April 10, 2015
We woke up around 8:00am, had a nice calm breakfast and packed up our things to tour the city of Munich. We arrived around 10:00am and started touring right away. Munich is an absolutely beautiful city to visit, however, there are so many people touring the city, it is extremely hard to truly see everything and/or enjoy the surroundings. Regardless there are many beautiful monuments and building to see.
Much of the architecture seen throughout Germany is greatly influenced by Italy, even the most German of cities such as Munich. Centuries of fragmentations, modernization and historical wars which greatly impacted kingdoms and principalities cause much diversity amongst regions but many were left to favor vernacular architecture, which is commonly seen in Italy.
The picture on the left is the entrance of the Munich Residenz, the former royal palace of the Bavarian monarchs of the House of Wittelsbach. Today, this building serves as a display of former palace architecture and the various decoration used.
On the right is a photo of 1 of 4 lions which are positioned at the entrance, believed to protect the palace. For centuries the people of Bavaria and Munich have used the lion as a symbol of strength, courage and bravery. There are monuments of lions everywhere, but they are also used in logos, family armor, etc. The people of Munich rub the lions nose whenever they pass by the monument (which is why it is the only part of the statue that is polished). Rubbing its nose is believed to bring good luck.
I rubbed it's nose... then quickly reached for my Purell haha (a bit of a germ-o-phob from being sick so often, but also once you watch the surrounding people and there tendencities you quickly realize that lion's nose is worse than the door handle in a public bathroom)!
The city centre was absolutely beautiful but under construction so picture opportunities were limited, add in the hundreds of people touring and it was near impossible to even get a shot. The image above is only a small portion of the town hall.
TOWN HALL
Here is the main tower of the town hall, an incredible piece of history and art. While there, we were luck enough to hear the bells rings (the sound was incredible) and witness the life-size figurines dance to the melody.
It was amazing to see such a huge heard of people gather for such a moment, it truly brought a sense of tradition to Munich. The city is incredibly religious (Catholic) and set on keeping their traditions in regards to religion, values and beliefs.
FANCY CARS... EVERYWHERE!!!!
Now for something a little less serious... There are beautiful cars in Germany, everywhere you look, you see fancy sport cars... Audi...BMW... Mercedes... Also with so many highways being unlimited for speed, you see a lot of these puppies on the road. I can think of a few people back home who would be in heaven!
Once we regained our self-control and mind from all the pretty cars, we continued on our journey. Again, this is a beautiful building greatly influenced by Italian architecture.
We stopped in the central market where dozens of little shops are scattered between various food huts. The little shops all contained home made trinkets and little DIY projects. The images below are some examples (which I plan on attempting to recreate).
The majority of the shops look like the photo posted below. Surely the items vary as they are all made by hand but the concept is very similar.
Below are some photos of other typical food shops that you can expect to see in the Munich market, bread and dried beef are highly popular commodities!
One random comment I will make about Munich and Germany as a whole is I love how clean this country is and how environmentally friendly/aware they are. No matter where you go everything is clean and solar panels are utilized frequently anywhere possible!
We finished off our day in Munich with a nice big beer (I had water, as I am gluten intolerant and I'm already consuming enough wheat as is and my intestines are crying...) But Gauthier very much enjoyed his ginormous beer (and I enjoyed my sip)! Then we took a peek inside the theater on our way out!
Although Munich was beautiful our stay was short. Munich simply was not a city for us. The amount of people in the city was similar to what you would experience on Canada day, which was a tad too chaotic and loud for our liking/comfort. We spent 6 hours exploring the city, then packed up and made our way for Salzburg, Austria.
- San
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