Art, Nature and Sport in Munich

July 7, 2016:

After a walk of shame back to the hostel from Marienplatz the next morning, I made it in time for breakfast with Josie, Jessica, Tyler and Morgan (my new friends from Ohio) before their departure. When they asked what time I'd gotten in, I sheepishly told them that I was just getting back.

It was my last full day in Munich, and wanting to make the most of it, I took out my ripped brochures and determined which tourist attractions I could actually visit - unfortunately there were not many, but I was determined to use my remaining time to the fullest. This would consist of a solo walking tour through Munich. It became a question of what I enjoy doing with my free time anywhere, so my first stop was the Neue Pinakothek which focuses on European art from the 18th and 19th centuries.

I don't think that I had previously had much exposure to German art, but there was plenty in the museum and it is not my favourite. I am generalizing, but the image of one painting featuring many trees is stuck in my memory. The trees were so precise and perfect, it was as if it was a representation of someone placing nature into a strict order. I prefer impressionism where all the separate brush strokes create a chaos that, when viewed from further away, work together to create a coherent image.

So naturally, I was attracted to this museum in particular by the extensive French impressionist collection:

"One of the world's leading collections with masterpieces of Pierre-Auguste Renoir (Portrait of a Young Woman), Édouard Manet (Lucheon in the Studio) (Monet Painting on His Studio Boat), Claude Monet (The Bridge at Argenteuil), Paul Cézanne (The Railway Cutting), Paul Gauguin (The Birth - Te tamari no atua), Edgar Degas (Woman Ironing), Camille Pissarro (Street in Upper Norwood), Alfred Sisley (The Road to Hampton Court), Georges-Pierre Seurat and Vincent van Gogh (Sunflowers) (The Weaver)." (Wikipedia)

La Seine a Argenteuil - Claude Monet

Sunflowers - Vincent Van Gogh

I was only a few blocks from the university in Munich and I was curious to find out what a German university neighbourhood might look like. Imagine my surprise when I came across Geschwister-Scholl Platz next to the university!

Sophie Scholl is someone I discovered in a roundabout way because of my interest in anarchy. First, I learned the history of the Mujeres Libres during the Spanish Civil War (just prior to World War II) and their work to peacefully create an anarchist society that empowered working class women. I don't remember exactly if this inspired me to search out other female revolutionaries, or if Sophie Scholl's story was promoted by the same space that recommended the story of the Mujeres Libres, but I learned that Sophie Scholl led a peaceful protest against the Nazis called the White Rose campaign. I knew that she had distributed flyers at a university, but didn't realize that it was the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, before she was turned in to the Gestapo by the janitor. There is a monument to the White Rose resistance movement in front of the main building of the university, and Geschwister-Scholl-Schule (Scholl Sibling School) is the most popular school name in Germany.

Julien had recommended the Eisbach wave as a must-see in Munich, so I continued my tour in that direction and was not disappointed.

In addition to surfers, many people went swimming further along the little river and many people were playing sports or having picnics in the beautiful park.

I stayed for a while, enjoying the beautiful weather and people watching, before I returned to the hostel to freshen up before the France vs Germany Eurocup 2016 match. The brewery tour group had vowed to meet each other at Marienplatz at 8pm to find a place to watch the match together, and I was only slightly worried that no one else would remember to come. But they were good people, and everyone showed up exactly at 8pm. Joe and Gareth had heard somewhere about a place near the Olympicpark called Tollwood where there would be food trucks and where the match would be broadcast, so we boarded the metro and tried to determine if we could get away with following fellow metro-riders who were decked out in Germany paraphernalia. Somehow, I ended up being called out as the "responsible one" because I knew which stops we were getting off at - I chalked it up to having chaperoned field trips in my capacity as a teacher, but it sucks always being recognized as being the "responsible one". It makes it harder to explain when you become Vanilla Ice that the two are not at odds with each other.

And anyway, we got lost trying to find our way to Tollwood. We asked several people for directions and finally found the hillside where everyone had gathered.

It was too crowded on the main hill for us to see the screen, so we climbed a hill even higher up, only to have our view obscured by a large branch. Jason went in search of beer and returned with the good news that there was a tent with a screen in much closer proximity to the viewers and that they were selling beer there. The Germans, even through the first half when no one had scored, were subdued and somber. It made it hard for us to get too into the spirit of it. None of us particularly cared who won, but it would have made for a better party if the Germans had.

We took it in turns to go out in search of food and I had the most delicious vegetarian pizza I've ever had. I translated the ingredients prior to ordering and Google Translate could not generate a translation for Zwiebeln. I decided it must be some German secret for making delicious pizza, but a Google search just revealed to me that it is a common onion. After the match, we ordered steins of beer and celebrated Jason's birthday, loudly singing happy birthday in English among the Germans.

The metro had stopped running by the time we left Tollwood, so we caught a cab and I went to sleep in my hostel room at the most reasonable hour I'd managed since arriving.