The weather has been a real treat the past few days. The sun is bright and the temperatures are warm, so warm that it makes me wonder why I bothered to wear a long-sleeved t-shirt today for my walk around town. With the Oktoberfest safely behind me, today was set aside as an exploration of Munich-fest.
There are so many churches here that a random game of “let’s see what this one’s like” seemed appropriate.
Almost without fail, the plain fronted churches have some of the best artwork. The painting in this particular venue was stunning. The Bavarians have a really nice way of whitewashing the walls before adding the color.
Since the edifice is usually not constructed of any particularly beautiful stone, then the white walls make good sense. The benefit of the blank background is that any color applied afterwards jumps from the field. The gold appliqué becomes dramatic.
Sculpture has never really be my interest but this trip has broadened the appeal. The wood carving of Mary reminds me a little of the still movement of the religious relics in Prague. (If you bounce back to the May entry the similarities are there.) Without knowing the date of carving my guess is that they are from approximately the same period, given the style, pose, and paint palette. The difference here is that there is less swing in this piece than the almost dancing male figures of Prague. Since this entire area was roughly part of or under the influence of the Austria-Hungarian Empire, I guess the similarities should not be that surprising.
This angel and child has a little more of the "dance" motif.
Enough with art history…
I’m definitely not back in the groove of writing every day and documenting interesting sites, because I haven’t a clue as to the names of the churches visited. There was this one with the tallest towers in all of Munich. Today is a national holiday celebrating the reunification of East and West so they were closed.
So, as a surrogate I climbed the second highest church tower for a view of Marien Platz, where the clock tower is still under renovation. From this perch the city unfolded beneath.
Looking down the main street back towards the Hauptbahnhof the steps of the morning could be easily retraced.
Ok, time for a confession. Although impressed with the planning and under-whelmed with the overall impact, my blogging of the English Garden in May was incorrect. I wasn’t even “in” the English Garden but in the Parliament Garden. This definitely needed to be rectified, so across town I tread to visit the "Real McCoy".
The result was roughly the same as the first attempt in May, as “Garden” is really a misnomer for “Park”. The hectares of green space are well constructed with woods and planned horse trails. There is even a Chinese Tower where an Um-Pa band paced out Oktoberfest favorites to a happy resting crowd, filling themselves with pretzels, smoked fish, ice cream, roasted nuts, and of course liters of beer.
Every park needs a centerpiece and the English Garden has this Greek style temple sitting on practically the only elevation on the grounds.
The isolation of this simple structure adds to the appeal. A great lawn lies out before the knoll with a stream bifurcating the meadow.
This man directed aqueous obstacle is no babbling brook but a streaming torrent.
Upstream a flash catches my eye and if I hadn’t seen surfers in the Snake River outside of Jackson Hole this would have been a pretty confusing display. But there they were, maybe fifteen of them in all on both sides of the current, patiently waiting their turn to jump into the rushing fray and attempt to “hang on”.
Some surfers were obviously more adept to the idea of keeping the center of gravity pushing the board upstream against the current than others. The challenge was inviting and the camaraderie of the group cheered on new comers as well as the seasoned.
For a job well done the waiting river rats would slap the sides of their boards in approval and bark like seals. The first impression was that they were encouraging the long-rider to finish up and allow another some wave time, since nearly always after the slapping and barking the rider would fall out of the gravitational “sweet spot” and be rapidly swept down stream. However, the reality of the situation was that as the tricks increased in complexity and the applause grew the difficulty factor simply eliminated the rider.
In spite of the warning sign, as the afternoon wore on more surfers and spectators emerged to enjoy the entertainment provided by the fast currents.
The event was almost like a guiltless version of watching a car wreck. Each surfer would step or jump into the wake, perform a few cut backs and then the inevitable crash was right around the corner. Everyone, including the surfer, knew that the crushing smack of limbs hitting hardened water was coming and we all equally eagerly awaited not only the successful stunt but also the correlating wipeout.
(Great inversion and surfing the current with a backwards board.)
Oooo’s and applause were equally doled out for great tricks and face plants.
Walking down the street I stumbled into the haus der kunst or “house of art” on prinzregentenstrasse. Of course Hitler was an incredibly awful human being, but he did appreciate the arts and this building was the first official state monument built after coming to power. The exhibit in residence was from Robin Rhode, and incredibly imaginative multi-media artist. The most compelling of his works are sequential “stop action” stills that tell a story. He plays with dimension to create a different literal perspective. For instance there is a sequence of him dunking a basketball. The entire storyboard is actually played out flat on the ground and shot from above. The basket, backboard, etc. are drawn with chalk and the only three-dimensional objects are the ball and Robin. It is as if he has bodily entered the two-dimensional cartoon world. Effort and emphasis lines are drawn in chalk around his flying, spinning, and dunking body. If you're interested here a representative link to an artist bio, http://www.artthrob.co.za/99nov/artbio.html.(Of course my apologies for getting excited over something that I was not allowed to photograph. I even forgot to snap the outside of the building… shame, shame, so out of narrating practice.)
Finally, on the stroll back home to the Youth Hostel I simply “took in” the clear German design of planned infrastructure, grand boulevard arches,
... perfect and sparse signage (compared with Ireland),
... elegant court yards,
... and to the intermittent splashes of nature mixed with the city life.
There is a rather interesting and maybe odd statue of an oversized man who appears to be sliced into a hundred horizontal metallic layers, while standing in a median park space. This warranted a picture. Then I was being summoned by a directed and repeated “Halo, halo”. A cab driver was pointing to the man and explaining to me in German that there was a plaque on the wall that explained who this fellow was and why he was important. This was actually a statue of Maximilian Joseph Graf Von Montgelas. (Of course it was. How silly for me not to have recognized that… haaa.) For the Bavarian people he is a very important figure, the international political savvy equivalent of Thomas Jefferson. He was responsible for defending Bavaria politically from the Hungarian empire long enough to achieve independent statehood and this statue stood out in front of his Munich home.
What I particularly loved about the exchange was that the taxi driver cared enough about his state’s history to make sure that an obvious tourist didn’t just take a random picture of an interesting statue, but actually gained the story as well. Shame on me again, for not taking “his” picture. The cabbie reminded me of my father at his best, full of energy and excitement with full eyes and belly, gesticulating for fullness of expression, eager to share an esoteric and self inspired point. I thanked him generously and left with a spring and broad grin.
