Day 9: A Minute for Munich

This was our second day in Munich, and we took the time to see the wonders of this city. To my surprise, it had some interesting features, more than I would've expected. I had no idea how culturally and historically rich the city was.

As we went on a walking tour, we learned some interesting things about the city. This place had significant connections to the life of Adolf Hitler. He came here as an artist, but got involved in politics later on. Disturbingly, the beer hall we ate at the night before was where he organized the Nazi party in the early 1920's. We also saw the old town hall (which is actually newer because it was bombed but then rebuilt) and the new town hall. In front of the old town hall was an unusual statue of the Virgin Mary with knights battling the "four great evils" of the time.
After the tour, my family toured the Residenz. It was this big palace that belonged to the Bavarian Monarchy prior to the 1918 German Revolution. There were a lot of rooms, so much that it felt like a maze. It was like there was a room for every possible purpose, including reading, writing, and sleeping. I don't know what someone would need that many rooms for. They also had a treasury and a theater, which was neat to see.
After the palace, we went to the English Garden, which is a big city park containing several interesting stuff. This includes a Greek Temple, a Chinese Pagoda, and a Japanese Pavilion. We actually ate near the pagoda when we stopped for lunch. We got tired from all of the walking and decided to go back to the hotel for a rest, but first, we bought a few souvenirs.
Mom was able to get us reservations at the Hard Rock Cafe, so we ate dinner there. On our way to and from there, we stopped at this old church, which has a very interesting legend behind it. There's something called the "Devil's Footprint" that is there on the floor, which allegedly was left behind by the devil when he visited the church. It took us a while to find it, but we did. Afterwards, we went back to the hotel and settled in for the night.

Comments

  1. KristynJanuary 9, 2025 at 5:46 PM

    I really appreciate your commentary and the details/names/history you include. I had forgotten so many of the details that this really refreshes it for me. Remember how they say you can always feel the wind outside that church?

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 16: Museums, Muggles, and Mischief.

Image
  We woke up and had breakfast, and then we began a long walk to a Harry Potter Photographic Exhibition. Along the way, we saw this Sherlock Holmes-themed pub. We didn't eat there, but it was cool to see. We started out the day by seeing the Harry Potter Photographic Exhibition in London. Here, photos, costumes, and more were displayed to show the behind the scenes movie magic. Along the way, we saw some interesting things, like the Weasleys' flying Ford Anglia, and costumes worn by Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) and Ralph Fiennes (Lord Voldemort). After getting some lunch, we went into one of the biggest and oldest museums in Europe, the British Museum. It contains a large collection of ancient artifacts from all over the world. This includes things from Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, Viking Scandinavia, Pre-Colonial Polynesia, and Medieval Europe, plus more. Notable things include the Bust of Ramses and the Rosetta Stone, as well as some actual mummies. There w...
Read more

Day 12: Czech This Out!

Image
  The Czech Republic really surprised me. When going in, I was not expecting much, but it turned out to be my favorite stop on the trip. A lot of us were surprised too, so I wasn't the only one. We drove all the way there from Germany, cutting through Austria as we did. When we arrived, we had to pay for parking, and while that happened, we walked into the main city of Cesky Krumlov. We checked into our hotel and got lunch, even though my serving of spaghetti was disappointingly small. We took a long walking tour of the area. Sights we visited included a church, a town square, a university center, and someone's restaurant. The owner of that restaurant was the one who was leading us on the tour. He taught us about some of the area's history, how it was built in old times and flourished during the Renaissance and Baroque eras, later being annexed by Nazi Germany prior to World War II. The most interesting part was this castle, complete with a tower that looked like a cake and...
Read more

Day 6: RIIIIIIICOOOOOOLAAAAAAA!

Image
Today was the Swiss National Day! On this day, August 1, is when Switzerland declared its independence in 1291. Although we didn't celebrate many festivities, we did do other things. The tour group went up to the Swiss village of Murren, a town high in the Alps. From there, we got an impressive view of the valley below. We even saw some paragliders. As fun as it looks, I'd stay away from stuff like that after seeing that gravestone last night. Since we had nothing better to do, we bought our own lunches, simple sandwiches from a grocery store, even though I would've rather had something from a restaurant. At least we got to try good chocolate. While the men went on this big hike up to a mountain called the Schlithorn, the rest of us went on a gentler hike to a waterfall, and Matthias joined us. It still was a hike though, with lots of ups and downs as well as a bumpy dirt path. I was getting tired a lot of times. I even took my shirt off because of how sweaty I was getting....
Read more