Munich...

We arrived in Bavaria's capital city Thursday late in the evening after a six-hour trip on a Train à Grande Vitesse from Paris.   It's a long way between the two cities, and more than half of it was spent in the dark--so no chance to see the steeples of Augsburg or Ulm.  The domestic architecture difference between France and Germany is quite noticeable once you cross the Rhine.

Our hosts, Pat Oliver and Michael Heil, live in the center of town, a few hundred meters from the Isartor Gate on the eastern end of the old town.   The subway system seems to be excellent.  We didn't need to wait for an S-banh streetcar/suburban train/underground from the big Bahnhof to the Isartour Gate.  

Munich's Founding Monk Statue on
New Town Hall: Munich=Monk

Friday, we spent a lovely day yesterday walking around (16,000 steps on John's Fitbit--it  may be a record for the trip).  The city is very modern, with  dull concrete and glass architecture, except for its few older, mostly reconstructed buildings. But the people are fashionably dressed, and very tall. 

Bavarian Knight Wins! Beats
French at Medieval Marriage
Fete.

We enjoyed watching the glockenspiel on the New City Hall a few minutes after noon, then headed over to the Viktualienmarkt for a lunch of brown bread, lox, lettuce, and goat cheese sandwiches (they write "lachs" here, not lox.).  We watched the crowd before finishing with three lovely cappuccinos and pastries.

Lunch with Pat at the Viktualienmarkt
--lox and goat cheese

Baroque gone wild

Trying to find out who he is?

A short walk from there (nothing is far from anything else in the old city) we arrived at the Asam Church.  This place was built by two architects as their private chapel, but also as the show place for their inventions and decorative arts.  It's so rococo!  From there we saw two other churches, St. Michael's, a lovely baroque church and the cathedral, the Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady), the seat of Benedict XVI when he was cardinal here.  It left us cold. 

     

Last night we went to a symphony performance in the Hercules Hall at the Residenz, a hall of magnificent acoustics and the home of Bayerische Rundfunk Orchestra.  The program had only the two pieces.  Both were superb in execution, though we must admit that the Elgar Symphony 2 left us feeling that it was a climax that never happened.   The Jörg Widmann viola concerto was its German premiere.  He was there for it as a native Munchner.  It's a fascinating use of instruments, giving a wide variety of many types and movement of sounds (some atonal, some lyrical).  The violist as well as a few other instrumentalists moved around the stage among the other orchestra members.  Not something we would want to hear regularly, but still very worth hearing.

Dinner before the concert was a lovely repast in a top-scale restaurant, Brenners.   Three of us chose salads.  John's was lamb and artichoke, Ben's a vegetable salad topped with grilled chicken.  Pat had a beef salad, and Michael enjoyed grilled chicken with kartoffeln.  A bottle of Languedoc made the meal.