Germany: Day 2

Saturday morning we had to get up fairly early so Seth's co-worker would have time to drop us off at the train station before he caught his flight back to the U.S. This meant we arrived there an hour earlier than we really needed to.

Then of course in spite of all the extra time we very nearly missed our train to Munich. That's because they switched tracks at the last minute and it confused Seth and I greatly. We noticed the signs finally and asked an employee and finally got on the train about a minute before it left. We sat down in some nearby seats and congratulated ourselves on figuring it out in time.

Obviously we congratulated ourselves too soon because a few stops in we realized the seats were assigned and we were in the totally wrong part of the train. This only happened because a whole bunch of people came in our car and started pointing at the numbers above the seats and talking in confused voices and looking at us weirdly. Slightly embarrassing. We asked a passing conductor to help us decipher our German ticket and eventually made our way to the right seats. Luckily the rest of the two-hour journey was uneventful, unless you count running into a huge crowd of LDS missionaries on the same train going to see President Monson for a conference. And I thought we wouldn't see any Mormons on our trip...

Waiting in the Marienplatz for our tour to start. Be warned: I will make this forced-smile face in every picture Seth insists on taking of me.

Once in Munich, we stashed our luggage at the train station (since we couldn't check into our hotel until 3) and then got some lunch before heading over to the main square (the Marienplatz) of Munich for a 3-hour walking tour of the city. It was AWESOME.

Here are some of our favorite stories and things we learned.
(If any information is wrong you can blame our tour guide and/or our bad memories)
Much of the city was destroyed during World War II. The Nazis, knowing that Munich would likely be the focus of heavy bombing, went through beforehand and took thousands of meticulous pictures of everything. As a result they were able to rebuild most of the city to look the same. Possibly one of the only good things the Nazis did.

The famed Glockenspiel of Neues Rathaus (New Townhall). See here if you want more information. Not quite as exciting to watch as I thought it would be, but at least I can say I have seen it in real life.

This is the New Townhall built in the 1800s. It survived the bombings of WWII. It was designed to look old and medieval.

The Altes Rathaus (Old Townhall) was built in the 1400s but was destroyed in the war. It was designed to look new. So the new is old and the old is new, as our tour guide explained. Makes sense.

Part of Peterskirche (St. Peter's church). Do you see the cannonball? (It is on the right above the arched window) It was lodged there during a war with Sweden in the 1600s. During the bombings of WWII St. Peter's was badly damaged and the cannonball fell out of the brick wall. A citizen found it and saved it and after the war when the church was rebuilt, he gave it back to be lodged in the wall again. It's encased in concrete now.

The other side of St. Peter's. The tower (known as Alte Peter - Old Peter) has a sightseeing platform on the top - if you look closely you can see the people on it just beneath the green section.
There are two clocks on each side of the tower for a total of eight clocks. Our guide told us a supposedly classic German joke: Why does St. Peter's clock tower have eight clocks? Answer: So eight people can tell the time simultaneously.
I didn't get it either.

A statue of Juliet outside the Altes Rathaus that France gave to Munich. Can you tell which part of her you're supposed to rub for good luck? Apparently you're supposed to leave some flowers in exchange for groping her (you can see some in the crook of her arm) but I'm not sure how often that happens.

The National Theater - originally a monastery for monks. It burned down and was remade into the theater. The Hofbrauhaus (a famous beer hall) is only a couple blocks from this building. Because they did not have enough water anywhere close to kill the fire, they ran to the Hofbrauhaus and recruited men to pass barrels of beer along a human chain to douse the flames. The men would pass a barrel along and then of course set one aside for themselves. Eight barrels made it and about one hundred-fifty-ish barrels of beer disappeared in the two blocks between the buildings. The monastery burned down.

They turned it into the National Theater after that. Pretty much all the monks in Munich were in the business of making beer and the original ones here were the same - the only difference being that their recipe for beer was stolen from another monastery they had burned down to put them out of business and cover up their thievery. So far the National Theater has burned down four times and legend is that it is punishment for the crime of the original monks.

The copper stones on this street are a tribute to the German Resistance. This is a small street in between two main ones. I don't remember exactly where or what the names were unfortunately, but many men took the main roads to work. On the main street (that you can't see closer to us) was a plaque commemorating the Nazi party and those walking by were required to make the Hitler salute, enforced by Nazi guards positioned there. Many Germans simply took the farther main street to avoid this, but some courageous men would take that first route and then purposely turn down this little side street just before the plaque in defiance of that rule.
In retaliation, the Nazi party stationed someone just inside the archway (middle right side where the copper ends) to pick up these rebels and they would be taken to a concentration camp (usually Dachau). These copper stones are a tribute to the path these men took to show their resistance to the Nazi party. Very touching.

The Theatine church. One of my favorite buildings in Munich and I loved the story behind it. The King at the time had six daughters and he wanted an heir to his throne. He enlisted a monk at the monastery to pray for one week straight that he would have a baby boy in nine months time and in return the King would give him anything he wanted. Nine months later the boy of course was born and the monk asked for a church in his favorite color - yellow. We didn't go inside but apparently the monk also insisted everything inside be absolutely white.

For some reason we did not take a picture of the Hofbrauhaus the entire week we were there. Whoops. Munich is obviously famous for its beer though (Oktoberfest, anyone?). Our tour guide gave us some statistics on beer drinking in Bavaria - the region where Munich is located:
Germany taken as a whole is only #4 when it comes to liters of beer drunk per person per year (The Czech Republic is #1). However, when you separate Bavaria from the rest of Germany, it easily rises to the #1 spot. Bavarians drink almost twice as much beer as the Czech Republic. (I don't remember the numbers exactly but it's something like 200 liters compared to 100 liters) The rest of Germany falls to #22. Also, Seth can't get over the fact that construction workers there are allowed to drink up to 5 liters of beer on the job.
Bavarians like their beer.

I debated writing about the Hofbrauhaus and its original lack of bathrooms and issues with where men were supposed to relieve themselves (hint: on the floor) but for now you will be spared that amusing little anecdote our tour guide told us.

There are other things we saw but these are the only pictures we took on the actual tour. Other sites we went back and visited later on in the week so I will write about them later.


After our tour we grabbed some sandwiches at the Hauptbahnhof, got our luggage and went to our hotel - only two blocks away. We then went out to a little grocery store down the street to get some food for breakfast for the next few days.
Everything was delicious except for the apple juice we bought because it was both watery and carbonated. I swear, in Germany if it's not alcoholic then it has to be carbonated. Even the water.