A slow start today – we were obviously still struggling from our big night out. We did make it to the walking tour, where our rather annoying American guide took us through the city. We saw a couple of pretty impressive churches, not least of which was the Fraukirche. This cathedral has quite a history – the devil himself allegedly had a hand in its construction; the story goes that the architect made a deal with the devil to allow it to be built more quickly in exchange for no more windows to be added to the church. Little did the devil know that from the entry to the church none of the existing windows were visible, so he had incorrectly assumed that there were none and that the church would be a dank, uninviting place. There is even a footprint in the foyer to prove it. The building was also used as a navigational point for Allied bombers in WWII, and it was accidentally hit. When the tower was rebuilt they placed a gold brick there to mark the impact point.
The statue in the main town square is interesting, with the four cherubs on the bottom fighting the evils of famine (a dragon), the plague (a chicken-devil thing), enemies of war (a lion), and Protestants (a snake). Also in the town square are the old town hall (bombed in the war and rebuilt in the fifties) and the new town hall (built circa 1900 in a neo-Gothic style to look older than the old town hall, and it survived the war so technically it IS older than the old town hall). We also saw the funky new Jewish synagogue, with its mesh top that lights up at night to serve as a beacon to attract Jews back to Munich. Around the city there are plaques and small memorials (112 of them) subtly fixed to buildings remembering people or places that were destroyed during WWII. It's a very different way of remembering the terrible past compared to the huge, conspicuous monuments in Berlin.
There was a cool market that we didn't really have a chance to look at, but will no doubt revisit tomorrow. We walked down the most expensive street in Europe (all boutique shops like Louis Vutton etc) and heard how Oktoberfest first began; the king of Bavaria married his girlfriend and threw a lavish party for the citizens. Everyone had such a good time that they did it again the next year, and it continues to this day. Apparently so many Australians come to Munich during Oktoberfest, get drunk and lose their passports that they set up a temporary Australian Embassy to deal with it during the festival (there isn't a permanent Aussie Embassy in the city). Our tour concluded with the place where Hitler brought the Nazi party to life (he took over a socialist group that he was supposed to be spying on for the military) and marched (unsuccessfully) to try and take the city. It was here that he was arrested and sent to the prison where he wrote Mein Kampf. Interestingly, the place where he did make a lot of speeches when he finally came to power has a couple of lions that overlook the Residenz (government house) on one side and a church on the other. The lions are set up so that the one overlooking the church has its mouth closed, symbolising that people should never speak out against religion, and the other has its mouth open, symbolising that people can criticise the government. It's interesting that during the Third Reich the exact opposite was true.
Braving the cold walk back, we made dinner and did a little planning. It's so time consuming trying to check out the various options for travel and accommodation. It's so mind-boggling, but it has to be done.
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