MÜNCHEN

Hello lovelies!

Oh my goodness, I feel like a posting champion. Thankfully, Doctor Who and Buffy the Vampire Slayer keep me entertained during the rather tedious process of adding pictures to posts. And once that's done I get to do the fun part! Explaining!

Our next destination was....dun dun DUN...Munich! We left for the Copenhagen airport bright and early in the morning and after some desperate last minute Danish Krone spending in the form of pretty postcards and VERY palatable pastries at the airport, we boarded our plane. Kun-Wei wasn't feeling very well so I naturally took total advantage and nabbed the window seat. :) If you are wondering what the flight from Copenhagen to Munich looks like, look no further!

It looks like that!

Kun-Wei and I took the Munich underground from the airport to the stop near our hostel, got a bit lost, passed some pastry shops, made a mental note about the pastry shops and finally dropped our stuff off and left to explore!
This is (I think) a picture of Munich's Rathaus AKA the New Town Hall. It is a GORGEOUS structure. Incidentally, I'm pretty sure that Munich's New Town Hall is older than Munich's Old Town Hall because the Old Town Hall had to be rebuilt after the war. However, the Old Town Hall still looks as it did before WWII because Munich made a HUGE effort to rebuild the city how it was. So it's really the Faux Old Town Hall. I think that's really cool. The day after this we took the free walking tour with New Europe Tours and our tour guide told us all about how the citizens took very detailed notes and pictures of the city before the bombing started in order to preserve the city. It's really incredible!

Here's another view of the Rathaus! I think! I should probably apologize in advance for any dreadful inaccuracies and falsehoods that I put forth on this blog. Any errors are unintentional and totally correctible if you let me know!

This is in the Frauenkirche AKA Cathedral of Our Dear Lady. Remember when I said you'd get a lot of church/cathedral pictures? Ha ha, we are only just beginning.

This church is actually really cool. Mainly because of it's crazy cool history. Also, take note of this perspective of the cathedral from this angle. Note, perhaps, the apparent lack of windows on the sides from this view point. Spoiler: It's going to be important in a few pictures.

Ok, I LOVE stained glass. Love love love it. Europe has itself some HAWTT stained glass windows. Seriously, I loved them so much! This is but a small sample of lots of really lovely glass.

Ok kids, it's story time! This is another cool story from the tour. But first, this is a picture of the cathedral's beautiful ceiling. Pay particular attention to those little dot things at the center of the sort of flower petal patterns. See how they appear to have different colors and maybe designs? Excellent!

This cathedral suffered major damage in World War II. The roof caved in and one of the towers was destroyed. After the war extensive reconstruction was needed to restore the cathedral to its former glory. It required both labor and money, and for their help...um...helpers got their family crests and little signifiers on these little discs on the ceiling. Included among these disks is one that has a Jewish star. What? Welp, here's the awesome story. Folks at the Cathedral of Our Dear Lady got word of the ransacking of Jewish establishments before they were set to occur and approached leaders in the Jewish community to tell them about it and agreed to take and safeguard important documents and objects. After the war was over, the Jewish community was actively involved in the cathedral's reconstruction as a thank you. I really like that.

SHINY!

Yeah, that's really all I have to say.

More stained glass! I'm sorry if it's excessive but I absolutely love it.

Story time again? Yes! Woo! Here's another fun one. But first, remember that picture from above? The one without windows? Where I said "Spoiler" and then some other stuff I don't exactly remember? Fantastic! Ok, now we're ready.

This is...dun dun DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUNNNNNNNNN...the Devil's Footprint!!!!! AHHHHH!!! Ok, so, to start the story: the Frauenkirche was build quickly. Remarkably quickly. Almost...tooooooo quickly, in fact. Local legend has it that this awesome speed was achieved with the help of the ol' Scratch himself and his minions. See, the Devil went down to Georgia... Oh wait, nope, wrong story (ok, I'm sorry about that joke but...it's staying). Ok, for realsies, the Devil apparently visited the architect when the Cathedral was in its early stages of development. He stood where I was standing when I took the above picture and he noticed a lack of windows in the building. So, being the Devil, he decided to make a deal. He told the architect that if he (the architect) didn't add any more windows to the Cathedral, he (the architect) could borrow the Devil's helper buddies at night to finish the Cathedral real quick like. See, the Devil figured that this would be a fantastic way to make the Cathedral all dark and dreary and, well, devilish. He figured that people would enter the Cathedral and want to worship him instead of God due to the whole dark and dreary and devilish thing. So, the Devil's minions built the Cathedral in record time and when it was finished, the Devil visited the Cathedral and the architect to see the finished result of his dastardly plan. And what did the Devil find? A bright and lovely Cathedral that would definitely not help him in the slightest! Naturally, the Devil was enraged and said something along the lines of "WTF, man?" to the architect. The Devil saw a ton of windows all over which seemed like a breach of the agreement. The architect then took him to the point that he had originally pointed and said something along the lines of "See, you done got tricked! Oh snap!" This made the Devil very angry. In fact, it made him so angry that he swelled to three times his size and stamped his foot in anger, leaving this footprint.

Of course, if you actually see the footprint, you may notice that it's a bit small to be a super big Devil's footprint. In fact, I think it might have been slightly smaller than mine. There are two possible explanations:

1) This footprint actually belonged to the architect, or, more likely...

2) The Devil is super tiny naturally, like a hobbit or leprechaun or fairy, so swelling to three times his natural size made him roughly the size of a modern female human.

Hey guys! It's our old friend the Rathaus! And it's glorious Glockenspiel! We had the extreme pleasure of seeing the Glockenspiel in action and woah, it is almost as exhilarating as watching fast-drying paint dry. Ok, that's not entirely fair, but it was a bit silly. There were these little figurines that turned slowly and a slow motion joust (spoiler: the Bavarian wins). It goes on for fifteen minutes but we only stayed for a few minutes (another tour memory).

It's the Alter Peter! AKA the Old (Saint) Peter Church! Goodness, that is one lovely ceiling! Let's take a close-up look at it...

*Swoooooooooooooooooooon*

Ok, I know that I've already been generous with the story time but I've got another one for all ya'll! YAY!! Ok, so, on the doors of the Alter Peter there is a sign with some rules. You've got your self-explanatory no drinks and no ice cream cones. Presumably the ice cream cone rule can be extended to all food. You've also got a pretty understandable no hat rule. If God wants to non-lethal lightning bolt some pearls of wisdom into your head, the thin cloth of a hat may cause unwanted interference or even full blockage. There is also a sign with an "X" through a dude's pants with his pockets full of...oh man, I'm almost embarrassed to type it...ok, his OWN HANDS. Yep, that's what I'm saying, NO HANDS IN YOUR PANTS IN THE CHURCH! Kun-Wei and I giggled at this for sometime. Our tour guide noticed this too. A while back she dragged a church usher out to the sign and asked him what the deal was. He looked at her and, in all seriousness, replied, "The Devil is in your pants." So...that left her with the question "What the hell could have happened in that church to inspire that rule. I would like to hear that story." So would I, Sonja, so would I.

IT IS A BATTLE AXE OF JUSTICE OR SOMETHING. RAWR.

More shiny! Sparkly sun-rays of gold! Yum!

See these stairs? These are the stairs of Alter Peter's tower. These are just a small taste of the many stairs that we climbed to reach the top of the tower and an absolutely spectacular view of the city. The stairs were crazy narrow and there was a crazy number of them but it was so worth it. There's probably a metaphor for life in there but I'm going to go ahead and just let you see the pictures.

It's my awesome travel buddy! And the beautiful city of Munich!

The Alter Peter view of the Rathaus and Glockenspiel!

Aren't these rooftops fabulous? I like 'em! I can't tell you how much I loved the old feel of Munich. It was such a cool place.

Ice cream! Yum. :)

Dramatic view of the Glockenspiel!

'Tis the Theatiner Kirche! It's a Roman Catholic church.

See how pretty?

This is Feldherrnhalle! It is a monument built on the orders of King Ludwig I of Bavaria! Note the noble lion statues that you can't really see that well but are the light teal blobs. According to Wikipedia it was "a symbol of the honours of the Bavarian Army." This was also the site of the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923 when Hitler tried to overthrow the government.

The Hofgarten! AKA The Court Garden. This is, I believe, a pavilion for the goddess Diana.

This is me soaking up all of the huntress's fierceness/admiring the beautiful scenery.

More pretty!

More pretty stuff! I'm so sorry but I'm too lazy/tired to google this. Isn't it enough that it's gorgeous? Ha ha, it doesn't matter if it's enough! I call les shots! Ahahahahahahaha. Oh dear. Sorry, I went on a little power trip there. My b.

This is in the English Garden. It was lovely!

Kun-Wei and sneaky flowers in the English Garden! I know that the flowers were in pretty plain view but they felt like they were in their own little plot of fairytale land or something, though.

Wanna hear something crazy? All of the states of Germany weren't unified until 1871. That's right, we beat the Germans by almost a hundred years on the whole becoming a country issue! Hells to the yeah.

And on that happy note, I leave you until my next post.

Much love and cheers!