Munich

My beloved handbag was just about ready to fall apart by the time I arrived in Munich, so even before I bought essential food supplies I went in search of a replacement. I have had this handbag since September 2016 when I was in Barcelona and I have an unexplainable love for it. It’s faded now and definitely worse for wear, but sometimes you just get attached to things. I bought it from a Desigual store in Barcelona and I wanted to replace it with a new bag from the same brand because I love their designs. I got to their store in Munich about 35 mins before they were due to close, and looked at every bag before choosing one that was a similar size and shape, paid for it, emptied my old bag into it, carried the old one outside, checked the pockets and lining for anything important, folded it, gave it a kiss and placed it into a bin. A man who watched me do this asked what I was throwing away and I said my old handbag, it’s been awesome but now its job is done. He said ahh, I understand, I have done the same with my wife. Ha. Not quite the same but the sentiment was there, and he winked and walked on.

Munich has a dark past to rival Berlin – this is the site of Hitler’s rise to power, he formed the Nazi party here and gave his first speeches of anti-Semitism (in the now famous Hofbrauhaus beer hall), and tours of Third Reich hotspots, the nearby Dachau concentration camp and Hitler’s Eagles Nest tours are apparently very popular. It is enough to know this while I am here but you would be forgiven for not knowing that these dark reminders are all under your nose. Munich is a vibrant city and unlike Berlin, it has a well preserved (70% reconstructed) old town which is really very beautiful. I walk to the Marienplatz to see the incredible gothic town hall building, and for only 4 euros you can take a short elevator ride to the top of the tower to get uninterrupted views to the Alps (on a good day like today), and right across the city. If you’re there at 11am, 12pm or 5pm you’ll see the glockenspiel in the tower and hear the carillon bells too. Amazing. Round the corner is the Viktualienmarkt where you can buy your fruit, wine, meat, cheese or grab a hotdog/schnitzel/burger/roast pork bun and a litre of beer and plop yourself in the shaded beer garden. I’m not a big beer drinker but it is the drink of choice here – I have just missed Oktoberfest (it ran 19 Sept – 4 Oct this year) which sees visitors drinking 7 million litres of beer. I called into the famous Hofbrauhaus beer hall which was packed with people drinking litre glasses of beer (for 5-10 euro), eating knuckles of pork (13 euro) and suckling pig (17 euro) while listening to oompapa music…..a bit more than I could stomach. Instead I head to the English gardens which is a massive 910 acre park, and as it’s another gorgeous sunny 23 degree day seems the perfect place to be. It is packed with people enjoying the sun, including several people who felt so good in the sun they took their clothes off! There is even a part of the river where the water is so strong there are people surfing on it. I was so distracted by the unexpected naked people that I wandered off the path, accidentally slipped in some mud and got covered in dirt, so headed back to my apartment to shower and change and put on a load of washing before heading back out again for dinner. It’s surprising how dignified you can pretend to be when your backside is covered in mud 🙂