Munich, Germany
A busy day, looking around town, visiting the market and exploring the zoo. During our travels we noticed lots of young people dressed in traditional Dirndl and Lederhosen. After a while we realised that they were celebrating ‘Little Oktoberfest’, the spring equivalent of the famous beer festival.
On the central front tower of the Town Hall is the Rathaus-Glockenspiel – a clock made up of 43 bells and 32 life-size figures – chimes and re-enacts two 16th century stories (one of a marriage and jousting context and the other of couples dancing in the streets), every day at 11 am, 12 pm and 5 pm (the last in the summer only). The end of the show is heralded by the quiet chirping of a small golden rooster above the pageant. The crowds start gathering 15 minutes before each event, with everyone jostling for the best view and camera angles.
The Munich Town Hall (actually the New Town Hall) in Marienplatz is an amazing building, constructed in various sections over 40 years from 1867 to 1905. Inspirations for the designs came from the City Halls in Brussels and Vienna. Parts of the complex is open to visitors, including a lift to an upper balcony for a view across the city. The interior of the building is a maze of courtyards, tiled corridors, carved stairways, stained-glass windows and vaulted ceilings.
The Munich Cathedral (Munchner Dom) or The Church of Our Dear Lady (Frauenkirche) was built from 1468 to 1488. Its twin towers at 98 m tall are the tallest in town because city administration rules limit buildings in the middle of the city to 99 m height. The interior is so big that it was built to accomodate 20,000 standing people, which was remarkable for the time, as the city of Munich only had a population of 13,000.
Munich has lots of churches and we visited a couple during the day. The first was the Asam Church (Church of St Johann Nepomuk) – a Late Baroque building built 1733 to 1746 as a private chapel for the Asam brothers, Eqid Quirin – a sculptor and Cosmos Damian – a painter. The church is only 8 m wide and 22 m deep and sits in a main street between commercial buildings and terrace houses. It could be easily missed as just an elaborate shop front. The interior is incredibly ornate with its walls, columns and balconies covered in mosaics, frescos and statues. Its architecture was designed to have its communicants sitting in the lower, subdued coloured and darker levels (representative of the sufferings of earth), royalty sitting in the middle levels surrounded by the blues and whites of their rank and the brightly lit, ethereal ceiling paintings of heaven and eternity. Like many other European churches it was clearly still in use on a daily basis.
We also visited St Peters Church (also known as Alter Peter – Old Pete) which was bright and white and gold gilded throughout. The original church on the site was destroyed by fire in 1327 and the second church was severely damaged during WWII. With various rebuilding programs, the church is a mixture of Gothic, Baroque, Rococo and Renaissance styles.
The Viktualienmarkt (Victuals Market) in Munich is highlighted by a tall Maypole with figurettes of trades and crafts. Up to 140 colourful stalls selling flowers, meat, cheese, eggs, fish, fruit and vegetables, butter, honey, wine and many other food items. Also craft stalls, where we bought Katie a miniature bird house mobile and an outdoor bird wind chime for her garden.
Our afternoon was spent at the Munich Zoo (Tierpark Hellabrun). Set in 40 ha of lovely and extensive woodland alongside the Isar River. Many of the enclosures are unfenced with only a system of moats to contain the animals, which gives a sense of openness and naturalness. We were met at the gates by a pair of wonderfully carved ibex statues. With almost 770 species, many of rare and endangered animals and with programs of breeding, reintroduction and conservation, it is one of best zoos we have visited. Many families were enjoying the space, little ones being pulled in 4 wheeled trolleys on riding strider bikes or scooters. The space was very child friendly with numerous adventure playgrounds. The main cafe/restaurant was large and centrally located with a great variety of hot and cold foods. Environmentally friendly serving dishes were used throughout the zoo and a deposit system encouraged the return of the reusable coffee cups.
Among the highlights of our visit was seeing the Javan Rhinoceros with their plate-like hides trying to negotiate turns in and out the doors of their house, a Sloth relaxing on a rope ladder above our heads, a Takin with its playful calf, Polar Bears trying to extract fish from a block of ice and a pair of male Lions roaring at a passing plane. Of particular interest to Austin was the herd of Heck Cattle (reconstructed Aurochs).
Back to our digs and on to our local restaurant for dinner. We got chatting to an Australian couple, the husband of whom was a lecturer at Monash University and over for a visit to the Technical University of Munich to look at entrepreneurial projects in engineering. There appears to be lots of philanthropists in Germany, willing to fund ideas with potential future applications – something we sadly lack in Australia.
