Tag: museum

Since I have been here several times, I asked my family what their first impressions of Munich were and their response was, they thought it to be a very livable city. Clean and vibrant with a very cosmopolitan population.

For one, the Isar runs directly through it adding to its luxuriant greenspaces and parks. So it is a very green city.

The city itself, like many other European cities of this age, is comprised of an older inner (alt stadt) city, surrounded by the more contemporary version of itself. Our hotel, the Hilton München City on Rosenheimer Strasse, is situated in the perfect spot just outside the old city to enjoy the use of its mass transportation system (which is extensive by the way) and of course walking.

Walking over the Ludwigsbrücke from our hotel we meet the Isartor, the eastern gate to the old city. It no longer protects the old city from tourists and vagabonds, but once was a stalwart against unwanted invasions.

The Altstadt

The city core is comprised of numerous catholic churches, kneipes and bräuthauses, somehow proving the proverb that faith and beer are somehow strongly tied together. In fact everything in Munich is tied to beer.

The famous Glöckenspiel of the Munich Rathaus still works, but now its on a specific schedule. You must consult the working hours in the front of the Rathaus for specific play times.

Other points of interest include the famous Frauenkirche with its dual towers and cupolas. The church inside is nothing special, I myself preferred Saint Peter’s from what I could see. Taken for granted that we attended some of the Latin high mass on Easter morning at Saint Peter’s, which may have swayed my opinion a bit.

The cupolas of the Frauenkirche from a different perspective.

The Deutsches Museum

We ventured around on foot a bit to discover the two famous hofbräuhauses and the Odeonsplatz. We also took the time to visit a few museums, including the Deutsches Museum, which we highly recommend, especially if you have any kind of mining background. The mining display is extensive.

It is also very dark and there are numerous crags and unlit crevasses where anything creepy can hide.

The museum has many other exhibits including naval, airplane and electronics (our personal favorite).

They even have a System 7501 and System 360 from IBM, as well as a Cray and numerous early PC models.. Two tickets anyone..?

So that just about does it for this whirlwind blog entry about Munich.

Our Farewell to Munich

We leave you with a shot of the Marienplatz…

…and Frauenkirche in the evening.

Saturday, prior to my son Tristan and I knowing that we had contracted the flu, we all walked into the center of town to visit the Egyptian museum. It contains the largest collection of artifacts, outside of Egypt. We had thought that Italy was still allowing free admissions to museums from the 5th – 9th. However, this was not the case. In fact, we could not even get a student discount since those are only offered on Thursdays – oh well. The one thing we did get unexpectedly were headsets, which unfortunately ended up to be useless technological throwbacks to the early 1990’s. Undeterred, we soldiered on determined to make the best of it, even among an afternoon throng.

The amazing pieces were the statues and sarcophagi which were surrounded by glass so you can see all sides.

Below is Patti in front of a 4200 year old Sphinx, like the one near the pyramids of Giza.

And finally the sarcophagi we mentioned before.

Well after an hour, which we really enjoyed (our son, Tristan is an ancient history buff), we took our leave to consume some of Italy’s really fine coffee.

Next time we hope to post about something a little less macabre.