Munich

View from our apartment

On Saturday, October 20, we left Vienna by train about 10 a.m.  to go to Munich for a week.  Typically for our excursions, the day was overcast, even occasionally rainy, and the visibility not good.  However, eventually the weather did clear up, so that by the time we reached Salzburg, the day was sunny, and we could get a good view of the mountains and lakes.  We arrived in Munich in the mid afternoon and our new landlady kindly met us at the train station.  Our new apartment is only a few blocks walk from the station on the fourth floor – with lift.  This is a much smaller apartment compared to Vienna, but has large windows overlooking an interior

Linderhof Palace

courtyard with a mural on the opposite wall to make the view more interesting!  This area of town is a little edgy – lots of casinos and strip clubs, but there are museums within a half mile and the town center.  In fact, our first evening we walked into the town center, which is pedestrian only.  Lots and lots of people out shopping and milling about and either pushy or oblivious.  There is the cathedral and other churches and the Rathaus (town hall) very neo-gothic and ornate.

Linderhof garden

Sunday morning we went to Meeting for Worship, which was in a Lutheran Church social room about 6 blocks from our apartment.  There were only 5 other people besides us because a number of regulars were at Yearly Meeting.  None the less, the meeting is usually under a dozen people.  Since it is so small, they have the nice habit of spending an extra hour or so with Worship Sharing, so we got to know them fairly well.  The area near the Meeting is also where a number of the art museums are, so after lunch we went to the Neue Pinakothek, which is newer because it has 19^th and 20^th century works.  We saw a lot of older works until we finally came to the last 2-3 rooms with a number of Van Gogh, Manet, Cezanne, and Rodins that were quite lovely.

Oberammergau

The absolute high point of the week was a bus tour out to King Ludwig’s castle of Neuschwanstein.  Once again, the day started out overcast, almost foggy, but as we climbed into the mountains, we got above the clouds.  Our first stop was the mountain retreat palace of Linderhof, a comparatively small but amazingly ornate lodge.  Ludwig frequently did not like people around him, so his dining room table was on a piece of floor which could sink down to the kitchen, be set with all the food, and then raised back into his dining room.  One of the rooms was octagonal and had mirrors on all the walls,

Hohenschwangau Palace

so the room seemed to stretch out to infinity in all directions.  There is something of a peacock motif, and 2 large porcelain peacocks were placed outside the entrance when

the King was in residence.   We then had an hour’s stop in Oberammergau, where the once a decade Passion Play is held.  It has many shops with carved wood and other souvenirs.  Many of the houses are painted with scenes and designs on their exterior, a common practice in Bavaria to show of your wealth.  All through this area we were passing along high, craggy Alps.

Neuschwanstein Castle

Finally we got to Neuschwanstein.  For me it is really the setting itself which is the most moving, almost whether there were a castle there or not.  There is a little alpine lake, a larger lake, many craggy peaks, and a wide plain.  To top it off, there were beautiful fall colors on the trees.  We elected to take a shuttle bus up the mountain rather than walk.  The bus lets you off so that you can walk to a marvelous bridge (Mariabroecke) which spans high over a gorge with waterfalls.  The bridge overlooks the castle.  It is all just incredibly gorgeous.  The castle itself was not completed because of Ludwig’s

View into gorge from bridge

death, but the parts that are complete are on view.  I guess because of the large number of tourists, the tours are timed and quite regimented, and you can’t take pictures inside.  You do not have time to look at the many paintings on the wall, all of which are based on various German myths, most of which were turned into Wagnerian operas.  The palace is an homage to Wagner, although he never got there.  He did, however, often visit the palace of Ludwig’s parents, Hohenschwangau, which is in the village below Neuschwanstein, and is where Ludwig mostly grew up.  We bought a book about the castle in the gift store which gives us a good look at the paintings.

One of the views from castle

Tuesday, back in Munich, we went to the Alte Pinakothek, which is the old art museum.   It was pretty overwhelming after a while.  There were Jan Brueghel and Peter Brueghel, Lucas Cranach and Hieronymus Bosch, Albrecht Durer, Da Vinci, Raphael, Van Dyke, Rembrandt, and Canaletto.  The museum particularly favored Peter Paul Rubens.  His monumental The Last Judgment has pride of place in the central gallery.  The piece is so large – 6 meters tall – that the room was especially built to house that painting.

Front of the castle

Wednesday we went to the Deutches Museum, which is their museum of Science and Industry.  Again, we probably tried to see too much.  We enjoyed their display of sailing vessels (or models) of different types, cultures and eras.  Actually there were modern, non-sailing vessels also.  They also had a beautiful exhibit of musical instruments.  After lunch we took a tram over to the “English” Gardens, which is the

Rathaus

main city park.  English tends to mean naturalistic, with winding paths through woods, rather than French, which straight walks through formal gardens.  We then took the tram back into the city center, looking into various churches, including the main Cathedral, which is huge and very gothic.  Almost everything was destroyed in part or whole during the war, and it is interesting how much was rebuilt to look the same as before the war, particularly because many of the churches had already been rebuilt 2 or 3 times since maybe the 12^th century.  We were lucky to chance to be in the main square at 5 o’clock when the clock strikes in the Rathaus tower.  First a

Clockwork joust

circle of peasant dancers went around twice and then on the level below a set of knights jousted.  The second time around one of the knights tumbled over.  All this time, of course, there is a great peal of bells.

Not even the full panorama of Nymphemburg Palace

Entrance to palace

Thursday, our last day, we took a tram out to the Nymphenburg Palace.  This was mostly occupied by rulers a couple of generations before the famous King Ludwig, but they were pretty odd in their own way.  This is a typical palace, enlarged many times with a huge garden and hunting grounds around it.  Folks used to boat around on gondolas in the basins and canals.  It was a summer palace and one of the expansions was to please the queen, who named it Nymphenburg, because she envisioned herself out there surrounded by maids and children.  Later one of the kings created a Hall of Beauty with 36 portraits of some of the most beautiful women he could find.  I’m not sure if his queen was included.

Hall of Beauties

We enjoyed our five days in Munich, and we think that we could enjoy more of the Bavarian countryside and Alps, but don’t feel compelled to return to Munich.   On Friday October 26, we boarded the train to Darmstadt, a city in Hessen near Frankfurt where the Wetteroth ancestors are from.