Hadley and Cordy visit

It's great to be able to show Munich to visitors, and share some of our love for this place.  Hadley and Cordy arrived last Saturday (3/9) and we spent a fun and busy few days showing them some of our favorite places.

On the tower of Alte Peter, for the best view of the city.

As well as seeing all the many sites, we ate a lot of Bavarian food with them, and drank a fair bit of beer (hmm, not so much Hadley as us, actually...)   With respect to Bavarian food, I think Hadley commented at one point when she was (finally) enjoying a salad that it felt like she'd only been eating meat, pretzels, and pastries.  Ah well, only for a few days :-)   Both of them were pretty impressed with the bakeries, and all the food at the outdoor Viktualienmarkt though.

[BTW, many of the following photos are Hadley's.  She downloaded them to my computer for "safekeeping"...  hopefully she is OK with some being included in posts here.  Hers are marked HH in the caption.]

Pasteries in the bakery across the street from us.  Pic by HH.

One of the olive stands in Viktualienmarkt.  Pic by HH.

The girls in front of the Feldherrnhalle. HH.

An evening walk past the Friedensengel.   KT. 

We spent much of the time just walking around town.  On Sunday we even saw some sun peek through the clouds when we hit the Königsplatz, not far from our apartment.  (I will do a separate post on this square sometime soon... there's a lot to it.)

In front of the Glyptothek, on the Königsplatz.   KT.

The Propyläen, built in the mid-1800's in the ancient greek style,  on the Königspltatz.   KT.

Hadley in front of the Antikensammlungen Museum,
also on Königsplatz.  KT.

A rainy Monday afternoon seemed a good time to visit the Residenz (earlier post here) with Hadley, while the kids were in school (including Cordy, in Julia's class).

Part of the "cabinet of mirrors and porcelain", one
of the ornate rooms.   HH.

View into the "cabinet of miniatures" (see the
small paintings on the wall, embedded in the red
enamel "japanning".)  The mirror reflects the
hallway through all the ornate rooms.  HH.

The most impressive parts are the hallway of highly decorated rooms known as the Reiche Zimmer (ornate rooms) and the Antiquarium.

Thomas admiring the Antiquarium, filled with antique
Roman and Greek busts.  HH.

After the riches of the palace, we went for some liquid wealth/health at the Nockherberg -- the traditional strong beer festival.  Munich has celebrated the brewing of especially hearty beer since 1751 when lay people discovered the joys of Starkbier from the local monasteries.  This strong beer was meant to help keep the fasting monks alive during Lent when they didn't eat, but did drink beer.  (I'm not kidding.)   Starkbier is nutritious, rich, and about 7.5% alcohol.  At the contemporary strong-beer festival, the only unit for beer purchase is, of course, a Mass (one liter).  Even with sharing two beers between the three of us, we were in fine shape to cook dinner when we got home...

On Tuesday, Hadley, Cordy and I did a lot of walking, mostly in the palace and grounds of Schloss Nymphenburg.  (My post from the summer is here.)  There were a lot fewer people around compared to summer, and having the grounds almost to ourselves was kind of cool.

Wednesday, supposed to be their last day here, we hit the fabulous Deutsches Museum, with its many science and tech exhibits, and an underground maze of info about mining.   The best part, however, was a small exhibit with facial detection software...

Fun.  And Hadley and I are obviously very "happy".  (But do I really look 60 +/- 11 years old!?)

OK, I like this one better.  (A youthful 37 +/- 12 years...)

Thanks to a snowstorm (mostly in Paris) we got an extra day with Cordy and Hadley (although that became slightly chaotic since Thomas and I were to leave early afternoon Thursday for a Humboldt meeting in Bamberg (next post), and my mother-in-law was coming to look after the kids, and their new flight didn't leave 'til 10 that evening... but it worked out fine.) 

Having visitors gives us a great excuse to see and show off all the wonderful Munich sites again.  I'd love to have more of you come zu Besuch! 

The kids enjoyed looking out the back of a tram.

Our daily...

Bread!  In continuing the posts on things I especially like about Germany and Munich, I naturally needed to say something about the wonderful bread here.  German Brot is ubiquitous, but (for a North American) amazingly tasty.

Here is an example of our bread basket (from our first apartment, photo
taken by Julia).

What can I say.  Three quarters of Germans' body mass must come from wheat and rye.  The typical German eats bread or buns for breakfast (with jam, or cold cuts), and then also as the staple for the evening meal, since they usually have their largest hot meal at midday.  Bread really is a daily essential here.

My favorite bread is from the "Hofpfisterei" (which, I believe, is the same
bakery which supplied the royalty of Bavaria since the 13th century.

My favorite bread, the "Öko-Spezial" from Hofpfisterei, is 90% rye (and 10% wheat), and it has a delicious full flavor.  Many of the traditional breads in Germany are rye based, and come in large round boules, of which you can ask for a quarter or a half.  There are also awesome white breads, including baguettes (not quite as good as in France) and lots of Brötchen (buns, which are actually called "Semmeln" here in Bavaria ).
   In a country with very strict Sunday closing laws, bakeries are the only type of business to be found open for a few hours on Sundays.  And they really are everywhere.  According to a post from the Goethe Institute, there are 47 bakeries in Germany per 100,000 inhabitants: That's one bakery for roughly 2000 people.  You cannot walk a city block in Munich without finding one, usually with beautifully presented displays of their wares.  Even in the train stations there are bakeries that would be fine specially shops at home...

The Rischart bakery at the Ostbahnhof (train station)

Of course, being in Bavaria, I need to especially point out the pretzels, which are amazing!  Brezn, as they are called here, are the perfect snack; crisp and salty outside, and soft and chewy inside [wait, this sounds like a Gary Larson cartoon...]  You see kids on the streets eating them all the time  -- they're relatively healthy with no sugar or fat.  A Breze tastes great by itself, or especially awesome with a bit of butter or cream cheese.  They're not trivial to make -- the distinctive flavor comes from being dipped in a solution of sodium hydroxide (lye) before baking -- but maybe we will try when we get back, since otherwise we'll really miss them!

Our latest Brotzeit basket, with Brezn...

At least a couple evenings per week now, like a good German family, we have Brotzeit (literally "bread time", but it refers to a light meal of bread with cold cuts) for supper.  Good cheese and cold cuts on great bread makes for an easy and surprisingly tasty meal.  If it were easier to find good bread at home, we'd do this more often there too -- how great it is not to cook, and still have everyone enjoy a meal at home.

I could almost write a separate post on cheese, and certainly one on the variety of cold-cuts/wurst available here, but for now I'll include a couple pictures from my favorite places to shop for our Brotzeit toppings.

One of the cheese stalls at the outdoor Viktualienmarkt.

In the Wurst counter of my favorite Metzgerei (butchery).
The liverwurst, seen behind the lamp reflection, is divine on rye bread.

Yum.  All these pictures are making me hungry.  Too bad the bakeries aren't open past 7pm...

Our mini winter vacation

In some ways, this is a bit embarrassing, that here we are living so close to the Bavarian Alps, and up until this past weekend have not made use of any of the fabulous winter sport activities there.  Skiing, either downhill or cross-country, just seemed too complicated, as not only do we not have any equipment (which of course we could rent) but in order to keep the suitcases to a minimum we had decided not to pack any winter-sport clothing:  Benjamin is the only one with snow pants, for example.  Somehow the thought of getting sweaty, and then cold, in jeans and cotton sweaters, and coming back for an hour on the train was enough to just make it not happen...

 
However, last Sunday was sunny
(finally -- this has apparently been the grayest winter here since 1951)
and we decided to head to the Alps for some sledding!









There are several Rodeln (sledding) hills in the Alps, and we chose one in the little town of Lenggries, since the base of the mountain is only about a 20 minute walk from the train station.  On the way to the hill, we rented two sleds, for 5 Euros each, since it was not clear whether there would be sleds available at the hut on top.

The sledding path is about 1.5 km long, with an altitude difference of 200 m.   It took us about 40 minutes of good effort to get up to the top of the sled run (walking on loose snow is not as easy as summer hiking!) but there were some beautiful views along the way.

The little hut at the top of the run is a very typical Bavarian Hütte, and before we started our sledding, we had a great lunch of potato and sausage soup and Wiener Schnitzel.
Luckily they had one more sled available to rent, so we had a total of three.

Near the top.  We were glad to see the hut after 40 minutes of climbing.

Now for the fun part!!  

Actually, it was a little alarming at first, not only because it's quite steep near the top, but because it's nearly impossible to brake with two people on a sled.  (Digging in heels works to some extent, but not when the track is icy, as it was at the beginning.  The only way to slow down is to put both feet on the ground and lift the front so that the back of the runners digs in...)

 Once we figured that out, the kids went sailing down on their own, and Thomas and I took turns sledding part-way down while the other walked.  Once at the bottom (10 minutes or so) we hiked about half-way back up and slid down several more times (while one parent waited at the bottom).



This was great exercise, in the sun and mountain air. We were all pleasantly exhausted by the end of the day, and there were no arguments about bedtime!

Julia coming down the track...
Unfortunately my camera batteries died just as Benjamin and Thomas came into view.