The Residenz

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The Residenz was the Royal Family’s residence, the place where they hung out for hundreds of years until the Allies (that was us–sad faces, please) bombed it to smithereens in a few hours one day, in order to Do What We Had To Do. The German pamphlets are very nice about this fact, and never mention the complete loss of this amazing palace. Truthfully, the stats are that 23,000 square meters of roof was reduced to 50. Much of the artwork and many of the treasures had been moved to a safe location

But don’t worry. The Nazis, in all their tidiness, photographed this place ad nauseam, so with the fragments of this palace that were left, the archived artwork and treasures, all those photographs (and I’m sure some war reparations money), they rebuilt the thing. Dave and I both agree it’s one of the most impressive royal houses we’ve seen, perhaps because it’s a highly edited collection.

The Shell Grotto. I’m going to get Dave busy on the weekends building me one of these.

We call this the Dripping Medusa statue. What you can’t see is that the rest of Medusa’s body is at this guy’s feet and water is squirting out of her neck, too. Very inventive.

The next room is called the Antiquarium because they keep antiquities in there. This guy is not one of them.
The scale and shape and size of this hall is so harmonious. It’s a pleasure to walk in and be in, and perhaps you can see from the people in the picture, it’s very large, but full of light and interesting things to look at.

Because this is a blog post, I’m going to give you the edited verion, the highlights according to Elizabeth. One is the ceiling corner of the next room (below). I have three more corners, but won’t post them, because you get the idea from just this one.

I liked the old-fashioned bee hive (looks like a hut of straw) and all the gilt bees attached to this ceiling. Money was no object, if you were a king, and so much of the ornamentation attests to this fact. But when I think that much of this is a reconstruction, I was amazed at the skill of the twentieth-century artisans who were able to put this decoration onto the walls, ceilings, doorways, hallways, everywhere. In the other four corners, they had a ship, and a palm tree, and a dragon on fire, not to mention the scenes in between the corners, with full-scale people lounging around showing the times of the day (didn’t photograph those as I was enamored with the bees).

More gilt.

The door to the Four Horses Salon and adjoining Kaisersaal (Emperor’s Hall). Last time we were in Munich, our conference had a reception here in the Residenz with the Deputy Secretary (equivalent to our Secretary of State). The conference organizers put in to the Secretary’s office for a reception and that office chooses the place and provides the food and hor d’ouvres on their budget. We lucked out and were here.

Detail of a door jamb.
Here’s the big hall, with its pieced marble floors, huge paintings and chandeliers. This is the one place you can linger, as it has chairs you can sit in. The reason why the call the adjoining room the Four Horses room is that it used to have a painting of Four White Horses on the ceiling, but no longer. Damaged in the war. This sort of thing happened over and over–referring to what was there, but is no longer. I can think of many instances of this in my own life, where the perception and memory are stronger than what exists now. And then there are the other times, where I’m madly scrambling just to keep up with “what is.” Sometimes it’s tiring to relearn.
This room is tiny, a small chapel just for the King not too far from the larger family chapel. It has a silver-encrusted altar, and piedra dura scenes around on the wall. Using Albrecht Durer as a model, craftsmen from Italy pieces together depictions of Mary’s life in stone–kind of like paint by number but with rocks and glue. So there’s silver and black on the altar, stone all over the walls, and the ceilings are painted a brilliant blue with gilt decorations. Amazingly, it all works together.

Looking up into the cupola. We were prevented from entering by a velvet rope, so the angle is skewed (the stone floors are original and they’re trying to protect them).

Stone on the left, a glimpse of ceiling, then the altar.



I like photographing mailboxes when I travel, and this little slot above the putti’s head and wings, tied with ribbons, reminds me of a mailbox slot. If you could post a letter to Heaven, what would you say? (Putti is the high-tech generic name for Cupid.)
Coming out of the chapel, is this Stag Hallway. Even the plain spare walls become beautiful with the shiny marble floors and the sun shining in.

This is the Green room section, repete with mirrors. Apparently having a plate glass mirror was a real sign of wealth in the 17 and 1800s and this room (and some of the next) showed that off. This fireplace is at the end of a cross-shaped arrangement of rooms, and while the photograph doesn’t really show this, it reflects back two galleries just like it.

At the other part of the “cross” what’s reflected back, five galleries away, is this exquisite little mirrored room, with gilt framing holding little jars of blue and white porcelein. While Dave likes the Four White Horses area, I’m crazy for this room and the Red Cabinet (next).
Many rooms are kept curtained and dimmed (like the Stone Rooms, which didn’t photograph well), but as soon as we arrived here, the sun came out again from behind a cloud and lit up the place. If I were a King, or his Queen, I’d spend most of my day here. This was right off of the Royal Bedroom.
(I’m pretending to live here.)
This is the Red Cabinet, a tiny room with miniature scenes covering the walls. The website states that “With the exception of the two sets of doors and the miniatures, the Miniaturenkabinett was completely destroyed in the Second World War. It took many years of painstaking work to reconstruct the stucco, the carving and the red japanning.”  It’s stunning.
The chandelier is made from ivory.

The last hall of the Residenz is the Family Portait Hall (my name for it). Stacked three high in gilded frames are portraits of the Wittelsbach family.

We were happy to have the chance to come here again, and went out into the day, heading over to the Yellow Church (look later for a post).

Theatine Church (Theatinerkirche)

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The Theatine Church, or Theatinerkirche St. Kajetan, is a glowing yellow church with black accents just across from The Residenz. Royal Ferdinand built it in 1662 as an honor and thanks because his wife produced an heir to the Bavarian Crown. Most men would have just brought a bouquet of flowers and her favorite chocolates, but I’m glad he was a man of the grand gesture.

Like I mentioned before, it has an all-white interior in stucco, with the exception of some side chapel pictures and a great black wooden pulpit. I’ve seen many many churches in my travels with Dave, so the churches that keep my attention are the interesting, unusual churches. This one qualifies with its yellow exterior (with black details on the towers) and the nearly all-white interior. Most of these pictures below are taken on Monday just before we headed down into the U-Bahn. We were drawn in because the sun was really shining brightly, more so than the day before.

We took many photographs, so just scroll through them at your own speed. Don’t worry, I didn’t put them all up, just enough to give you an idea.
I think the putti is where the sense of humor resides in this church. Much of religious decoration can be so somber, but not these little cherubs. A couple of them are playing hide and seek, with the leaves from the vine over their faces.


I searched in vain for more information about this memorial, but all I could find was that it was for Princess Maximiliane Caroline, born 21 July 1810 in Nymphenburg (a local palace on the outskirts of Munich) who died on the 4th of February 1821 in Munich. Some say she took ill after viewing a theater performance.Her parents were Maximilian I Joseph, King of Bavaria and Karoline, Princess von Baden and the child’s nickname was “Ni.” All of this information has different spellings in different places, but the salient fact was the young princess was eleven and judging from the carving above, her mother was heartbroken.

An alcove with a doorway that reflects the sunny yellow exterior color.

Dave and I play dueling cameras.


When the sun would strike directly on the stucco decorations, the contrast between the shadows and the brilliant light was startling.

The dome, with its yellow highlights, fascinates.






I suppose this is a confessional. I loved the contrast of the warm wood against the stark white.
The yellow from outside leaks in and casts a golden hue. I assume it’s a reflection off the exterior color.


One of my favorite shots. It’s as if the putti is saying hello (good-bye?) from its place on high.

Monday, Monday in Munich

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Monday we begin a wild-goose chase for some wood carvings. All I’ll say about that is we had a nice bus ride in the middle of the day which brought us to the Deutsches Museum, Munich’s equivalent of the Exploratorium and Smithsonian’s Science and Industry Museums mashed together. The guidebook says it’s the largest museum of its kind in the world. It IS big.
The front door.
(Take a look at that room with the tall windows on the second floor. We came back to that on Thursday for our final reception of the conference.)
The main hall is filled with an exhibit about flying, beginning with this model of a hot air balloon.

The Red Baron’s plane? (He fought Snoopy.)
There was an exhibit on how to fly a plane, so Dave and I took our turns at this jetliner. It’s way tougher than it seems.
Next stop, Endoplasmic Reticulum.
Really this swirling aqua mass was inside the Pharmaceuticals Exhibit which shows a human cell model which is magnified 350, 000 times. That purple eyeball is really the nucleus. Dave explained it all to me, as the Biology class I had was also erased from my memory banks some time ago.

And I’m standing near the Golgi Bodies. I wanted to photograph the mitochondria and hang the resultant photograph in my study because they’re the energy powerhouses of the cell and I’m in desperate need of more.

Bayer Aspirin began here in Germany, and the museum has an old pharmacy taken from an early monastery. Click here to go the museum website for a panoramic view. Incidentally, the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry was modeled on the Deutsches Museum.
Drawers in the old pharmacy.
Since it was now getting later and later in the afternoon (the clock shows 3:10), I’m thinking LUNCH, but where to find it? We decide to head back up to our neighborhood.
Later on we found out that the yellow building is an Art Nouveau bathing temple. To get in the mood, the dude on the rocks in the middle of the river is sunbathing in his birthday suit. Dave didn’t believe me at first (I’d read about this Munich experience somewhere), but as we walked up the street to the right of this scene, it was confirmed. There were a few others that you can’t see, behind the bushes.

Where we ate last night, at the HofbrauKeller. About that point, I was pretty much ready to eat the stoplights, the trees, anything. So Dave wisely found usa small place to grab a bit to eat.

We had green salads, drinks and a pretzel. A Bavarian pretzel.
The view across the street (Wienerplatz). We walk home, noticing this small church (below) in this area of Munich named Haidhausen.
We walk past the Klinikum, a hospital, where Dave’s conference is held. At least I think this building is part of that enterprise.
Then, home to our hotel.
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Later that night we went over to the Opening Reception, tucked in the back of the Klinikum. It’s a bit odd to walk past people in wheelchairs and with casts and bandages on your way to a nice party.  Most people were there already and had found their tall glasses of Munich beer. They served us little open face sandwiches of all varieties, fruit salad, turkey and pineapple skewers and any number of warm drinks (they don’t really believe in ice here and instead chill the drinks first–which sometimes works). We decided against the water-with-gas and went for the apple juice. It’s less sweet here in Germany.  We’d decided earlier that if the refreshments were half-decent, we’d count that for dinner and just come home afterwards. That’s what we did.

Tuesday’s Travels in Munich

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Dave and I breakfast together, then he leaves and I linger over the paper and posting our travels on the blog.  I do the tourist laundry thing (rinsing out underwear in the sink, rolling it up in the towels, snapping out the moisture and hanging it over hangers in the closet so the maid won’t see) and get going mid-morning.  I head towards Marienplatz, the center of pedestrian Munich, or should I say, Tourist Munich, stopping at Thomas Sabo’s charm shop for an addition to my charm bracelet.  They wrapped these charms in miniature round hat boxes.  Charming.  I walked on.

I like seeing the unusual, and in this case, two little shadow box pictures in a window bordering a small park named Marienhof Park. Just like we are so “American,” they feel so “European,” especially in their graphic arts.

Just around the corner was a long yellow building with many doorways: Dallmayr’s Food Shop.  It was vast, huge, fascinating and I didn’t feel like I could take any pictures inside, but did purchase a sel de limon and curry powder, mainly because I loved the containers.

Well, maybe I was influenced by this window showing piles of different flavors of salts.  Sorry about the glare on the windows.

How can I resist a truck with this word on the side?

My destination was this shop: Deeply Felt, a little place that sells only felt.  It was loaded with felt, and a teensy little area where the customers stood–it might have held 3 or 4, and there was one in there already.  I tried to hurry as I chose 100% wool felt–a rare item in the U.S.

Down from that was this umbrella shop.  My big impulse buy was an  umbrella in sunny blue with scenes of Munich all around.  I mentioned to the shop owner how nice it was to have such sun.  Not for me, he said.  I like rain.

Another sunny yellow store: the Ludwig Beck Department Store.  It goes all the way to the corner, to that patterned building.  I went to the New Rathaus–the townhall built in the late 1800s (versus the townhall from 1474).  One source writes:

If you happen to be in Marienplatz at the right time you are in for an amazing treat. The square will fill with the sound of the carillon in the Glockenspiel. It plays twice or three times a day, at 10:30am, noon, and 5pm. As the folk music chimes ring out, doors open and brightly hued mechanical figures of enameled copper emerge and begin to dance. The Glockenspiel has two separate acts which celebrate two events from Munich’s past. The colorful dancers are doing the Schaefflertanz or Dance of the Coppers which commemorates the end of the plague in 1517. The other “act” is a miniature tournament of knights jousting. They are reenacting a famous tournament that was held for the royal weddings that took place in Marienplatz in 1568.
Dave and I remembered it from our last trip, and so made a beeline for it this time as well.  I watched the Golockenspiel play, then headed for the elevator to take me up to the top.  Blessings for elevators.

It was a lovely day, warm and pleasant, with good views around Munich.  This is the Frauenkirche, the largest Gothic basilica in southern Germany; it was built in record time (1468-88).

View from the top of the Bavarian Motor Works (BMW) Building and Olympic Park tower.

They had these glass plates for the key to what we were seeing.

My favorite church, as seen from the tower.  There were quite a few people up there with me, and I happened to ask one man how to say the German word for Excuse Me.  My journal has only the phonetical pronunciation of “Fat-Sigh-On.”  I complimented him on his English, and asked him where he learned it.  In Germany, he explained, if you are a good student you are encouraged to travel your senior year of high school on a fully paid study abroad.  He ended up in North Carolina, but his English had no trace of an accent.

I later used this example in a debate back in my classroom in California, where they had to develop an argument.  Interestingly enough, more of my students thought the school system should NOT sponsor a student abroad, than should. Many of them are from small towns and perhaps have never left the area.

This is a view of the Old Town Hall (on the left with the crenelated facade), an old gate (red steepled roof next to it), and just behind that with the red roof and the green-topped tower is the Heiliggeistkirche, also known as The Church of the Holy Ghost.

Looking down into the courtyard.  I ate lunch underneath one of those green umbrellas: weissewurst, or white sausage, a Bavarian specialty, most typically eaten for breakfast.
Time to go.

I signed the tethered-by-a-chain book on the way out, in the lower right corner of the verso (or left-facing) page.  Notice the dog-eared corner on the upper right.  I did that so I could show Dave when we came back.  But when we returned later that week, the book had been replaced by a fresh clean copy.

I think it always pays to read up on a place before you go.  One tourist had written about the inside of the Rathaus and had a few pictures.  When I was leaving the tower, I asked the lady taking money if I could walk through the town hall.  Yah, yah, she said, and indicated I should go right when leaving, instead of left to the elevator.  I went down the corridor (see Friday’s post for the huge red door), and felt like a bit nervous trying to figure out which door would lead me to where I wanted to go.  Down some steps, turn and wow.

That nameless tourist was right about this.  The stone arches, and very gothic styling made it feel like I was inside a foreign castle of some kind.  While in the war Munich was bombed, yet apparently the damage to the Rathaus was minimal (it housed the US Military Headquarters after WWII).  I do believe some of it must have been reconstructed, for many of the windows have a newer date on them than the date of construction of the building.

The whole place was fairly deserted.  If someone did show up, I tried to look like I knew what I was doing.

Everything was so. . . so. . . Germanly Gothic.  Until I stumbled into the above alcove. . .

. . .and saw these windows with an American flag, and the Statue of Liberty.  I began to pay attention a little more.

Figures of Edison, Lincoln and Andrew Carnegie along with a depiction of Niagra Falls. The windows throughout all had early creation dates, some with rondels of old glass.  Maybe they salvaged some from damaged windows and re-set them into new glass?  But why so many American-themed windows in the alcove?  If I read German, I might be able to tell you.  But many times as visitors to another country, we see things we don’t understand and try to figure out plausible solutions and answers to our questions.
I remember going to dinner with Matthew and one of his friends to a Chinese restaurant.  She took the chicken bones out of her chicken soup and lay them on the table, saying, “This is how the Chinese do this.”  I had been to China, felt like I was okay-immersed in some of the day-to-day manners and I’d never seen it.  I replied, “Maybe where you were, they did this.” I thought at the time how large of a county America was and how our manners and customs vary from region to region, and China was even larger still.  And with a language that felt impenetrable, so I couldn’t ask enough questions nor get enough answers for all that I saw.  I tried to figure out some things, but didn’t venture into the Chinese subway, fearing I’d be transported to Siberia or something.  I walked a lot and had a lot of questions about what I saw, both then, and now, in Germany.

I still have no answers.

I took as many photos as I dared, but it was so quiet in there and I, with all my crackling shopping bags, felt very noisy.  I proceeded on my tour.

Some original stucco work?

A more traditional window was on the next floor.

Notice the diamond-like blue and white pattern on the shield of this wooden horseman.  That’s the Bavarian pattern, and was found on mugs and ribbons, and dresses, and store banners–everywhere as we were close to Oktoberfest, and everything was getting pretty dolled up for the occasion.  Aside from our stars and stripes, I can’t think of many patterns that are pervasive to any particular region of America, but then we are a much newer country, with less history and tradition than these folks.

Now I feeling like I’d overstayed my welcome, plus I was getting a little bit hungry.  So I went outside, and enjoyed lunch (see Menu from Munich for more details on that), and while waiting for my meal, took the following picture, looking back up at the tower.

I write my postcards to family back home, and then remember that I need to buy stamps.  Add that to the list of Tourist Things To Do today. One thing for sure was that I missed the tram rides.  Our side of Munich relies heavily on the trams and that’s how I had traveled before when we were here.  One item was to try and find that gate that had inspired the center medallion of a quilt I made after returning from Germany last time, but it was always right there, at the end of the block of a tram stop and I thought I might never find my way.

I walked through the old gate at the end of Marienplatz, and entered the church at the corner, the Heiliggeistkirche, or Holy Ghost Church.

It had a soaring center nave, flanked by two equally high side areas (I guess that they are all the “nave.”  What do I know?)  I’d have to say the predominant coloration is pink cotton candy meets the Tiffany box, and they are both adorned in gilt.

The church began in 1208 as a pilgrim house, but within 50 years it was being used as a hospital.  The church itself was constructed in the 1320s and four hundred years later it was re-made into a baroque church, the interiors by the Asam brothers, famous in these parts for their use of lots and lots and lots of rococo flourishes and gilding.  Yep.  So what entranced me was the plain wooden pulpit on the side, conspicuous in its simplicity.

This spoke of the church’s origins.

After the Holy Ghost Church, I wandered through the Viktualien Markt, really just an area with a giant beer garden, frantic dirndl-clad waitresses and some shops and

booths of food, floral decorations, beer, cheeses. No lebkuchen cookies like last time.

Walking on, I rounded a corner and saw this.  No, it wasn’t the gate from before, but it was the exact same pattern in the center of my quilt.  It felt like a mini-homecoming–something very familiar.  I also found the shop where I’d bought my dirndl fabric, and bought one more meter to make a Christmas apron.

Then around another corner, saw a building so old, it had the date painted on the outside.

I had purchased an apple while in the Viktualien Markt and munched on that, the wandering wearing on me.  It was getting late and I had a headache and was far far from the hotel.  I remember reading in one account that someone believed the best was to do sightseeing was to wander until exhaustion, stop to eat, then repeat. Well, I’d done the first part well, but I still had to find the stamps, so after buying a bunch of souvenir chocolate at the Gallerie, I asked their concierge (how interesting is that?) where to go.  He directed me.

I stood in a short line at the Post Office waiting for a clerk, watching the two women in front of me.  One was holding a small tiny baby that couldn’t have been more than 2 or 3 weeks old and the other woman was in charge of the stroller, leaning over often to touch her friend’s baby.  I heard a chime. My turn and I went to station #2.

I pointed to the addresses and luckily the man spoke enough English to help me.  I paid for what I needed and then he pulled out his book of stamps, then asked me if I had any glue.

Glue?

He pulled a glue stick out of his drawer, applied it to the backs of the stamps, pasted them on to my postcards, nodded,  and gestured to the people behind me to come forward.  So, I guess they don’t have glue on the backs of their stamps.

I retraced my steps, head still hurting, apple gone, bags getting heavy and remembered that I wanted to buy some earrings for a friend back home.  I jostled for control of the turn-about earring stand with some teeny-bopper, losing, then finally choosing a pair.  I wandered back to the U-bahn, grabbed the 100 bus, arrived home and fell asleep.

Dinner was at Kafer, the fancy food shop, which also had a nice restaurant on the side of the store, as well as very pricey restaurant on the second floor.  We enjoyed the patio-style restaurant, obviously.  They had a deadline of closing by 8 p.m. and they were serious about that, taking down the posts, rolling up the overhead canvas and stowing the cushions as we finished our dessert of fresh raspberry tart.

After dinner we walked around the neighborhoods, got money out of an ATM, then went back to the hotel.  Dave worked–writing to one of his former grad students about publishing their work, a corollary which had been discussed that day, and I did more tourist laundry, finishing out the day the way I’d started it.