Enjoying Munich with Cathy.  This is one of her favorite cities.

Munich is, of course, glorious. The old capital of Bavaria, backed up to the Alps, and not particularly historic unless you are studying the medieval salt industry and trade.

At the moment the warm weather is lingering into mid-fall, and the city is full of people.

 

At noon the tourists (us too) fill the square in front of the Rathous (city hall) to watch the ancient glockenspiel turn.

There are of course plenty of grand and official looking buildings.

But also plenty of just great views and interesting little places around the old town.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Munich is the kind of place one could stay in for an extended period. Great markets with the highest quality foodstuffs of every kind. A wonderful downtown city park (the English garden) to walk in. You would have to leave if you needed any kind of clothing, etc. Because Germany is expensive!

A lot of the tourist activities revolve around Munich having (I am told) the best beer in the world. And (I know) they are in a tie with southern China for the best pork in the world.

You can enjoy both together (the serving suggestion) practically everywhere. Sitting outdoors in the sun, in the beer hall. Everywhere.

I have been here on and off over 45 years. And there are restaurants I go back to, just because.

And I particularly enjoy the Technology Museum, 5 stories of technological history to warm an old engineer’s heart. They have cars and planes and boats (a U Boat with the side cut away so you can see all the interior), and I cannot stay away from the hall of the steam engines that ran the industrial revolution. They have a Watt engine built from the original drawings.

The museum is in way better shape today than it was in 1945.  In fact it seems impossible they saved anything.

Here is the Marionplatz in 1945.  One of the many places where you can (like London) see the new buildings that filled in the bombed gaps.

Munich actually survived the Allied power’s bombing pretty well. As opposed to say Dresden where the capability of humans to create a “fire storm” (plasma loose on the earth) was tested. Who can understand the first half of the 1900’s and our self-inflicted destruction of the leadership of western civilization in the world.

Munich, this prosperous, beautiful, welcoming city was the home of the Nazi party. The first death camp was constructed just down the road. So it goes.

Some church pictures. Just because.