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Some beautiful and remarkably ornate buildings survived the devastation of the war. The tower at left has a brilliant seventeenth (I think) century clock...

Germany

Hank Shiffman
2003-11-26 17:54:38

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Munich

My first trip to Munich involved a talk at the Sun Users Group conference. It was a whirlwind trip: arrive one afternoon, give my talk the following day and leave the morning after. I paid a brief visit to the Marienplatz in the center of town. It was brief because it was evening (most everything was closed), it was cold and it was about to storm most furiously. I did manage to walk around and admire some of the architecture before racing for the welcoming warmth of the subway station. By the next morning the rain had turned to some serious snow. And this is southern Germany!

Some beautiful and remarkably ornate buildings survived the devastation of the war. The tower at left has a brilliant seventeenth (I think) century clock. A couple of times a day the clock goes into its performance: music playing and characters dancing. In those days they knew how to build things to last. Quite a far cry from our modern concept of reliability: "Windows 95 is very reliable; it doesn't crash nearly as often as Windows 3.1!"

One of my visits happened to correspond to a new national holiday. Germans clearly take their holidays more seriously than Americans. Pretty much everything was closed for the day, aside from bars and restaurants. Which may explain all the beer drinking in the restaurant at the right. Personally, I have a hard time looking at a beer glass at ten in the morning, Oktoberfest or no Oktoberfest.

I did get to watch part of a parade, complete with silly costumes and marching bands. It was all rather colorful and festive. T'would have been even better if I'd had some idea of what it was all about. Not that there really has to be a reason to celebrate.

One of the surprising things about Bavaria is how quickly you can go from a city like Munich into rolling hills, woods, farms and small villages. It's all ...