Musings on travel #3: Munich
A Friday "posy" of images and words
Dear Creative Souls,
This past week a lingering heatwave saps my energy; for days, venturing outside has been akin to opening a hot oven and being slapped in the face with steaming air. One day the temperature peaks at 43.5C (110.3F) and is still in the mid-thirties after dark. Too hot to walk. Too hot to do anything but lie around, read, watch TV. I dig out a jigsaw puzzle and find myself addicted; time speeds up - I sit for five minutes and find that thirty have passed. From Germany comes photos via WhatsApp: snow-blanketed fields, a red squirrel nibbling a walnut, birds - wrens, robins and sparrows - feasting from a snow-covered feeder. I zoom in. Sigh.
I am reminded of a line in my 2023 novel, Wildflower, where Jane (ten-going-on-eleven) dreams of a white Christmas:
“True, songs like ‘I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas’ are like a hot smack in the face when you walk out of the air-conditioned shops into boiling heat. But one day, I’m going to wake up on Christmas Day to frosted windows and a carrot-nosed snowman in the garden”. ~ Wildflower, Monique Mulligan
The sun taunts me. I want to be outside walking, like I did in Berlin, Munich, the German countryside, but I’m a prisoner of this unrelenting heat until late afternoon, when - if - the sea breeze brings cooling air. Like Jane, I dream of landscapes transformed into winter wonderlands, of fairy lights glittering in windows, of cosy moments with loved ones, drinking hot chocolate, dipping crusty bread into eating hearty soups. And I find myself back in Munich. Join me, if you will.
Travel bouquets
I am travelling to Munich on an early ICE from Berlin. The plains give way to a fog of white, as if someone has erased all the form and features, leaving a blank canvas. It is hard to see where the snow ends and the fog begins. I snap a photo, send it to my eldest son: current view. My eyes move away from the white to the man across from me. He is knitting with four needles; he tells me he is making eine Mütze, a beanie. My husband left his beanie in the taxi the day we arrived in Germany; days later, I will leave mine on a train.
Munich has surfaced after being submerged in record snowfall; life here, we discover, does not grind to a halt, even if transport temporarily did. The roads and sidewalks have been cleared, snow unceremoniously dumped in mounds on corners. Gravel gets into the soles of our boots, under the wheels of our suitcases, as we walk to our inner-city Airbnb. The sidewalk is narrow, half of it taken up by scaffolding and grocery stands, by small groups of men smoking and talking outside barber shops, strip clubs, kebab shops, coffee shops. Our progress is slow, our movements awkward; we are in the way, we are too early to check in. We push our suitcases into the corner of a heaving coffee shop, order hot chocolates, and wait.
It is almost dark when we venture outside; we walk down the road, turn right and follow the sidewalk past stately houses and expensive cars to Tollwood Winterfestival on the Theresienwiese, an event highly recommended by our host. We are tired and it is loud, crowded, overstimulating, and we shrink away from the festivities in search of a quiet place to eat. We go back the way we came, continue towards the Altstadt and in, a restaurant just outside of Sendlinger Tor, attempt to eat the biggest schnitzels we’ve ever seen. We go home with leftovers, unsure of this town, unsure of ourselves.
Sirens. Like Paris, there are so many sirens here. And armed police - in the markets, at railways, in parks, and near museums. It is confronting and disconcerting at first for we Aussies. One afternoon we leave the Altstadt at the same time several police vans pull up, first one or two, then more; like others, who stop to watch, we are curious, but we head to the English Gardens and walk in the rain, keeping a safe distance while sirens continue to blare. There is nothing in the news that night.
Our first full day in Munich is a Sunday. The shops are closed but Marienplatz is a mass of people, tourists and locals; we buy Elisen Lebkuchen and a delicate glass bauble at the traditional Christkindlmarkt, and move on, away from the congregation in front of the neo-Gothic Neues Rathaus waiting for the Glockenspiel to delight young and old. We explore alleyways and peer into shop windows. We eat pizza at Eataly, one of the few restaurants open. We climb Alter Peter (St Peter’s Church) and gaze over the Munich skyline while bells ring in this city of churches. We look for the devil’s footprint at the Frauenkirche, we pause at baroque altars and think of loved ones. We drink Feuerzangenbowle at the Medieval Christmas markets at Wittelsbacherplatz, hot chocolate in a café. We walk until our feet hurt and our faces ache from smiling. That night, we share our leftover schnitzel and a bread roll we saved from breakfast, wash it down with an Australian wine we brought with us from Berlin. We agree that Munich is undeniably pretty … but it’s as if this city of textures and deep layers is keeping us at arm’s length.
Walking to Munich Hauptbahnhof, we hear an Australian accent. Our heads snap around in unison - later, we laugh at the unconscious way this happens, how we give ourselves away. We pause on a street corner to chat with strangers from our homeland, before going our separate ways - us to Salzburg, them to Neuschwanstein, the famous fairytale castle. The train moves from city to suburbs to countryside, past lakes and villages, past church steeples and a stonemason’s next to a cemetary. We laugh and point with childlike joy when the Alps arrive on the scene, and decide then and there that our next day trip will be to the Alps, to Zugspitze, not the must-see castle that was also on our agenda.
In Salzburg, soft rain falls; we open umbrellas and climb stairs to a church, closed; more stairs takes us to the city’s fortified wall and we walk along this wall, through a patch of forest punctuated with snow and glimpses of the Alps, and then down ancient stairs into the city’s old town. We wander through alleys and markets and down winding streets. We buy treats: biscuits, marzipan, chocolates, Christmas ornaments. The air is fragrant with cinnamon, sugar, wine, grilled meat. We wander along the brown, rushing river, watch ducks being swept along, pause to gaze at the Eastern Alps that frame this beautiful little city. We eat Sacher Torte in Hotel Sacher, ticking a box that leaves our taste buds unsatisfied, but we don’t care because in less than eight hours, Salzburg has found the sweet spot in our travelling hearts. Even when our train to Munich stops inexplicably on the tracks for an hour, and my husband worries because he didn’t think to bring his passport, we wish we had more time.
Munich becomes less aloof and more of a friend as we walk around the city streets, hopping on trams that take us to Schloss Nymphenburg and Olympic Park. We climb hills and wander through parks. In the Botanic Garden, we sit by an icy lake and eat a packed lunch; we wander for an hour in a winter garden that is ours alone until a worker lectures us for being in a “verboten” part of the Botanic Gardens where snow-weakened branches could fall on our heads. Did we not see this on the news? We came in through the back gates - they were open, so we assumed the park was open - but we keep this to ourselves and make a quick, laughing getaway. Only later, reading headlines that warn people to steer clear of forested areas, do we realise the enormity of our cluelessness.
We make way for dedicated joggers along the still-icy Nymphenburg canal. We stare at portraits and chandeliers in the castle, at expensive BMWs in BMW Welt, at grabby shoppers in TK Maxx, and ponder a world plagued by rampant consumerism. A world we are part of. We ditch the pricy café strip, opting for glühwein and Lebkuchen at a tiny Christmas market for locals in Neuhuasen-Nymphenburg. We eat plump raspberries from a friendly street vendor in Karlsplatz and watch an older couple dance on the ice rink. We seek out where the locals eat and shop. And when we watch tiny school children hold hands as they follow their teachers, listen to animated conversations on buses, and shop for groceries somewhere other than Aldi, we start to wonder what it would be like to live here.
The homeless sleep in doorways; by late afternoon they are huddled up for the night but in the morning they have vanished, leaving sleeping bags puddled where they slept. In Salzburg, beggars approach at train stations, near monuments, outside restaurants. We wonder about them, where they go at night; we read about gangs of beggars who bus into towns, who will take what they can get. We sit in a cramped studio room in a wealthy city and think about the privilege we have, some of it from life choices, most inherited from life.
The Alps rise before us, majestic, ancient towers of rock and ice and snow. Paddocks blanketed in snow, tiny huts dotting the landscape. The train winds through an ever-colder, ever-wilder landscape. As we approach Garmisch-Partinkirchen, we are like overgrown children, eyes shining, mouth open, heads shaking in awe. We want to stop the train so we can walk through the fields, make snow angels, throw snow balls. We want to set our inner children free. But we are adults, here to see the top of Germany, a glacier, a summit.
At the Zugspitze station, we sit on a hard bench and eat our packed lunches - brötchen mit Schinken and Käse - while skiers clump past, ski boots covered in snow powder. Layering up, we venture out to the wild white. For there is nothing but white, no view of four countries, no endless stretch of mountains. We sink deep into the snow and trudge to a viewing platform; we pause to catch our breath because it’s hard work and breathtaking just being here in this moment, this place. It is -4C (24.8F and who knows what the chill factor is) and a man strides past wearing short Lederhosen and socks pulled up to his knees. At the summit, we brave the elements for less than ten exhilarating minutes - on this frozen platform resembling a snow planet in a Star Wars movie, it is -8C (17.6F) not counting the wind chill factor, the white is closing in and we are buffeted like sheets on a gusty day. I can’t feel my hands, my nose, my lips, but rich Dallmayrs’ hot chocolate, cake and the warm restaurant does the trick. Later, we catch the cable car down to stunning Eibsee; it is some moments before the white clears and we can view the steep descent towards the mountain lake, which steals our breath once more. We walk, we imagine, we wish.
We leave Munich with a bag of pastries (courtesy of our Airbnb) hosts and the sense that a friendship has only just begun. Underneath the proud traditions, the elegant architecture and the historic old town, we sense a deeper beating heart. Munich, we agree as we wait for our next train, will call us back one day because we left when we’d only just begun.
Next stop: Strasbourg
Thank you for taking me back to Munich, Monique. I went there on my honeymoon 10 years ago.. and it was one of my favourite places in Europe.
Absolutely beautiful! Wonderful to read about the cold when it's so hot here in Perth!