Post 5b: Munich Explained

München, etc.

It would be pretty difficult for me to describe to you what walking down the streets of Munich is like. There are such a wide variety of people and things going on around you that it’s hard to put your finger on what exactly makes Munich such a cool place. This metaphor will not do the city justice, but I will try to compare it to Austin, TX. If you’ve been to Austin, you know that it is a world of its own within the state of Texas where the people pride themselves on being from Austin, but not necessarily Texas. Munich is the same way in that the people there are first Bavarian and second German. We happened to be there while they were celebrating the city’s 850 year anniversary so we were treated to a lot of street vendors selling pretzels and people wearing traditional lederhosen and other dress.

The youth hostel we stayed in was called The Tent and I highly recommend it to any young person who goes to Munich. It was basically a large tent set up in the botanical gardens about 15 minutes from the heart of town. It was incredibly cheap and incredibly fun because it was pretty much like summer camp- sleeping in a big tent with 150 strangers. We met some girls from Texas (we could tell in a second because they were passing a wine bottle- real classy) who actually knew a couple people we knew from TCU…small world, right?


Pinakothek
My favorite thing in Munich was the Pinakothek der Moderne art museum. As you can probably guess, it was a modern art museum, but it was hands down the best one I have ever been to. The Tate Modern in London was cool because it was free and had a handful of famous works, however, the Pinakothek had almost twice as much stuff! They had the usual modern paintings, sculptures, media exhibits, but they also had car, furniture, jewelry, and interior design. That picture of the large ice thing is a BMW hydrogen car completely incased in ice. Talk about a cool exhibit! The other one is a whole room (with hanging chairs and stuff) made from zip ties! There’s much more I could talk about, but there’s also much more to this blog.


Englischer Garten and Hofbrauhaus
The Englischer Garten was legit even if the pictures don’t make it seem like anything special. If you’re a fan of Central Park then you really need to go to Munich and see this park because you will quickly change your mind. The Englischer Garten is much bigger, still in the heart of the city but without those weird rock things, and with a river running through it!
If the Englischer Garten was one of my favorite outdoor places then The Hofbrauhaus was hands down the best place indoors. If you have seen the movie Beer Fest or have an imagination at all then this place is the stereotypical German restaurant. There’s a life band playing polka music, there are people wearing lederhosen, good looking girls in those beer maiden costumes walk around giving you pretzels, and the beer comes in one liter glasses. It could be heaven.
While I was at The Hofbrauhaus, I actually ran into a KState alumni (and by ran into I mean accosted in the gift shop.) It was really cool to be in Germany talking about Kansas State football, and seeing if he knew my parents. Of course he claimed he knew my mother, but by the look his wife gave him I was guessing it was a beer-influenced joke. I also talked to a nice Englishman who was somewhat sloshed from half a liter and told me all about how his second wife didn’t make top marks at Essex university because she was spending too much time at his flat. Then he told me he knew Tony Blair. Liar!


Dachau
We couldn’t spend an entire summer in Germany and not visit a concentration camp museum so we decided to take a day trip to Dachau- one of the first camps. I think I could probably write five blog posts just about this one experience. It was incredibly interesting/eye-opening/humbling/disgusting. The museum did an excellent job of explaining how Hitler came to power and how the work camps turned from temporary residence for a maximum of 8,000 people to a death trap of 35,000 – much better than my high school history teacher at least. I must give a lot of credit to the Germans who put together this museum because they didn’t gloss over the holocaust at all. They told it like it was with all the horrible stories included- something the U.S. isn’t the best at doing (I think there was one paragraph in my history book about imprisoning Japanese U.S. citizens after Pearl Harbor).


I posted some pictures although obviously they don’t mean anything unless you go there and put yourself in the shoes of the prisoners…or even the guards. As I walked through the museum, I wondered what it would be like to see your family’s name displayed as either a prisoner or as a Nazi general- I mean, WW2 was not that long ago. I feel like too many words would ruin it for me. I don’t want to try and rationalize it in my mind because I don’t want to let go of the emotion I felt while visiting.



Misc.
I want to say a few things about my last entry because I got a lot of responses from it. It’s actually kind of funny because my German co-workers who read the blog (thank you, Google Alerts) thought I might have been a little critical of Germany, whereas my friends and family in America thought that I was being a little critical of the U.S.! I am incredibly proud of myself for finally accomplishing that right amount of critical sarcasm so no one really knows how I feel!
If I could attempt to form some kind of response, however, I would say that being in Germany has made me both appreciate the way of life in the U.S. but also understand that it is not perfect and could definitely be improved.


For example, I find it incredibly ironic that in the United States every politician claims they are a die hard Christian who believes in family and Christian values and the church, etc., however no one seems to want to save our decaying social security and medical care systems, we still have the death penalty, and we aren’t afraid of war. I guess when you compare what we say and what we do it seems a little hypocritical. I don’t know enough about European politicians to pass judgment, but their governments seem to have much more respect for social justice and citizens’ rights but not such an emphasis on religion. I don’t know- kind of interesting.


I was wrong about the taxes. I thought that it was just a base percent, like everyone loses 50%. Nein. It’s much more of a gradual scale, and I think it is better then the U.S. system where we clump people into brackets. Or at least I would think that until I started making enough money to qualify for losing 50%!


Banking here is atrocious, though! The check card that they gave me (called a maestro card) is hardly accepted anywhere. This is hard for me because I never carry cash in the U.S. There are charges attached to everything. Using a generic ATM is automatic 5 euro charge. Transferring money to a U.S. account is like a 40 euro charge (probably somewhat the U.S.’s fault though). If you don’t check your account balance at a terminal (separate from an ATM) once a month then they charge you. You can’t make changes to your account over the phone or at another branch- you must go to your local branch. Internet banking is all in German and requires a separate ID number then the other three they originally give you. sjfhdsjkfhjkadghsjkieru!!! Okay so German engineering is great. Awesome roads and industrial machinerary, etc. but the information technology I’ve seen so far is not too savvy. I feel like an ebusiness major who spoke German could make millions here! Too bad I don’t sprechen…


“Bitte” (pronounced “bit – uh”) is a funny German word. The translation dictionaries define it as “please” but the people in Germany use it for so much more than when asking politely. They say “bitte” after you say “danke” kind of like a you’re welcome, and they also say it as a question like “please tell me what you just said”. So here’s a typical conversation between myself and a German who is translating the word “bitte”


Nate: “Okay, that sounds great! Danke.”
Deutschlander: “Please.”
Nate: “What?”
Deutschlander: “Bitte?”
Nate:“Please what?“
Deutschlander:“Nothing.“
Nate:“Oh, okay... thanks.“
Deutschlander:“Please.“
Nate:“Bitte“




Prost!