30 Maypoles - the one below is in the Viktualienmarkt which is a daily food market in the center of Munich.  It started as the original farmer's market for the city but has grown to over 140 stalls with a variety of food and drink including gourmet offerings.  The Maypole in the market is decorated for Oktoberfest which starts just a week from now.

A few fun facts about Oktoberfest that we learned during our visit.
 - It starts in mid September (better weather = more beer) and runs for 16 days through early October.
 - Only 6 breweries - all located within the Munich city boundaries - can participate.
 - There is a special Oktoberfest beer brewed by each of them - all the same - for the festivities.
 - You need a seat in a tent to be served a beer - but you do not need a reservation and there is no cost to enter the festival or any of the tents.  A big business has formed offering table reservations for $$ - and this will guarantee you a seat - but, if you plan early, you can reserve for $0 on your own.  Also, unless at peak time you can normally find a seat without a reservation.
  - The population of the city grows from 1.8M to 6M+ during Oktoberfest.
  - It is actually a family friendly event and there is a big festival area with rides and booths - the description said "think state fair" :)
  - The servers are paid based on the number of beers they serve - so they are motivated to both work hard and carry a lot!  The record is reportedly 16 liters at one time - crazy.
  - Our guide the other night told us that you can't "apply" to be a server at Oktoberfest - instead it is something that is handed down through the generations within families.  He also said that some of the servers can make almost $30k for just the two weeks of work.
  - All beer is sold as a liter - and last year over 7.5M liters of beer were consumed.
  - Here's a picture showing the Munich brewers that are included.

And a few more personal "fun facts" from our visit to Munich - they all start with a Polish blonde over 50 (that would be me!) - the jokes just write themselves :)
  - I was really bummed that my hair seemed to be very oily and heavy - I thought maybe I wasn't rinsing it well enough.  I then learned that the small bottle that said "shampooing conditioner" was really just conditioner - I thought it was shampoo + conditioner.  Instead, the shampoo was actually the same as the body wash - clean your body and clean your hair.  So, for a couple of days I was "washing" my hair only with the conditioner - oops!
  - The first day I was in the shower - and laughing as I couldn't get the water to come out of the shower head, then couldn't open the "shampooing conditioner", and finally couldn't get the pump to work on the body wash.  It was then Craig came running into the bathroom to let me know I was flooding the room.  Well..the shower head was pointed at me but also at the shower door - which unfortunately did not fully close (ever) - I was unaware.  By the time Craig noticed almost the entire bathroom floor was covered in water and it was seeping out to the next room.  Oops :)
  - Finally, the first day we came back to the room after the maids were in it none of the lights / outlets worked.  I was afraid I had blown a fuse plugging something in with one of our converters.  I told the front desk on our way out and when we came back that night all was good.  It stayed that way until yesterday when we came back - again after the maids - no lights / no power.  I was then convinced somehow they were blowing a fuse and deciding not to fix it.  I called the front desk to let them know - only to learn that there is a small switch right inside our room that turns on / off all of the electrical supply.  We're familiar with putting your room card in a slot to control the power - but were unaware of this special switch.  No doubt the front desk got a chuckle from "those silly Americans".  Oops :)

For our last day we had to visit one more beer garden.  We went to Paulaner which had a great outdoor area.  Craig had the classic Hefe-wizen and I tried it as a Dunkel - really yummy.  It felt like the perfect way to wrap up our visit to Munich.

Tomorrow we fly to Copenhagen - spending a week in Denmark which is where Craig has some family roots (more to come).  It's crazy how fast our time in Europe is going - we will be back home in less than a month.  So far it's been an amazing ride.

Hope you are all enjoying the ride.