and Bavaria
I was real glad to hear form the German. It made for a good nights sleep and a relaxed plane ride to Munich. Anna said she got off work at 3pm and we could meet then. We arranged a place and that was that. The next day, Hope and I flew to Munich. Munich has always intrigued me. Bavaria in general, actually. Some dark things happened in this part of the world. The town and region do not suggest any of this. And the people were great. They were friendly and jovial and all around good to people. While we were waiting for our luggage a lady came over the intercom and called me to the nearest information desk. I’ve never had that happen in an airport before. I’ve heard other people called to the nearest information desk and all I could ever think about is the intercom in my sixth grade class linked directly to the office that, whenever anyone would get in trouble, they would call the room and interrupt the lesson and ask for some miscreant to be sent down. That’s what it felt like, and I wondered briefly if I’d been caught doing something I shouldn’t have been doing. Thing is, I couldn’t fully understand where they wanted me to go or how I should get there. While wandering around looking for something or someone to help me, a lady asked me if I was all right. I must have look befuddled and lost. Ultimately, she help figure out who and what was the matter. It was Anna. She was going to be late. Not a problem.
apartment in Muich with Giraffe
Hope and I took the train into Munich, stashed our gear at the train station and headed into the city for lunch. As we walked Nuehauser strasse towards Marienplatz I was reminded of National Lampoon’s European Vacation (I would be reminded of this movie, which I saw in drive in with my grandma 20 years ago, several times on this trip.) Nuehause stretches from the train station to Marienplatz and is one of the main pedestrian shopping streets of Munich. It was packed with people. This was Friday, Oktoberfest was to begin the next day, and so all these people were here to celebrate beer. Our first stop was lunch. We sat outdoors on the square at a little pub. I had brats and beer. It came with sauerkraut. I’ve never really eaten sauerkraut, maybe once when I was a kid. But in Bavaria it seemed like the polite thing to do. Turns out, I love sauerkraut. Love it. It goes well with brats and beer. Which were fantastic. Bratwurst is actually from Nuremberg. Munich is known for it’s Whitewurst, but I didn’t know this at the time.
After lunch we walked around a little bit. We were meeting Anna at 6pm so we had the afternoon to kill. We watched the clock do its grand cuckoo business in Marianplazts and then we looked at some sculpture and stuff. Anna showed up and she showed us a couple more things, the market where all the Bavarians go in the evening, the church tower. We talked about the plan. Armin, Anna’s husband, lives in London. He was coming to Munich to see Anna and join us for the weekend. We were originally going to stay at her sister’s place all weekend, but because of a mix up that turned out not to be possible. Armin’s good friend invited us to stay at his apartment, but only for Friday night, as Anna wanted to get back to Eggenfelden, the little town where she lives outside Munich, to see a dog hunting show, which sounded great.
We met up with Armin and his friend Marcus at Marcus’s house, had a few drinks, talked and then went to dinner. Marcus is a great guy. He collects BMW’s and he took Hope for a ride on the Autobahn in his coup. For dinner we had traditional Bavarian food. It was awesome. Rich and thick and full of taste. With Weiss beer, Heffeweisen is Bavarian.
Bavaria is the region we, as American, associate most with Germany. It is a region in the south by the Alps and it comes complete with the lederhosen, the polkas and the Oktoberfest. From what I understand, the north part of Germany is completely different. What we were experiencing, and would experience for the next week, was the mythological Germany. It was beautiful. The next day we got up early, had breakfast and headed to the Oktoberfest parade. The Oktoberfest was originally a celebration of king’s birthday. All the breweries brew a special beer for the occasion and drive it through town in a parade. A lot of people are dressed in the traditional gowns and lederhosen. People were already hoisting steins. The barrels of beer are delivered to a specific tent at the Oktoberfest grounds. There are several tents, each with a different atmosphere, catering to a different type of experience. Each “tent” (really a large hall holding between 2 and 8 thousand people each) is run by a different brewery. The Hofbräu Festhalle is the tourist tent and it’s the one everyone who isn’t Bavarian, goes to. The tents are really hard to get into as they fill up early and fast. We showed up two hours before they actually taped the kegs and couldn’t find a seat. You have to be sitting down to get a beer, and so we were hunting pretty hard. Eventually we found two seats and then a couple across from these seats left so we all got to sit. At noon, all the kegs have arrived and the mayor taps the honorary first keg and then the festival begins. We were going to sit in that tent, the Schottenhamel, with the mayor but we couldn’t get in and we didn’t want to be with the tourists. So we got into a nice little tent called Hacker Festzelt.
This is how it works. Just prior to noon all the servers begin lining up at the taps. All morning long you could get pretzels and other Bavarian snacks, but no beer until the first honorary keg is tapped. There is a count down, much like new years, and then the German brass band begins to play and everyone cheers and the beer begins to come. This first round is where you see the ladies carrying ten and twelve litters of beer at a time. Stout German ladies with bright smiles and so much beer it makes your heart melt. They visit each table with these armloads and people buy the beer and begin drinking. After everyone has been served the servers come around to each table taking more orders for beers and eventually food. Chicken is a traditional food at Oktoberfest and I had been looking forward to this for a couple of years, ever since Anna and I talked about it. So throughout the day the band played tunes, people drank, and every fifteen to twenty minute the band struck up a particular song, a nationalistic tune, which everyone sung, and at the end they count, in German, “One two three, drink!” And everyone was obligated to slam their beers on the table and hoist it to there mouths. Everyone was so happy. Singing. Drinking. 5 liters of beer later we decide it’s time to go. We stumble outside. Anna is not drunk, she’s driving. Armin is drunk. I’m drunk. Hope is drunk. Hope, throughout the day, had been taking pictures of the lederhosen asses, each pair having a different stitch pattern or embroidery. The Germans loved it. She probably got a hundred guys to bend over and rub their asses and pose for a picture. Outside we ran into Anna’s sister and went for another beer with her and her friends. Then we walked through the ride area. Anna had a favorite ride that she always went on as a kid. It was the swing that spins around and goes up. Anna and Armin and Hope did that while I stay on the ground making sure not to throw up and watching all the people. They went on a few more rides and then we left. It was a great thing to have done, Oktoberfest.
On the drive to Eggenfelden I passed out. It’s about an hour, hour and half away. When we got there I was pretty much sober and we met Anna’s dad and his wife, our hosts for the next week, and settled in for the night. I claimed the cabana, a little one-room bathhouse down by their pool. This proved to be a great place to relax for the week. Anna’s dad is an architect and he designed the house.
It has a postmodern feel on the outside, but there is a real attention to craft and detail on the inside. The cabana was simple and well thought out. The pool was a fresh water pond really, the plants doing the filtering. It was inspiring.
Hannes and Ursala made us welcome in their home for a week. They fed us and entertained us. Hope is a scuba diving instructor in Belize and Hannes and Ursala are both divers. One evening they showed us movies and slides from some of their diving adventures. We mostly relaxed and didn’t do much. Anna and Armin have two dogs. Hugo, who was with us in studio from the beginning of architecture school, and a Hugo’s son, Emil. Anna’s father has a practice in Eggenfelden where Anna works. So while everyone was at work, hope and I would play with the dogs, or go for walks.
Hugo and Emil
A Bavarian forest
Small Church in Eggenfelden
The Fountain at Bauturm
The Dolzer’s had a lot of art in their place. One particular artist struck Hope and they had a lot of her work. It turns out that she was a friend of the dolzers maned Mio Kupka and Ursala made arrangements for us to go into the city to visit her. So Hope and I took the train back to Munich one morning and visited a couple of buildings. We saw St John Nepomuk Church, a small baroque church along the storefronts in Munich.
After we walked up to the Haus Der Kunst, or the Artists House. They had a show called the Black Paintings. This was several painting using just black done by the Abstract Expressionists. There were five artists represented, Robert Rauschenberg, Ad Reinhartd, Mark Rothko, Frank Stella and Barnett Newman. These paintings were fascinating. Black, rich and deep. We had planed on visiting a few other museums before meeting Mio, but they ended up being closed. So instead we walked out to the Olympic Park and saw one of the buildings that made the trip worth it. This was the Olympic Stadium by Frie Otto. I was inspired. It’s shear mass and scale for a cable stay structure, I couldn’t stop taking pictures of it. You can book a tour to walk on top of it. I wanted to do this, but you had to book in advance, so I skipped it. The pool was amazing. We walked around here for a good hour.
Olympic pool
We met Mori at her house in the evening. She showed us a bunch of great work and Hope bought a few pieces. I also wanted to buy some stuff, but couldn’t afford it. In truth, I cannot bring myself to spend hundreds of dollars on art yet, although I would like to. Her stuff was exciting though and I like it.
The next day Hope decided to go back into Munich to visit the art galleries and museums that were closed the day before. I went to a town on the Austrian border to see the world’s longest castle. Anna drove me out there on her lunch break and I walked around for a couple hours, did some drawing took so photos.
Hannes was in a meeting close to the town where the castle was so he picked me up in the evening. On the way back to Eggenfelden he drove me past the birth place of the current Pope who, as it turned out, was just in town a few days prior visiting his brother who still lives in Bavaria. So I saw where the Pope lived his first three years. There is a big sign on the side of the road with the smiling Pope waving and an arrow point the way to his toddle home. Crazy.
On our last night there Hope and I wanted to take Hannes and Ursala and Anna to dinner. They choose to go to the water castle where Anna got married for another traditional Bavarian meal. I had seen pictures of the place and it was nice to see where my friends celebrated their union in person.
The next day Anna dropped us off at the airport and we said good-bye to Bavaria and all the Germans.
I thoroughly enjoyed my time in Bavaria. The people we met were friendly and warm. The tourists, even, were well behaved and respectful, and drunk eventually. The weather was perfect. It was a good week. My thanks to Anna and Armin and Marcus and Hannes and Ursala.
Hope and I took the train into Munich, stashed our gear at the train station and headed into the city for lunch. As we walked Nuehauser strasse towards Marienplatz I was reminded of National Lampoon’s European Vacation (I would be reminded of this movie, which I saw in drive in with my grandma 20 years ago, several times on this trip.) Nuehause stretches from the train station to Marienplatz and is one of the main pedestrian shopping streets of Munich. It was packed with people. This was Friday, Oktoberfest was to begin the next day, and so all these people were here to celebrate beer. Our first stop was lunch. We sat outdoors on the square at a little pub. I had brats and beer. It came with sauerkraut. I’ve never really eaten sauerkraut, maybe once when I was a kid. But in Bavaria it seemed like the polite thing to do. Turns out, I love sauerkraut. Love it. It goes well with brats and beer. Which were fantastic. Bratwurst is actually from Nuremberg. Munich is known for it’s Whitewurst, but I didn’t know this at the time.
After lunch we walked around a little bit. We were meeting Anna at 6pm so we had the afternoon to kill. We watched the clock do its grand cuckoo business in Marianplazts and then we looked at some sculpture and stuff. Anna showed up and she showed us a couple more things, the market where all the Bavarians go in the evening, the church tower. We talked about the plan. Armin, Anna’s husband, lives in London. He was coming to Munich to see Anna and join us for the weekend. We were originally going to stay at her sister’s place all weekend, but because of a mix up that turned out not to be possible. Armin’s good friend invited us to stay at his apartment, but only for Friday night, as Anna wanted to get back to Eggenfelden, the little town where she lives outside Munich, to see a dog hunting show, which sounded great.
We met up with Armin and his friend Marcus at Marcus’s house, had a few drinks, talked and then went to dinner. Marcus is a great guy. He collects BMW’s and he took Hope for a ride on the Autobahn in his coup. For dinner we had traditional Bavarian food. It was awesome. Rich and thick and full of taste. With Weiss beer, Heffeweisen is Bavarian.
Bavaria is the region we, as American, associate most with Germany. It is a region in the south by the Alps and it comes complete with the lederhosen, the polkas and the Oktoberfest. From what I understand, the north part of Germany is completely different. What we were experiencing, and would experience for the next week, was the mythological Germany. It was beautiful. The next day we got up early, had breakfast and headed to the Oktoberfest parade. The Oktoberfest was originally a celebration of king’s birthday. All the breweries brew a special beer for the occasion and drive it through town in a parade. A lot of people are dressed in the traditional gowns and lederhosen. People were already hoisting steins. The barrels of beer are delivered to a specific tent at the Oktoberfest grounds. There are several tents, each with a different atmosphere, catering to a different type of experience. Each “tent” (really a large hall holding between 2 and 8 thousand people each) is run by a different brewery. The Hofbräu Festhalle is the tourist tent and it’s the one everyone who isn’t Bavarian, goes to. The tents are really hard to get into as they fill up early and fast. We showed up two hours before they actually taped the kegs and couldn’t find a seat. You have to be sitting down to get a beer, and so we were hunting pretty hard. Eventually we found two seats and then a couple across from these seats left so we all got to sit. At noon, all the kegs have arrived and the mayor taps the honorary first keg and then the festival begins. We were going to sit in that tent, the Schottenhamel, with the mayor but we couldn’t get in and we didn’t want to be with the tourists. So we got into a nice little tent called Hacker Festzelt.
This is how it works. Just prior to noon all the servers begin lining up at the taps. All morning long you could get pretzels and other Bavarian snacks, but no beer until the first honorary keg is tapped. There is a count down, much like new years, and then the German brass band begins to play and everyone cheers and the beer begins to come. This first round is where you see the ladies carrying ten and twelve litters of beer at a time. Stout German ladies with bright smiles and so much beer it makes your heart melt. They visit each table with these armloads and people buy the beer and begin drinking. After everyone has been served the servers come around to each table taking more orders for beers and eventually food. Chicken is a traditional food at Oktoberfest and I had been looking forward to this for a couple of years, ever since Anna and I talked about it. So throughout the day the band played tunes, people drank, and every fifteen to twenty minute the band struck up a particular song, a nationalistic tune, which everyone sung, and at the end they count, in German, “One two three, drink!” And everyone was obligated to slam their beers on the table and hoist it to there mouths. Everyone was so happy. Singing. Drinking. 5 liters of beer later we decide it’s time to go. We stumble outside. Anna is not drunk, she’s driving. Armin is drunk. I’m drunk. Hope is drunk. Hope, throughout the day, had been taking pictures of the lederhosen asses, each pair having a different stitch pattern or embroidery. The Germans loved it. She probably got a hundred guys to bend over and rub their asses and pose for a picture. Outside we ran into Anna’s sister and went for another beer with her and her friends. Then we walked through the ride area. Anna had a favorite ride that she always went on as a kid. It was the swing that spins around and goes up. Anna and Armin and Hope did that while I stay on the ground making sure not to throw up and watching all the people. They went on a few more rides and then we left. It was a great thing to have done, Oktoberfest.
On the drive to Eggenfelden I passed out. It’s about an hour, hour and half away. When we got there I was pretty much sober and we met Anna’s dad and his wife, our hosts for the next week, and settled in for the night. I claimed the cabana, a little one-room bathhouse down by their pool. This proved to be a great place to relax for the week. Anna’s dad is an architect and he designed the house.
It has a postmodern feel on the outside, but there is a real attention to craft and detail on the inside. The cabana was simple and well thought out. The pool was a fresh water pond really, the plants doing the filtering. It was inspiring.
Hannes and Ursala made us welcome in their home for a week. They fed us and entertained us. Hope is a scuba diving instructor in Belize and Hannes and Ursala are both divers. One evening they showed us movies and slides from some of their diving adventures. We mostly relaxed and didn’t do much. Anna and Armin have two dogs. Hugo, who was with us in studio from the beginning of architecture school, and a Hugo’s son, Emil. Anna’s father has a practice in Eggenfelden where Anna works. So while everyone was at work, hope and I would play with the dogs, or go for walks.
The Dolzer’s had a lot of art in their place. One particular artist struck Hope and they had a lot of her work. It turns out that she was a friend of the dolzers maned Mio Kupka and Ursala made arrangements for us to go into the city to visit her. So Hope and I took the train back to Munich one morning and visited a couple of buildings. We saw St John Nepomuk Church, a small baroque church along the storefronts in Munich.
After we walked up to the Haus Der Kunst, or the Artists House. They had a show called the Black Paintings. This was several painting using just black done by the Abstract Expressionists. There were five artists represented, Robert Rauschenberg, Ad Reinhartd, Mark Rothko, Frank Stella and Barnett Newman. These paintings were fascinating. Black, rich and deep. We had planed on visiting a few other museums before meeting Mio, but they ended up being closed. So instead we walked out to the Olympic Park and saw one of the buildings that made the trip worth it. This was the Olympic Stadium by Frie Otto. I was inspired. It’s shear mass and scale for a cable stay structure, I couldn’t stop taking pictures of it. You can book a tour to walk on top of it. I wanted to do this, but you had to book in advance, so I skipped it. The pool was amazing. We walked around here for a good hour.
We met Mori at her house in the evening. She showed us a bunch of great work and Hope bought a few pieces. I also wanted to buy some stuff, but couldn’t afford it. In truth, I cannot bring myself to spend hundreds of dollars on art yet, although I would like to. Her stuff was exciting though and I like it.
The next day Hope decided to go back into Munich to visit the art galleries and museums that were closed the day before. I went to a town on the Austrian border to see the world’s longest castle. Anna drove me out there on her lunch break and I walked around for a couple hours, did some drawing took so photos.
Hannes was in a meeting close to the town where the castle was so he picked me up in the evening. On the way back to Eggenfelden he drove me past the birth place of the current Pope who, as it turned out, was just in town a few days prior visiting his brother who still lives in Bavaria. So I saw where the Pope lived his first three years. There is a big sign on the side of the road with the smiling Pope waving and an arrow point the way to his toddle home. Crazy.
On our last night there Hope and I wanted to take Hannes and Ursala and Anna to dinner. They choose to go to the water castle where Anna got married for another traditional Bavarian meal. I had seen pictures of the place and it was nice to see where my friends celebrated their union in person.
The next day Anna dropped us off at the airport and we said good-bye to Bavaria and all the Germans.
I thoroughly enjoyed my time in Bavaria. The people we met were friendly and warm. The tourists, even, were well behaved and respectful, and drunk eventually. The weather was perfect. It was a good week. My thanks to Anna and Armin and Marcus and Hannes and Ursala.
posted by jeffrey ottem at 5:58 PM
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