München

My train back to Paris arrived early Monday morning under a welcomed dawn. The Nachtzug (night train) was a long, fitful ride, almost ten hours from Munich to Paris. Traveling by train just isn't the same after you've ridden the French TGV (train de grande vitesse) line. We Parisians are the toughest to impress.

It was clear upon my arrival at the Hauptbahnhof that Oktoberfest was fully underway. Men in lederhosen and women in the German dirndl could easily be seen in every direction. It's the same as Americans dressing up in farming garb or ranch hand duds. German 'Trachten' or 'traditional clothing' celebrates the time before industrialization came to Germany when Bavaria was an agrarian region, before Germany was great. I find it ironic. Anyways, Germans dressed this way teemed through the station, along with American, French, Polish, and Russian people. Many of them were drunk, so an appropriately sized police force was present. As I waited for my friend Nell and her Middlebury chums, I saw this note taped to the wall.


I was eager to see as much as possible in the waning daylight. This is St. Paul's, marking the direction to and from Oktoberfest
from our apartment, which proved to be quite useful to some in our party.


Well, I had better not delay it any further. Here's a photo of the beer at the Hofbräu tent. At 10:15am.


Now imagine drinking this quantity in a single day. One of the guys in our group did just that. One alone left me reeling.

Nell had a beer of her own.


Having already had quite enough of Oktoberfest and being less sober than I would usually prefer before noon, I went off on my own tourism adventure. This is the Frauenkirche, a fine example of Gothic architecture constructed between the 15th and 16th centuries. It houses a funny bust of my good friend, Pope Benedict XVI, who originates from Bavaria.



Then I learned about mining at the Deutsches Museum, where I was nearly refused the student ticket price. Whatcha doin' there, bud?


And then, of course, there was Otto von Bismarck of the First German Empire.


I was heartened and still saddened to see empty Jägermeister flasks everywhere. In France we joke about 'Veloskills', our term for drunken bike riding. However in German the term would be something like, 'Fahrradfähigkeiten'.


Here is the Neue Rathaus, completed in 1910, at Marienplatz in the center of the Old City. The sun came out just in time for ...


The Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel! By chance, there was a CSU rally that Friday afternoon. Other speakers included President Minister of Bavaria Günther Beckstein and CSU Chairman Erwin Huber.


Again, the measures taken by Oktoberfest goers.


At the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau München, there were lots of great paintings to be seen, particularly from the pre WWI German expressionist group, The Blue Rider artists. Here Wassily Kandinsky teaches lesson of the day to the students of his 'Phalanx' school. Photo by Gabrielle Müller.


There I also bore witness to the worst exhibition space design of all time.


Oktoberfest, I will not miss you.