Munich

The last stop on our trip was Munich and the rain arrived in town soon after we did.

The train didn’t take long to get to Munich - 299km/h was the highest reading we saw

It was fine when we went into the subway system but when we surfaced at our stop it was wet, fortunately our hotel was only a ten minute walk from the subway station.  It was too wet to go for an orientation walk so we relaxed for a few hours then went out for dinner at a nearby pub. It was a pub the locals frequent and our table for six was shared by 3 groups.  Us, two guys drinking beer and talking football and a couple there for a meal, they spoke good English.  We were told that strangers sharing tables is common practice and it made it a nice friendly atmosphere.

On our way back to the hotel, in spite of the rain, we walked an extra block to the English Garden to watch the surfers on a wave in the river.  This man made standing wave is on a small man made river that branches off the Isar river that flows nearby. It was unusual to be in the middle of a city and see surfers walking down the street, in their wetsuits and carrying their boards.  There were quite a few people walking in the park but unlike us most had umbrellas.

The next morning the weather appeared to be clearing so we set off with hopeful expectations.  We walked to the city centre, about 15 minutes away.  Marienplatz, a square in the city centre has been the city's main square since 1158.  The New City Hall, built 1867 to 1908, is on one side of the square and in its tower is a glockenspiel (clock) which plays three times a day.  During its first play of the day we were up the tower.   

We had gone inside the town hall, it's the city council and administration office building, and after we had wandered up a couple of stairways we were asked what we were looking for.   We said we were just looking around, thinking we may have wandered to where we shouldn't be, so were surprised to be told that at the end of the corridor we could get a lift up the tower.  

Inside the town hall

Inside the town hall

We were happy to pay a few euro to take us up eight levels to the tenth floor.  With cloud around we couldn't see as far as the alps but did have a nice view over the city.

We also had a view down on the crowd watching the glockenspiel.  It dates from 1908 and when it plays many of its 32 life sized figures move to the tune from 43 bells.  They reenact a royal wedding, jousting tournament and a ritualistic dance; it goes on for about fifteen minutes.

We decided we would like to see the clock play so spent an hour looking around the nearby shops.  After about half an hour the rain came bucketing down.  Al had an umbrella he'd claimed from the gutter the day before, serviceable but not without some faults and I scurried into a nearby shop to buy one.  At the appointed time of midday we sheltered in a shop doorway and watched the clock go through its paces.  In its time it was probably a wondrous thing but today it's perhaps more of a historical novelty.

We passed by the old town hall that was originally built from 1470 to 1480 then in 1877 and 1934 two gateways were added to allow traffic through.  Large portions of the town hall were destroyed in the war and restoration has followed the original design.

Munich was heavily damaged in WWII by allied bombing, there were 71 air raids over 6 years.  Only 2.5% of the city's buildings remained unscathed and about 45% were destroyed.  Many buildings have been rebuilt close to their original design.

We intended to walk in the park by the Isar river but by the time we got to the German museum, which is on an island in the river, it was too wet for walking to be enjoyable so we went into the museum. It's a science and technology museum and we had an hour and a half there before it closed, which wasn't long enough.  The exhibits were excellent, good displays, good variety and good information (most things had English translations).

Isar River

The next morning was showery but we set off to walk in the English Garden.  This one of the largest urban parks in the world and was created in 1789.  The park was given the name Englische Garten because it was laid out in the style of an English country park.

We passed by the surfers again and further into the park found a group of surfers on another wave.  By the time we got to the beer garden by the Chinese Tower our umbrellas were in use again.  This beer garden is Munich’s second largest with seating for 7000 but due to the rain and there being just a few people sheltering under the pagoda it lacked it's true atmosphere.   

It doesn’t look happy about the weather either

The Chinese tower (pagoda) is 25 meters high and was originally built in 1790.  It burned down in 1944 and has been rebuilt to the original design.

After a short stop at the beer garden for coffee and cake we continued walking along the paths and beside lovely mature trees.  As we continued further into the park the rain got heavier and although our umbrellas were doing a good job our legs were getting quite wet.  We saw some buildings nearby and looking for shelter we went over to them and found a

small sports complex with tennis courts, gym and restaurant.   Nobody was using the outside seats that were under a big umbrella so we made ourselves comfortable there for about half an hour until the rain eased.  We then walked back to our hotel via the park that's beside the Isar river.

For the next few hours we relaxed in our room while the weather slowly cleared and the sun was shining by the time we went out in the evening for a Bavarian beer and food tour.  Our evening started at the tour meeting point with a bottle of one of the local beers then we had a short subway ride to the Beer and Oktoberfest Museum.  This is in one of Munich's most historic buildings (standing since 1347) and undamaged in the war.

Before having a tour through the museum we sampled three beers, light (Helles), darker (Dunkel) and a wheat beer.  Next we caught a tram to the Hofbräukeller beer garden and restaurant where we had pretzels and bread with smoked sausage, white veal sausage, ham, pate and cheeses, washed down with a beer (at our expense).  

A short walk away was the Hofbrauhaus beer hall and restaurant.   This was opened in 1897 and some of it still stands today.  In 1944, during a bomb strike, much of the the building was destroyed and by the end of the war only a small portion of the restaurant was operational. It was rebuilt in its original style and the hall reopened in 1958, today it's popular with tourists.   We went into the ground level where there is seating for around 1000 people.  The area is huge and the noise from people talking was loud.  Add to that the sound of the oom-pah band and there is a lot going on.   

Our group of eleven decided it wasn't a place for us and crossed the square to the more congenial Augustiner pub where the others had a beer and Al and I just chatted as we were mindful of our eleven hour flight to Singapore the next day.

To break our journey home we had a 34 hour (one night) stopover in Singapore.  After arriving at our hotel and catching a few hours sleep we went for a walk in the Gardens by the Bay.  The project to create these gardens on reclaimed land started in 2007 and it's amazing how established the plants are today.

After a good night's sleep we had several hours to fill in before returning to the airport so went to the Botanical Gardens.  These gardens impressed us, they are well laid out and provided some welcome shade on a typical Singapore day, temperatures over 30 degrees.

Orchid garden

We saw several of these in the gardens

Bamberg

It took us two hours to go by bus from Weimar to Bamberg and as we had seats up top in a double decker bus we had a great view.  We started off by travelling through rolling hills with grain fields and wind turbines were a common sight.  About half way into the journey the hills got bigger and were covered in forest.  We crossed over many viaducts and went through quite a few tunnels.  The longest tunnel was 7.9 kilometres so it was a while before we saw the light at the end of that one!

Bamberg has a well preserved historic downtown area and its seven hills are each crowned with a church.  We climbed three of the hills and visited two of the churches.

The most impressive looking of the churches was the former Benedictine abbey of St Michael's.  The first abbey church was built there in about 1015 and the present one was consecrated in 1121 but it had major rebuilding work after a fire in 1610  From 1696  a baroque façade was added. From the downtown area the abbey dominates the skyline. 

Because of safety renovations we could only visit the grounds but I would have liked to see the church as its ceiling has paintings of over 570 different herbs and flowers.  I had to be satisfied with seeing a few photos.  We did have lovely views of the city from the abbey grounds.

The early 11th-century Bamberg Cathedral sits on another hill and inside it was plain in comparison with more modern cathedrals we have seen.

Opposite the cathedral is the 'New Residence’ another building with several periods of construction.  We visited a wing added from 1568 and baroque wings added from 1697 - 1703.  In these times the head of the church was also the city ruler and he lived like a prince.  The residence was like a palace in both size and in interior decoration.

The architecture detail (cornice, balustrade etc) is all painted . In reality from the wall to the ceiling it's a curved surface.

The third hill we climbed was to go to a brewery restaurant that sells the local smoked beer (rauchbier), this place had been recommended to us.  When we got there we found it was closed (on a Monday) so had to settle for the beer downtown along with the local speciality of pigs knuckle with a potato dumpling.

The Old Town Hall is in the middle of a bridge and has frescoes on the walls depicting the (tall) tale of how the building came to be built on the island.  A town hall has been located here as far back as 1386 and the existing structure was built between 1744-1756.

Near the town hall bridge was Little Venice with its quaint old fishermen's houses.

In the cities we have visited there are many cycleways along the streets and bikes are common.

Cycleway between the footpath and the parked cars

Secure parking at the train station 

Weimar

Our three hour train trip took us along a valley with wooded hills on each side and we could see many small towns on the lower slopes. The houses appeared to be built to much the same plan, two stories with another level under a step pitched roof, most had white walls and orange roofs.  

In Weimar our apartment was in an old falconry bordering a cemetery and having trees around us was a nice change from inner city apartments.

Weimar has a proud cultural heritage with literary names of Goethe and Schiller ( I can't say I had heard of these two but the town has archives of their works) and musical names of Liszt and Straus having lived and worked in the city.

In 1929 Weimar became a centre for Nazism and Adolf Hitler visited the city more than forty times prior to 1933.  In 1937 the Nazis established Buchenwald concentration camp, only eight kilometres from Weimar city centre, the first inmates being political opponents, criminals and Jehovah's Witnesses. In 1938 Jews from Germany and Austria came to the camp then hundreds of Sinti Gypsies. Between July 1938 and April 1945, some 240,000 people were incarcerated in the camp and the number of deaths is estimated at 56,545.  The Buchenwald concentration camp provided slave labour for local industry and an armament factory was established at Buchenwald.

The Weimar city centre was partially damaged by US Air Force bombing in 1945 with some 1,800 people killed and many historic buildings destroyed. Many of the destroyed buildings were restored soon after the war because of their importance in German cultural history.

On our walk in Weimar we enjoyed walking in the large pedestrian areas and admired the old buildings, some perhaps restored and some maybe original.  

This building was destroyed in WWII and when it was rebuilt the historical façade was restored. It has been owned by the council since 1422 and the building has been put to a number of different uses over the centuries.  Apparently there is a tunnel connecting it to  the Town Hall across the square.

The town hall

The cemetery near our apartment was beautifully kept with many plots having flowering plants and large trees lined the paths.  In the centre there was a crypt and small chapel and there was also a Russian Orthodox chapel.

The Dukes palace had several fires in its long history and the current palace was built after a fire in 1774.  The building now houses a museum.

Old palace gate and tower 

Old palace from the park

Palace inner courtyard 

National theatre 

We visited Buchenwald where some of the camp buildings still exist and the layout of many other buildings was marked out on the ground.  

There was an excellent display covering many aspects of camp life from prisoner and guard points of view.  

Main gate and guard house 

Where the prison wires once fenced them in.

The dark stone shows the outline of some of the prisoners barracks 

The visit was a thought provoking experience and it left us wondering how such atrocities could be allowed to happen.  Similar things still happen in the world today so mankind hasn't learnt as much from the past as we would like.