Munich

I will make a confession early to lower your expectations.  As much as Ann and I love the adventure of going out into nature and exploring the photographic opportunities it has to offer, we’re pretty poor tourists. In urban areas, we’d rather just wander around, have some good food, and get a feel for the character of a place.  Tourist hot spots . . . not so much.  Unless, of course, they have something of particular interest to offer, like the Henri Cartier-Bresson exhibit that Ann discovered was showing when we visited Porto in 2020.  But that wasn’t the case in Munich.  Still, we had a bit of an agenda and have images to show - mostly Ann’s - but it’s not going to be a Munich tourist highlights blog post.

Now, I did mention food and we had some great food in Munich.  Our AirBNB was downtown within walking distance of the historic city center and the Hauptbahnhof, but it was more a working class neighborhood of a very mixed cultures.  So the day we arrived we ate at an incredible Lebanese restaurant that had the best falafel I’ve ever eaten.  They also have a local brewery that makes a beer just for them.

While we didn’t have a sight-seeing agenda for our couple of days, we nevertheless had other interests guiding us during our free time.  Part of that was figuring out how to stay downtown as long as we wanted.  So after breakfast the day after bimobil, we strolled over to the Hauptbahnhof to see if they had day storage lockers.  We found them, so we knew the next morning we could drop our bags there and continue our wanderings before heading off to the airport to spend the night at a hotel there.  The Hauptbahnhof was interesting with trains constantly arriving and departing and the usual mix of people moving from place to place, or families sitting around and waiting for their train.

Our goal for the day was to hit multiple camera shops because, hey, Google showed there were a lot of them around us and we just love gear.  Top of my agenda was to find Ann a Fujifilm x100v (check out More>Ann’s Gear> My Dream List on the website).  I utterly failed.  There were none to be had in the entire city - to include at Calumet Photo Munich and the even larger Foto Video Sauter.  It wasn’t the only photography-related item on our shopping list, but it was my number one and I hate failing.  No worries though, Ann is on Calumet’s wait list . . . at number 86.

Anyway, after stopping at a couple of camera shops (and window-shopping in a couple more used shops) we headed into the main part of the old city . . . of course through the gate that would lead us to Apple Store Munich because we don’t have Apple Stores in Portugal.

While it was fun getting a first hand look at new gear, there was nothing on our Apple to-buy list (not yet at least . . . my efforts to get Ann to decide on a new iPad were fruitless), and we continued our slow wanderings through central Munich.

It was a day of on-and-off rain, which added a bit of character to the places we explored.

And while there was evidence that CORONA still had a presence, Germany had just removed many of the mask restrictions the day before we arrived.  We generally continued to wear our masks consistent with Portugal’s guidelines, given that we were traveling and had near-future plans.  However, other than servers in restaurants and stores, on public transport and the periodic person on the street (maybe 2 or 3 in 10), masks were not as present as they are in Portugal.  Given that Karsten (from bimobil) had COVID, we knew it’s still around so we took care to try and minimize our risk.

Munich is a nice city and definitely has that European air of architecture and monuments from multiple ages.  But they don’t forget the present.  Not only is there the periodic very modern building, there is evidence of current events such as the Ukrainian flag flying above the building in the photo below. 

When it came time for lunch, we followed the recommendation of one of the sales persons we spoke with (if you want to find a good place to eat, ask a local).  He was right, the Franziskaner Brauhaus had sausages and pretzels geared more towards the local residents than to tourists.  It was the best we had in Munich (of both sausages and pretzels).  I just wish I had remembered to take a photograph of the meal before we ate it.

We spent the afternoon continuing on our photographic wanderings, pulling up our hoods when it rained, dropping them when it stopped.  I had an umbrella in my backpack, but it only got pulled out once or twice that day.  Face it, we’re from Oregon (and now Braga where everyone in Portugal says it rains too much) - what’s a little rain?  Just remember to keep the camera dry.

To be honest, neither of us are what one would call street photographers, but I’m impressed with the images Ann made.  As always, well composed and well timed.

I particularly like the image below.  I hate to admit it, I wanted to take the same image, but I was too hesitant to raise the camera I had.  Little did I know that Ann was behind me doing just that.  She’s braver than me!

There’s something about wandering around a city that I find enjoyable.  Whether it’s New York or Munich, or any other small town, wandering sure beats running from tourist sight to tourist sight or, even worse, waiting in lines.

Plus, you wander around enough, you never know what you’ll find.

All in all, we walked over 7 miles that day (at least that’s what Ann’s watch said we walked).  By the time we got back to the apartment, we were pretty beat and ready to relax.

The next morning we were at it again.  This time it was back to the Hauptbahnhof to drop off the luggage.  At the station we saw several groups of German Military there for who knows what.  Returning from the recent exercises in Norway?  Heading off to provide aid to Ukrainian refugees?  The blue beret folks were medical personnel, the larger group of guys outside I suspect were infantry.  We didn’t ask.

As you can tell from the sunlight streaming across the train tracks, Wednesday’s weather was much nicer than Tuesday’s.

We headed back towards the city center, taking other routes to see what was to be found.  This half-open (outdoor), half-enclosed (indoor) mall was particularly interesting.

With its hanging lights and reflections everywhere, we actually spent a bit of time there photographing.  Finding a place like this is the best excuse to play with your camera.

Eventually we made it back to Marienplatz, a major attraction.  I’d been here before in the 1990 and wanted to show Ann the giant glockenspiel (think giant coo-coo clock, except with half-human scale knights jousting and musicians playing and twirling about) that does its thing at the top of the hour.  Ann was . . . suitably unimpressed.  Like I said, we’re not the best tourists.

So we spent awhile looking at the small statuettes in front of and on the Neues Rathaus.  There were snake dragons, lizard dragons, chicken dragons . . . someone had a wild imagination back then.  Naturally, there was always someone there about to do them in. 

And then we walked into the Neues Rathaus courtyard area to get away from the bigger crowds.

There it was easier to take our time to photograph and to appreciate the various structures and statutes that appear in every nook and cranny of that building.

We weren’t in any particular rush, so we took our time just wandering around looking for images.

I think we were both a bit tired from the previous day’s walk, so we stopped off for a lunch (to learn that the advice we’d been given the day before was spot on . . . you really do want to avoid restaurants that cater to tourists), and then headed back to the Hauptbahnhof to pick up our luggage and take the S-Bahn to the airport.

In some ways, that’s the end of the story about our stay in Munich.  The next morning we caught an early flight back to Porto and were home by noon.

But stay tuned, because that’s not the end of the story of our trip.  Over the next two episodes, you’ll find out just why I needed to use Ann’s photographs from our wanderings in downtown Munich.