Marcelle's Blog: Vacation part 2: Munich

MUNICH

After a nice stay in Salzburg, Adelene and I hopped on a train to Munich. We arrived in pouring rain and a temperature of 13 degrees. Awful! After settling in at the hotel, we ventured out to try and see something anyways, and also to hunt down our dinner. We ended up at Hofbräuhaus, a famous beer hall in Munich. It was great: big noisy hall filled with long wooden tables you shared with strangers, waiters carrying platters of sausages and 1-litre beer servings, girls in dirndls wandering through selling pretzels, even en oompapah band!

On Saturday morning we took our time getting up and ready to go, and arrived at BMW World mid-morning. The headquarters of BMW are in Munich, as is their museum and one of their factories. BMW World is the equivalent of a nature interpretive centre for cars. There were interactive exhibits of BMW features, accessories and safety measures. There were displays of motorcycles and of this year's models, including what they called the "summer collection" - all convertibles. There was even a little motorcycle stunt show on the staircases and in the hallways of the building. There is also a floor dedicated to people picking up their newly purchased vehicle. BMW makes an event out of it: first the new, polished and primed car is is driven out to the display floor. Then the clients walk down a staircase to the fabulous sight of their new car gleaming under spotlights on a rotating platform. They then continue down to stand next to their car, grinning madly while a professional photographer takes a picture of them. Then, the customer rep walks them through all the features in their car. Finally, they get in, drive a victory lap around the showcase floor, then down a ramp and out they go! And everyone else in BMW World can watch clients receiving their cars, it's kind of fun. While I was there, I tried out a top-of-the-line motorcycle. Fun, but it's not for me.

We had one one specific plan for the Munich area, and that was to see Neuschwanstein Castle. This is a famous castle, it's very pretty so it's in all the calendars etc. It was also the inspiration for Sleeping Beauty's castle in Disneyland. We set off with a tour bus on Sunday morning, to see Linderhof palace and then Neuschwanstein. Linderhof was built by King Ludwig II of Bavaria, who lived there as a recluse until he was declared insane. He was removed to Munich where he died under "mysterious circumstances". Anyways, the palace is very small, but very ornate, modelled on Versailles.

The weather had been lovely while we were at Linderhof. But of course, as soon as we headed to Neuschwanstein, which was our real goal for the day, the sky couded over and it began to rain... no, I mean to pour! When we got there, we had lunch in the village to let the worst of the rain pass, as it was a 40-minute hike up the mountain to the actual castle. We ended up taking a kind of shuttle bus most of the way up and then ran the rest of the way to get to our tour on time. The inside of the castle was completely different from the other castles, residences etc we had seen. It was more "castle romanticism" in style (rather than over the top rococo). The images in the many rooms depict the medieval legends used by Wagner in his operas. The overall effect is theatrical, very much a fairy-tale castle, which is appropriate as Mad King Luydwig II had it built s a place for him to escape into his dreams. Adelene and I loved this castle and were so happy to have been able to see it, as we both had wanted to for years. We would have liked to stay longer, but weather and tour group limited our time there.

On Monday, guess what? The sun came out - no wonder, we weren't trying to get anywhere, especially not up a mountain! :-) We went for a long walk around Munich, into the Englischer Garten and to the Chinesicher Turm. We had lunch there, then wandered back into the old town before picking up our things and heading to the train station.

Once again, here are a few random shots we took along the way:

Giant Austrian Humpty Dumpty, playing it safe by sitting on a bench instead of a wall: