Munich City Walk



After the depressing tour of Dachau, a wonderful evening and day long walk in Munich was a good antidote. Following a violent thunderstorm Monday evening, a group of us headed for the old town. We made one train stop before an announcement was made in German. Everyone got off the train. We discovered that due to the electrical storm train service was halted. So we deboarded and walked the rest of the he way. The town hall was a magnificent sight towering over the square.

Historic town hall
The next day we were able to catch the glockenspiel show. Dinner was at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant located down a back alley and up a couple flights of creaky stairs. Wonderful food.
Excellent restaurant

Our challenge the next morning was figuring out how to buy train tickets. Despite selecting "English" we had no idea what to do. Fortunately Julie found an English speaking native who explained that even Germans have trouble getting train tickets. But she persevered and eventually we got our tickets. She seemed as thrilled as we were. As fate would have it, later in the day we had the opportunity to return the favor when we saw a German gentleman scratching his head in front of the ticket machine. I helped him get to the correct screen and Julie directed him on how to pay with cash. An empowering experience.

The Munich town walk took us to a busy market,

One of many market stalls
the Hofbrau Beer Hall and several churches, including the one where native Bavarian Pope Benedict served as Archbishop.
We saw the square where Hitler led the Nazis in 1923 in an attempt to overthrow the government. There were an endless number of shops, some very high end. And construction was everywhere sometimes making it difficult to find our way.

As we get ready to board the plane for home, some observations: far and away the most popular baseball cap we saw was Yankees; amazed at the amount of solar panels on farm buildings; everyone was friendly, helpful and most spoke English; how do people drink this much beer?; the trains are fast and cover a wide area; bikes, bikes everywhere from paths along the river to crowded urban streets.
Wild boar in front of Munich wildlife museum



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