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 Political Comments:

(Not necessarily those of the typist but as portrayed in the news here)

Currently the US is not in favor in Germany and one of the political "planks" in the election for Chancellor this weekend was a mild "Anti US" campaign. There were still talking this morning on CNN how this will all play out if the existing Chacellor stays in office after all the votes are counted and that "plank" played a part of his re-election. How will Germany ultimately participate in the Iraq picture. Bush is not well thought of here and as they said on the TV, one of his problems is that he has no charisma like Clinton who, with all his faults still had. They definitely don’t like the existing US powers over here. Some of their Bush satire is quite pointed and makes him out to be a bumbling politician who doesn’t get the bigger picture.

Germany especially in the Berlin area is having financial problems with unemployment etc, worse than we are in the US. They blame it on two things;

1. Existing govt. is very much a union supported government and as such, won’t allow stores to stay open past 4:00PM on Saturday and they must stay closed on Sunday. This wreck’s havoc on getting the tourist dollars from the weekend travelers.
2. Post reunification of Berlin is much more costly than ever anticipated and according to the TV, the people that had lived in East Berlin under the Socialist system just don’t have the business savvy and drive that the West Berliner’s have and are more than willing to not work and leave it up to the government to support them.

 Setting the stage:

I had a conference call on Friday evening (midnight here) and we had to be up at 4:00AM to make our train. It doesn’t take too many deductive skills to know what I was doing by the time the train pulled out of the station at 06:05AM.

Munich is in the southeastern part of Germany and is a 6-hour train ride from Dusseldorf which gives you time to either see a bit of the country or catch up on your sleep. Well, when I work up around 8:00, I couldn’t believe my eyes. We were going through the Rhineland area along the Rhine River. We saw old castles on the side of mountains looking down on the river and the German towns down below alongside the river. It was postcard perfect. We had a "Grosse tasse tee" large cup of tea and watched the countryside pass by. Many of the homes in the town’s sport window boxes with brilliant red flowers and vines trailing out of them. I think they choose red because they show up so vibrantly against the creamy color of most of the homes. I wish each one of you had been here to see them because my limited vocabulary just can’t do the view justice. A couple of the castles are now open as Hotels but many are still private residences. Vineyards abound on the sides of the hills in this area and they plant them perpendicular to the mountain. In Ca. you usually see them parallel to the hillside.

A few miles later it was time for another nap. When I woke up Jim was looking at me strangely. I asked "What’s wrong, was I drooling or something"? He said look around, what’s different. When I dozed off I was facing the direction the train was going, now I was facing the opposite direction. Our first inclination was "Oh s- - -". We didn’t understand what the conductor said and we should have changed trains at the last station even though the tickets didn’t indicate to do so. Jim goes to find the conductor who doesn’t speak a word of English but though a few hand gestures and ticket reviews, yes this was still the train to Munich. We paid more attention on the way back and yep, it happened again. Evidentally the train was pushed out of Munich and them at Stuttgart we change over to being pulled. There were a few mountains in between so maybe that is the reason, who knows.

Oktoberfest:

I never knew how the whole Oktoberfest celebrations started until this weekend (that is if you can believe the tour guide. I haven’t had time to go check this out yet). Anyway, One of the Bavarian Kings (Ludwig I think) was to marry a German princess and he wanted to show Napoleon that the German’s knew how to celebrate as well as the French. So he set the week aside after their wedding for a celebration period with free beer to all the Munich residents (only 30,000 or so at that time) complete with assorted festival activities and invited Napoleon as their guest. Everyone enjoyed this event so much they decided to make it a yearly happening. The Munich residents now have to buy their own beer but they enjoy it nevertheless.

Oktoberfest runs for 16 days and it started this past weekend. Munich usually has about 1million residents except for this period. Approximately ½ million people arrive/depart each day during the festival and Munich nets about 2 Billion dollars for these 16 days. Not too bad a revenue source.

Munich:

Our hotel was a 14.80-euro cab ride away from the Train station. We get to the hotel about 12:45 and couldn’t check in because check out time there is 1:00PM. No problem. I go and see about a couple of tours and when I asked where we went to meet the tour, they said at the Train Station. Ugh… we just came from there. We leave our backpacks, hop into a cab and back to the Train Station. Our cab driver back had a better command of the English language and told us of some of the festivities. There were metal viewing stands being erected along the main roads and she said they were for the Oktoberfest parade, which would start at 10:00 the following morning. She said you could buy a seat on one of these viewing stands or just stand along the route and watch the parade. Interesting commentary at that point but becomes important later.

We went to the Palace of Nymphenburg, which was the former summer residence of the Bavarian elector princes and kings. We saw the beauty gallery of King Ludwig 1. His walls were full of paintings of beautiful women of the court, his mistresses and just lovely ladies of the country. Incredible place, hopefully some of the picture we took will turn out, you weren’t allowed to use a flash.

We saw the House of Arts, Bavarian National Museum, Angel of Peace, and the very elegant Maximilian Street, which runs through the center of town where the Bavarian Parliament resides. We saw the Opera House and Royal Palace. The homes in the area around the Royal Palace are not allowed to be sold, they have to be handed down through the inheritance process. Keeps the "rift raft" out of the area.

There are over 700 fountains in the city of Munich. We definitely didn’t come close to seeing all of them.

We saw the American Counsel which as in all the cities we have seen, very barricaded and set up so that a car cannot drive directly up to the building. All now require a series of mazes that zigzag back and forth so a car can’t just zip in and zip back out.

We didn’t get to see the Glockenspiel (chimes) which chime every day at 11:00 because we weren’t there early enough on Saturday and were otherwise distracted on Sunday.

I signed us up for a night tour of Munich and since it also left from the Train Station, we decided to just hang around and sight see in town all day instead of going back to the Hotel. By the time it came for this tour to start, I was tired, grouchy and wishing I had never signed up for it. Boy was I wrong.

The sights when lit at night take on an entirely different look. They were magnificent. We went to a Hofbrauhaus for dinner. This place is a historical house (over 500 years old) and can handle 3,000 people on the first floor. We were on the 2^nd floor and had the company of a couple hundred other people with us for dinner and a show. Dinner consisted of enough German sausages, pork, chicken, sauerkraut, pretzels and beer for a small army. The entertainment was pure Bavarian and they were great. We sang, danced, ate and ate some more.

After dinner we went out to the Olympic Park. As you remember, Munich was home to the 1972 Olympics when Mark Spitz won his 7 gold medals. We went up in the Olympic Tower where you felt like you could see forever. The park paid for itself in 2 years and now is a continuing source of revenue for the city. You ascend/descend to the top/bottom at the rate of 7m/sec = I think 21 feet per second. You definitely know you are going up and down.

We met people on the tour from California. One man went to the same high school as Jim and he graduated from San Jose state. They had been in Prague prior to Munich. Definitely a small world. There were 4 other people from Dallas. Yep, we have to claim them too.

In Berlin, they talked a lot about Hitler and the way life was then, but not in Munich. Our tour guide said they had tried to initially put aside the Hitler years even though Hitler had adopted the city as how own and near to the Marienplatz in Munich, the Nazi party was founded. Instead they had concentrated on rebuilding the town as it was in the days of the Kings and Princes but the city government has decided that they should have something that documents the Hitler years as a historical reference point so they are going to take one of office buildings Hitler used and make a memorial out of it. This will be in addition to the Dachau Memorial. We didn’t even attempt to fit Dachau into our schedule.

We got back to the hotel after midnight and were more than ready to complete check in and call it a day.

On Sunday we decided not to hurry back into town in order to hop on the City Circle Tour Bus but to take our time and walk back to the train station. We had now figured out how to navigate and given enough time we could get back to the station. This way we could see Munich not on tour. Well, after about a mile or so we ran into the folks setting up for the parade. A little later on we passed the starting point for the parade and there was still room along the street so we pulled up a couple feet of concrete and set out back packs down to watch. It was INCREDIBLE. Munich parades for a couple of hours to officially start Oktoberfest. All of the major beer houses have entries in the parade, most of which are horse drawn affairs that had been decked out with flowers for both the wagons and horses. It seemed like every township was represented with everyone dressed up in their native garb, as well as the various trades (grape crushers, farmers etc). Both political candidates were there, each in his own horse drawn carriage and separated by a few bands. We took lots of pictures which I’ll send later if you would like to see them. This was all for free.

We decided that the parade would eventually pass the train station so when the street cleaners came alone at the end of the parade, we jumped out in the street and followed them back to town and to the train station. That worked out well except just imagine what it would be like to be behind the elephant sweepers at the circus for a mile or two. It worked out great and we hit the train station with enough time to grab lunch and head home.

An incredible weekend and we truly wish you could have been here.