Happy Holidays!

It's Christmas Day, for those who celebrate. It's our second holiday season away from the States, and boy how time flies. It seems like just yesterday that we were spending a quiet (and cold) Christmas in Cork, Ireland's other capital.

But looking back, so much has happened since that little holiday away. We've checked off a number of other travel destinations, like Belgium, Derry, Munich, Prague, and Scotland. If it counts as a travel destination, we visited our families back in Iowa and New York.

Family has come from America to see us in Galway, Mayo, and County Clare (writings of those trips coming soon).

I've accomplished a number of personal goals, finally pushing "publish" on my free eBook, and it's been very successful so far. The downloads creep up slowly each day, and as it becomes available on more platforms, I know it will grow. I hope to continue promoting and updating the book as the new year begins.

I'm well into writing my second book, pumping out my daily writing quota without much trouble. Instead of spending those hours every day on new blog content, I feel like I'm getting a better product with longform, pictureless, personal essays. Hopefully the new year will see another book on my e-bookshelf.

We hope you are kickin' it with someone you love this holiday season, whichever holidays you celebrate. If you are away from your close family and friends like we are, we feel you. Try to spend some time connecting with them with this amazing world wide web through which you're reading my words now.

Best wishes for a safe and happy holiday season and new year to all!

Cory and Sara

Cong, Co. Mayo
(Photo: Keri Hanson)

An Irish Year in Tourism

Before moving to Ireland, Cory and I were not completely inexperienced in navigating new places. I wouldn't say that we are worldly or seasoned travelers, but we had some shared domestic and international travel experiences under our belts (including our Farewell to America Road Trip in the weeks before our departure). To quote Rick Steves, our favorite travel writer, "travel is intensified living". For better or worse, you learn a lot about yourself and your travel companions in the course of an extended trip far from home.

I have learned a couple things about myself in traveling, the primary lesson being that it brings my type A personality to the forefront. I am a planner. A spreadsheet-making, travel-book-reading, list-writing, budget-generating planner. I try really hard to roll with the punches while traveling, but for me an hour spent lost in a train station is an hour I won't spend walking through the gardens of Versailles or drinking beer while listening to live polka music or eating gelato while watching gondolas wind through canals. It's an almost unbearable loss for me and it drives me to ambitiously fill our schedule to the brim. Traveling this way is exhausting, but I fear retrospective trip regret far too much to risk missing out on a must-see sight. 

All of that preamble is merely meant to explain why one of my most difficult transitions upon moving to Ireland was actually living in Ireland. For at least a month (maybe longer) I was unable to just be at home on an evening or weekend. We were in a foreign country! There are new and exciting places to see! Museums to visit! Shouldn't we be drinking Guinness or walking up a grassy hill spotted with sheep? Listening to trad music? Touring a castle? We couldn't just relax at home! We were wasting time! 

It's fortunate for me that I brought a patient companion who was able to tolerate my manic bursts of travel-hunger. Someone to talk me down and convince me that since we would be here for awhile we had plenty of time. There was no need to spend every available moment sightseeing, and we should take breaks from the spreadsheets every now and then. It took some time for that mindset to sink in, but fortunately for both of us it finally did. 

Traveling abroad is constantly exciting and exhilarating. Living abroad is not. It can't be. At some point, the surroundings and local colloquialisms become familiar...and thank goodness they do. Don't get me wrong, life in Ireland is interesting. We continue to learn new things about Irish history, culture, and politics while we are slowly crossing off items on our list of Irish places to visit, but I definitely feel like we have settled in. Work, chores, and weekly errands all have to be done. The mundane aspects of life exist here just as they do in the U.S., and sometimes I can spend a weekend at home binging on Orange is the New Black without feeling like I'm losing out on travel experiences. 

"Intensified living" cannot be a permanent state of being. We strive to keep a balance between accomplishing all of the tasks required of us as functioning adults and taking advantage of our location and situation as much as we can. Since moving to Ireland, we have always had at least one trip planned for our near future, and think that if we continue at our pace we will be able to look back on our time spent here without regret. 

For anyone interested in our last year of Irish travels, check out the blog posts about sights around Dublin, Northern Ireland, Cork, Trim Castle, Howth, and Newgrange. For our trips around Europe, see posts about Munich and Prague (and stay tuned for Belgium).

A Bird's-Eye View of Munich

Gettin' High

One of our goals in every city we visit is getting a bird's-eye view of the place. We prefer to do this after having seen most of the city. This way, we can actually identify the places we've seen from the ground. High city views are wonderful anytime, but we like the feeling of saying "Ohh! There it is!"  

On our last morning in Munich, we were ready for that high view, and it was just a quick walk from our hostel back to the old town center. St. Peter's Church was on our walking tour just outside of Marienplatz. It is not only the oldest standing church in town, but it is also the cheapest and most convenient bell tower view. 

St. Peter's Church Tower

The Climb

We paid our piddly 2 Euro and were on our way up the 306 (!) steps in no time. The climb was a mix of narrow stone spiral steps and replaced wooden steps of varying steepness. Wide platforms every few stories allowed ascending and descending visitors to give way and pass each other. The steps were too narrow to comfortably allow passing of two-way traffic.

St. Peter's Steps

Looking Down

The View

The climb (both ways...) was totally worth it for the view we enjoyed at the top. Munich has that red-roof charm through the whole of the old city. I'm sure the suburbs look like any other big city suburbs, but the slight mist in the air this day thankfully shielded us from these distant eyesores.

Away from Marienplatz

New Town Hall and Odeonsplatz, the Yellow Building

Way off in the distance, we could see silhouettes of skyscrapers in the commercial and industrial part of town. This would probably be where most real Munich residents live and work, but it wouldn't have any romantic appeal to tourists. Closer to these skyscrapers, we could see the Munich Olympic Park tower. Munich found a way to preserve much of the 1972 Olympics facility as a public park. The tower in the photo reportedly has another high view of Munich, but it is much more expensive and requires a train ride to and from the old city. No, thank you.

Olympic Tower in the Distance

More Red Roofs

Frauenkirch (left),  Olympic Tower (distant center), New Town Hall (right),
Odeonsplatz (right edge)

We were glad we waited until we'd already seen the sights in old town Munich. Seeing them from a height gave a much better sense of scale on these buildings we had craned our necks to see from the ground.

Munich is much better suited to a high view than, say, Dublin. Much as we've tried, we can't seem to find a really stunning angle of Dublin. We mostly attribute this to Dublin's relative lack of distinctive tall buildings. Most of the important social and historical sights in Dublin are at ground level in shorter buildings. The charming treasure of Temple Bar looks like a bunch of 1970's urban renewal tarpaper roofs from a distance. The Guinness Storehouse has a nice 360 degree look at Dublin with helpful labels on the glass pointing out historic locations, but Dublin just doesn't have the same visual punch as these Continental cities.

After our look at Munich, it was time to move on to the next city on our long weekend Continental jaunt.

Augustiner Beer Hall Munich

Oh yeah! Another beer hall.

That's right, after our English Garden adventure, we spend the evening at yet another beer hall. This one, less famous than Hofbrauhaus, was our far-and-away favorite. Augustiner is another of Munich's famous breweries, and their beer hall is just a bit outside the bustling, touristy old town. We had a bit of a walk from our hostel through the darkened city, but it was worth it.

Augustiner Dunkels

The atmosphere was much like Hofbrauhaus, with fewer international visitors like ourselves- and no polka band. German- not English- was the primary language spoken by the drinkers and the servers. The lack of touristy cache was also reflected in the prices of beers here, about 25% less than Hofbrauhaus. The dunkel (dark) lagers were an amazing start.

We were hungry for a sweet snack, so we shared an apple strudel.

Apple Strudel

We also sampled the rest of the standard German brewery lineup: the wheat beer and the helles (light but not lite, right?). Both were our German favorites in their category, and did I mention cheap?

Augustiner Wheat

Augustiner Helles

After sampling the full lineup, it was time to make our way back. Sadly, this would be the last beer hall we visited in Munich, but it gets our highest recommendation. Hofbrauhaus was good for a laugh, but Augustiner is a place that we could have settled down for a full night. When we make it back to Munich, this will be our first stop.

Munich's English Garden

After finishing our Rick Steves walk, we were as close as we would ever be to Munich's famous English Garden (Englischer Garten). We still had time and some daylight, so we continued north from the royal square on our way to the largest and most famous urban park on the Continent.

We only visited a portion of the whole park in our hour-plus walking visit. The park is larger than New York's Central Park, with only a fraction of the drug addicts! 

The first and most noticeable feature (for me) was the network of streams flowing through the park. Fascinatingly, the streams are all artificial, supplied by underground pumps. I saw a number of what I assumed were the famed Bavarian Trout in these streams, but after finding out they weren't indigenous streams, decided they were probably farm-raised stocked brown trout. Several ponds and small lakes collect water at the termini of the streams, possibly for recollection and recirculation by the pumps? Those clever German engineers!

On a small island in one of the ponds sits a Japanese Teahouse, built in honor of the 1972 Munich Olympics. A traditional Japanese garden occupies the rest of the island around the teahouse.

Obligatory Cory-Looking-at-the-Water Shot

More Water and the Japanese Teahouse

We were looking for two things specifically, in no particular order.

1. The Chinese Tower
2. The beer garden near the Chinese Tower

In our search for the center of the park, we passed a Greek-inspired temple, the Monopteros. It was built on the site of an old wooden temple to Apollo that sat on the spot. If we had more time and daylight, we might have popped in. As it was, we were on another quest for beer, so onward we went.

The Monopteros

As we walked, we couldn't help but be enchanted by the beautiful, clear, cold, trout-filled water of the streams all over the park. It goes without saying the these human-made streams were crossed with artful bridges and waterfalls. Heck, if you have a chance to build a stream, wouldn't you take every advantage to make it attractive?

Small Waterfall

More Water

The most striking sight on the streams is the surfers. Yes, surfers. Just downstream of the powerful pumps supplying the stream, a permanent wave is formed by the rushing water. Local surfers in insulating wetsuits catch the pipeline (is that the correct phrase?) and ride the wave as long as they can. When they inevitably wipe out (I'm pretty sure that's the scientific way to say it) they are washed downstream to a climb-out zone for another try. Emily got a good close up shot of the surfers waiting in line for a chance to dive into the chilly water.

Surfers

Now for that beer and food. We made it to the center of the park! Where's that beer garden? What!? Closed? NOOOO!

We arrived just as they were making final pours and closing up the service windows. We could see the last few stragglers finishing their food (cheap and delicious sausages) and big liters of beer at the tables, but alas, we couldn't avail ourselves of a single drop.

Dejected, we left the center of the park without even taking a picture of the Chinese Tower on our way to the exit. We were losing daylight and didn't want to be in even this inviting park when the sun went down. 

Back in town, we found a little pub/eatery called Jodlerwirt (Yodeling Innkeeper) and had a nice wheat beer and sausage. Yes sausage... beautiful sausage.

After finally getting our food and beer, we took another little night jaunt through town before visiting yet another beer hall. Don't worry, we let some time pass between the pub and the beer hall!

...A little bit...

Munich City Walk Part II

After the singular experience that was Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site, we returned to Munich to finish the walking tour we couldn't quite finish the night before.

We hit up one of the many roasted nut carts on our way to the walk for some caramelized-sugar-covered hazelnuts. These nut carts are everywhere in the touristy part of Munich, and a handful of hot, sweet nuts makes a great snack.

Roasted Hazelnuts

The walk continues with the more elegant royal neighborhood of Munich. For a long time before modern Germany, Munich was the capital of a small independant country of Bavaria. This small country was led by a dynasty of kings, with the first big name being Max-Joseph, for whom this square and a glitzy street (Maximilianstrasse) are named. The Residenz royal palace encircles much of this square. 

(Encircles the square...?)

Max-Joseph-Platz

On a side street on the way to Odeonsplatz sits a small but tasteful memorial to Hitler's Beer Hall Putsch, his first unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the German government. The cobbles are painted gold to represent spilled beer and later the spilled blood from Hitler's attempted seizure.

Beer Hall Putsch Memorial Spill

Beyond the Putsch Memorial is Odeonsplatz, with its grand yellow-gold church Theatinerkirche. The grand square leads off to two of Munich's long boulevards. Museums, monuments, galleries, and palaces line the square and the adjoining streets.

Odeonsplatz Church

Behind Odeonsplatz is the Hofgarten, literally the Royal Garden. It was built by the royal family and is now a beautiful urban public park. Well-manicured hedges line straight gravel pathways as they connect a series of flower beds and fountains. Visiting as we were in March, the fountains weren't on and the flowers were still sleeping. Despite being south of Ireland's latitude, Southern Germany has a real winter with freezing temperatures well into Spring. Fountains all over town were covered with wooden caps, presumably to insulate them from the freezing nights.

Hofgarten Paths

Odeonsplatz from Hofgarten

Thus ended our official, two-day-spanning Rick Steve's walking tour. The day was still not over, even after battling train tickets, visiting the concentration camp, and finishing our walking tour, there was still more to do and more time to do it. 

Dachau Concentration Camp

After making sense of our train tickets in Munich, we arrived at our primary destination for our only full day in Munich, Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site. The camp is named for the small town in which it was built. The site is managed and maintained by the government as a permanent memorial to what happened there.

The Memorial Site is free to enter and explore. Most of the buildings in the camp are open for visitors to see and examine. A very thorough museum occupies the large former camp administration building. During our half-day visit, we only had time to carefully read the interpretive materials of half of the museum. A short documentary movie on a rotation of several languages plays throughout the day.

In the museum I learned much that I had never heard in history classes. The exhibits begin with the timeline of Hitler's early political activism and ultimate rise to power, and are very explicit and direct with information. Seemingly no effort has been made to mitigate the horrors of the camps or excuse the people involved. Particularly disturbing were photographs blown up to life size of inmates being subjected to physical experiments, most of which caused death. The Nazis used prisoners to test the limits of human endurance and tolerance to high altitude, rapid changes in barometric pressure, and extreme hot and cold temperatures.

Dachau was among the very first Nazi camps, and was initially used to hold political dissidents. The location was selected so near Munich because the Nazis first took political hold in Bavaria and Southern Germany. It was later used to imprison the undesirable people captured in Germany's seizure of Europe. It was never used as a mass-extermination camp, but there was no shortage of killing and mistreatment in the camp.

After the museum, visitors can explore some of the remaining and reconstructed buildings. A long bunker was built like a traditional jail with individual cells for special or high-profile inmates. Two of the barracks bunkhouses have been reconstructed, and a large empty stretch of dirt and gravel lined with trees shows just how many identical bunkers like this sat in two rows in the camp. Visitors can walk in a replica of the barracks to see beds, bathrooms, and wooden lockers for camp uniforms and personal effects.

Beyond the barracks and the long empty space is a row of religious memorials and prayer shrines. Four unique structures welcome Jews, Catholics, Protestants, and Russian Orthodox visitors to pray or meditate. Beyond the prayer shrines is a working convent on the premises of the camp.

Near the religious shrines is a small building housing gas chambers and the camp crematorium. The gas chambers were built and functional but were reportedly never used as they were in other camps. The crematorium was in use, often round-the-clock. During the height of the war, camps ran short of wood and coal to fuel the crematoriums.

Don't look for political opinions here from me. This isn't the venue. I can and will say that the camp was presented and preserved very carefully and tastefully. I have to admire that the officials assembling the interpretive displays were so frank and candid about what their own parents and grandparents did.

One might wonder how we could have enjoyed any more of our trip after visiting such a sad place. We wondered, too. After visiting, though, I was less depressed and more hopeful than I had thought. At the camp we saw student groups from countries all over the world, other cargo-shorts-wearing-and-big-camera-toting tourists like us, and elderly people for whom the camp would have much more meaning. I saw what I think was a WWII veteran in a wheelchair with his family. They were gathered around a huge map of Nazi-occupied Europe with the name and location of every concentration camp marked. The old man was showing his family where he had been during his service in the war. That so many people, young and old, were traveling to see and learn from the past was very inspiring, and we were able to leave without the crushing weight of depression and despair.

Photo note-

I have decided not to include any of our photos of the camp in the post. A very nice photo gallery from Dachau can be found on the Wikipedia entry for the camp and memorial site if you want to see photos of the buildings and places described here.

Train Ticket Follies

"Validate your ticket."

"Make sure to stamp your train ticket."

"Big fines for unstamped train tickets..."

What does all that mean? We nearly found out the very hard way after our first full night in Munich. We both grew up in small cities without large public transport systems, making us mild metro noobs. Not that we've never used a large public transit system. All three of us (Sara, our friend Emily, and myself) had used buses, trains, and trams in the States and in Europe before, but we ran into a bit of a wrinkle in Germany...

In Munich, we were hoping to catch an early train to Dachau to visit the concentration camp. The cheaper-than-can-be-believed Partner Ticket was our best and cheapest option, so we purchased the ticket at one of the many handy automated kiosks. Our Rick Steves guidebook instructed us to get the ticket validated, but we misunderstood that page in our scan of the book, as we were distracted by...

Construction at the station. The train station that served the overland (S-Bahn) and underground (U-Bahn) trains was under renovation and some signage and track labeling were incorrect. We were waiting on a platform for our Dachau train for 25 minutes, and no train of our number arrived. We kept seeing the same line served over and over. Finally, we asked for help and were directed to another platform on the other end of the station.

We arrived just in time for the train to arrive. Relieved, I whipped out our travel book again and reread the instructions to validate our ticket. Confusingly, some tickets need to be validated and others do not. We are cheap, so of course we purchased an out-of-date book, no fault of the book, but we needed to figure out what to do... and fast.

Our train was at the platform and boarding. I grabbed a total stranger to ask about the ticket. He said (in his best English, God bless him!) that we indeed would have to validate the ticket. Unfortunately, he didn't know where the closest stamping machine might be. He directed us back downstairs, telling us to run as fast as we could.

What is validating a ticket? Also sometimes called canceling, this puts a time and date stamp on the ticket before use. It was confusing to us, because we purchased a day-long ticket with the date printed clearly on the ticket itself. Clearly if any ticket would not need an additional time and date stamp, it would be this one.

Timestamp: 0016 22 1035

Still a bit baffling to us, apparently this system of ticket validation limits misuse of tickets. Trains in Munich don't have turnstiles or gates. Riders purchase tickets, validate them, and carry them onto the train. Passengers are checked randomly on the trains by plainclothes transport agents, who issue stiff fines for anyone with no ticket- or with a legitimate ticket that hasn't been validated. According to the book, the touristy, "I didn't know!" means nothing to the rail operators.

So off we ran in search of a ticket puncher, not entirely sure if we would know one if we saw one. Before we had gone very far, Sara spotted an unmarked blue box with what looked like a ticket slot. We were unsure of what this box would do. If we put the ticket in the slot, would it be stamped as hoped, or would it suck in the ticket for some unknown purpose, leaving us bereft, out the cash, and waiting for the next train?

Boldly, Sara grabbed the ticket, pushed it into the slot, and prayed. The high-pitched squeal of a dot-matrix printer told us all we needed to know. The ticket came out correctly stamped, and it was a footrace to beat the closing doors of the train.

We dove into the train just before the conductor locked the doors for departure. An unfortunate person just a few beats behind us got to door just a moment too late, and pushed the open button to no avail.

There we were, after a taxing and harrowing ordeal, on a train bound for our main site for the day, Dachau concentration camp. For the record, we were not randomly checked on the train, but at least we were riding with peace of mind.

Night Stroll in Munich

By the time we had finished our, ahem, business at Hofbrauhaus, night had fallen and the city had quieted. It was too late to finish the walking tour we had started, but we would have time for that the following day. 

Our first wandering had to be back to our Munich home base, Marienplatz, with its impressive New Town Hall. Pictured behind the Hall (farther away than it looks) are the twin onion domes of Frauenkirche. I love the way historic European buildings are illuminated at night. Care is taken to catch every facet of the buildings, and details can be seen at night that are washed out by bright daytime sun. The soft yellow and white glow bring out the figures of each of the countless statues, reliefs, and Neo-Gothic points on this beautiful building.

New Town Hall at Night

A Brighter Angle

It seemed the pretzels weren't enough for a sustaining meal. Luckily, street food carts were still open, and we had the first of what would prove to be many, many, (many) sausages on this Continental journey. The bratwursts here were, as expected, nothing like the old Johnsonville brats of American fame. We noticed much more fennel taste in all of the sausages here, and American packaged brats usually have very little fennel flavor. For those unfamiliar, fennel tastes just a bit like black licorice. As scary as that sounds, it only actually makes food taste like licorice when it is overused. When added in proper ratio with other sausage spices, it imparts a very fragrant and almost floral taste and smell. It's quite nice. Maybe not enough to make one forswear the old Johnsonville variety, but it's always good to enjoy more than one kind of sausage, right?

...I hope so.

First of Many Sausages

We took a nice walk through the now-sleepy shopping district of Munich. The nightlife scene is in a different part of town, so much like Dublin's Grafton Street, things seemed to shut down early and the street was left to the evening strollers like us.

Landgericht Munchen- Munich District Court Palace of Justice

A building we had seen shortly after getting off the train was the enormous Palace of Justice, which sounds better in English than Munich District Court. Not much signage labeled it as such, at least not on the side we passed each day. We made a note to look it up when we got home. We should have known it was a courthouse, as so many American local courts sport the same towers and statues. Lady Justice must be up there somewhere...

Upon returning to the hostel, we couldn't help but avail ourselves of the 2 Euro Augustiner beers at the hostel bar. Dubliners would scramble for a 2 Euro pint anywhere in town, even if it meant they had to hang around with a bunch of younger, more-attractive-than-they-are-and-so-what-if-they-are? backpackers.

We would pay a visit to the home of Augustiner beer the following day, but that's for another post.

First Augustiner Pints

We had to get our beauty sleep, for we had a big day of Munich sightseeing the next day, and had to get an early start.

Hofbrauhaus Beer Hall Munich

Don't Hassle the Hof

If you needed any more clues about where we went for our Munich city walk intermission, goodness help you. In Munich, a visit to the beer hall is a pilgrimage for many, like a visit to Temple Bar in Dublin. Luckily, the Hofbrauhaus was a stop on the tour, and we decided to make it an extended stop.

Hofbrauhaus Exterior

Hofbrau is one of the many Munich breweries. It was designated as the official beer (brau) of the royal family (hof) of Bavaria. Hofbrau = Royal Beer. Haus, of course, means house, or hall.

The Hofbrauhaus beer hall building is massive. So large, in fact, that we couldn't immediately find the actual beer hall. We at first were only able to find mostly empty restaurant-style tables with white tablecloths. We had to do some sniffing and listening, but eventually made our way downstairs to the large beer hall proper.

Hofbrauhaus Beer Hall Interior

Make Mine Maß

Long wooden tables and benches lined the huge, noisy room from end to end. We had arrived for our first (but doubtfully our last) beer in Munich. The three of us ordered our maß (pronounced mahs) sized beers and the night was off!

Dunkel, Radler, Helles

I can (and will) write a whole essay about German beer styles, so I'll save my gushing for another post. For now, we'll say we ordered a dunkel (dark lager), dunkel radler (dark lager mixed with lemonade), and helles (light lager). I feel I also must point out for our American readers that many European draft beers are not brewed at 5 or 5.5% alcohol by volume like many American canned and draft beers. Many are brewed between 3.5 and 4.5 % ABV, so drinking a liter (or two) in a sitting isn't the physical feat one might imagine.  

It was getting close to dinnertime, and we had all only had a small sandwich and a half-liter of beer. Food was required. Hofbrauhaus does make and serve delicious-looking food (like the pork knuckle served with mashed potato balls), but we had our eyes on a different prize. Servers walked through the hall with large baskets of huge soft pretzels and gingerbread cookies for sale. We all couldn't resist a salty hot soft pretzel.

Pretzels!

Beer, Pretzels, and Hawkeyes!

While we were working on our massive blast of beer and carbs, a lederhosen-clad band took the small stage in the center of the room. We all enjoyed a performance of marches and polkas while we finished our victuals. 

Beer Hall Band

After the beer and food, it was time to venture back out into the streets of Munich in search of, well, more beer and food. What did you expect?

Munich City Walk

After getting our bearings and checking in to our rooms in Munich, we took on the Rick Steves Munich Walking Tour. Mr. Steves is our go-to guide for trips around Europe. His no-nonsense guides offer honest advice for American travelers, and I feel like he has a good sense of what non-backpacking-partiers want to see in European cities. His self-guided walks (often accompanied by a free downloadable audio guide!) are always top notch.

This walk starts us off at Marienplatz, under the looming shadow of its New Town Hall. I know, the building depicted below hardly seems like anything we could call, "New," but it used to be younger than its sister hall, just across the square.

New Town Hall

The Hall is so long, it's difficult to capture in a single photo frame from the square, so we have to admire its charm and beauty piece by piece. It is one of the few buildings that survived World War II, as Munich was largely bombed flat by the allies.

The stars of the New Town Hall dance around her famous glockenspiel, a marvel of cute 19th-century automation. Twice daily, the coopers dance below as the Lord and Lady watch the mounted knights joust above. We were lucky enough to catch the show the morning after this walking tour.

New Town Hall Glockenspiel

And... Here's a shaky cell-phone camera video of the climax of the show from YouTube.

The New Town Hall was built as an improvement to the Old Town Hall nearby in the same square. The Old Town Hall was completely destroyed in The War and rebuilt later.

Old Town Hall

Still in Marienplatz, we took a look at the statue from which the square gets its name, Maria, the Virgin Mary stands tall in the middle of the square. Munich was a longtime Catholic stronghold as much of Germany was converting to Protestantism in the wake of Martin Luther. The New Town Hall and the other buildings in the square all face inward to the central pillar with Mary.

Mary in Marienplatz

Inside the New Town Hall complex, we noticed the seals of Munich's sister cities. Look at the venerable company attached to Munich: The Great Kiev, Shakespeare's Verona, Stony Edinburgh, Imperial Sapporo, and...Cincinnati! Nasty 'Nati. Hmmmm.

And.. Cincinnati!

In the next corner of the square is St. Peter's Church. Another Catholic stronghold in Munich, the church was badly damaged in the war and rebuilt, like much of this great city.

St. Peter's Church Sanctuary

St. Peter's Church Exterior

We will be back to this church, particularly the belltower... but we're getting ahead of ourselves. Next stop is the Viktualienmarkt, the busy food-and-goods open air market just off Marienplatz. The market was booming and buzzing with locals and tourists. Pictured below is the famous Maypole in the square. Maypoles like this used to serve as information posts for illiterate villagers, advertising what was on sale in the market on a given day. 

Viktualienmarkt Maypole

Near the market is the Jewish Synagogue and History Museum. Note the not-so-subtle fortress-like atmosphere surrounding the rebuilt synagogue and Jewish center. A set of huge iron double doors with the Ten Commandments inscribed on their faces is the only entrance to the complex. Much more on the tragedy of the twentieth century later.

Synagogue in Munich

Around the corner from the Synagogue is another church, this one a hilarious advertisement to a pair of wonderfully-named 18th-century church architects. This church is just 30 feet wide, and is built between two homes. It was designed and constructed by the Asam (pronounced awesome) Brothers in 1740 as a demonstration to potential church building customers. Without much space, the brothers had to squeeze in all the potential features of their churches, regardless of taste, space, or restraint.

The front facade is overly decorated with concrete and stone gargoyles, statues, and a variety of pillar and scrollwork. Potential buyers could admire all of these features before stepping into the delightfully tacky...

Asam Church Facade

Oh yeah, the interior. Many of the crowning achievements of these two brothers were in their trickery. The ceiling is flat, but painted to give the illusion of an expensive dome. They used cheap glass to look like thin-sliced alabaster, and painted wooden pillars to perfectly match precious marble. All the plaster, gold, and paint tricks here would be selected a la carte by potential church builders and ordered from the brothers.

Apparently, they did quite well for themselves, and why not! Today, the church is a legitimate functioning Catholic church.

Asam "Awesome" Interior

Asam "Awesome" Altar

...Just another 500 year old church, St. Michael's lies between Karlsplatz and Marienplatz. The statue of St. Michael stabbing a protestant in the face serves as a very not-so-subtle reminder that the Catholics were (and are) in charge of southern Germany.

St. Michael's Exterior

St. Michael Rockin' the Spear

St. Michael's Interior

On the way to Frauenkirche, I was ambushed by a large bronze catfish.

Cory Attacked!

Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady) is the most famous Catholic church in Munich, at its twin domed towers are visible from just about anywhere in the city. It is of particular modern note because Josef Ratzinger served as Archbishop from this church until he moved to the Vatican. Later, he would become Pope Benedict XVI.

Frauenkirche Towers

 By this time, we were ready for angels of a different sort to give us respite from our long travels. Luckily, there was just such a place on our way, Hofbrauhaus.

Hofbrauhaus Exterior

Not sure what kind of thing happens at the Hofbrauhaus? Here's a hint. Tune in next week!

Wink Wink