Munich

We spent Friday (June 30) checking out of our apartment, taking the train to the Frankfurt airport so that we could store some of our stuff that we won't need on this holiday, then taking the train to Munich.  That left us with a few hours to walk around in Munich on Friday, all day Saturday to explore Munich, and then on Sunday morning we met our biking group.  So not as much time in Munich as I might have hoped.  It really takes 2-4 days to really explore this city.  I think we did justice to the historic Altstadt, but didn't get enough time to visit museums, or to see things in the area, such as Berchtesgaden.

We started our day using the Rick Steve's walking tour of Munich, which I highly recommend (I prefer self guided tours that have you really explore an area).  We only did about 2/3 of it, but it took us the better part of the day.  Some highlights.

The Viktualienmarkt, a large farmer's market/biergarten that has existed for centuries.   The first picture below shows the upper part of the Munich maypole (every little town in Bavaria has one of these, though Munich's is obviously more elaborate than most) and one of the many stands in the Markt.  The second picture shows the lower part of the maypole.  The different figures represent things of importance in the city.  The writing at the bottom talks about the German beer purity law, where in 1516 (in Munich) it was decreed that beer can only be made from water, hops and barley (so no fruit beers, for example).  This was because of a lot of adulteration in beer at the time, but these laws are still in effect in Germany.

A random statue in the Viktualienmarkt.  I liked that someone was keeping him supplied with flowers. 

The New Town Hall (new as of 1867) has a lovely dragon guarding it

I think our favorite find was the Asam Church (officially, the Church of St. Johann Nepomuk), created by the brothers Asam, who were a sculptor and a painter, as a "showroom" for their church building/renovating business (it was also a real church, originally a private chapel, but eventually public).  It's a narrow chapel, right next to their home/office, that has "one of everything" that a community might want in their church.  Which makes it completely over the top (of course, the fact that it is in the Baroque style would make it pretty over the top in any case).  Here are a couple of random pictures of things that struck my fancy:

The marble is a marble veneer (communities wanted more bang for their buck) and there are other "special effects".  Given the overall Baroque style, I found the relative severeness of the last picture to be compelling.  

Side note: this church was a real find from Rick Steves.  It was a bit out of the way on the tour, but well worth the detour.  Plus I would never have understood the significance of it -- it would just have been another over the top church -- without his very witty explanations.  

And for something completely random, we saw this on our walk.

Yes, that thing overhanging the roof of the building is a basketball backboard (and hoop -- though you can't really see the hoop at this resolution).  I assume it is an art installation, but who knows.  Maybe there are really tall people in Munich.