I woke up this morning at about 1:30 ish after falling asleep at around 10 p.m. (sorry, 22:00 here). After waiting for the sun to come up and reading the Wednesday NY Times I brought with me from home in excruciating detail, it was almost 6:30 and breakfast was open.
It was a standard European breakfast; nothing special but clean and neat and ostensibly Bavarian.
Breakfast looks yummy
I did drink about five cups of strong coffee. Then I took the S-Bahn three stops to Marienplatz. The weather was atrocious with cold and high winds. I had full on ski clothing and wasn’t terribly warm.
I walked into a very nice department store which had 70 percent off on some things, but mostly 20 or 30 percent off but stuff was priced in ranges and didn’t seem that expensive, really. But I don’t want or need anything. Below is a photo of one of many stores that specialize in Tracht (Derndels and laderhosen).
I walked to the closest museum I found — the Museum Funf Kontinente (five continents) mainly to warm up. It had native stuff from all over the world. The name was a tip off. I saw the Peru exhibit (we were there summer 2016), American Indian art, and strangely a not-updated homage to Mianmar (nothing about their apparent ethnic cleansing!).
Anyway, long enough in there and asked the front desk (everyone is so friendly, especially if you speak German to them) for directions to the Alte Pinakothek, which has some old masters and I felt like I should get some culture for a change. Speaking of culture, I’m noticing that I can often get people to understand my meaning when speaking German and I think with six to eight years of emersion I could become close to fluent.
By then, unfortunately, I would likely die of second-hand cigarette smoke since you are basically walking through a chimney filled with the stuff as you go down the streets. It’s gross and has to take a toll.
Everything is farther away and takes longer than people think and they really walk around here. I’ve noticed that at meals there is no portion control and bread is abundant. You need the calories. I went the museum’s cafe and had a Thai soup and a tuna salad; both very good.
Here are some photos of the highlights for me.
Being a peasant was fun!
Nice doggy
Okay, okay, I’ll pay, but it seemed expensive.
After the Alte Pinakothek, I headed back to the hotel for a much needed break of a few minutes, then met Jane and Mike from Wisconsin who are on my ski trip and responded to an email offering to get a tour of the Stadtmuesum, which prominently features Uhlfelder stuff. We met Dr. Isabella Fehle, the director of the museum and my friend, who took the three of us to coffee and cakes (not necessarily on a marathoner’s diet), gave us entry tickets and we talked for a long time. She is wonderful and the only peril for the Uhlfelder name exhibits is her leaving. That said, it seems some of the Uhlfelder exhibits (in the museum annex) were changed.
Uhlfelder China sold at Kaufhaus Uhlfelder on display at the Stadtmuseum
They added the famous photo of Dr. Siegal being marched down a street in his underwear with a sign that said “I will not bother the police.” I had no idea they had changed the exhibit. This is a very emotional thing for me and jet lag didn’t help; I told my new friends Jane and Mike about it but found it hard. Since the last time I visited the museum, I had met Dr. Siegal’s daughter Bea Green (she’s 92 now) and spent a couple of days with her in Munich is April 2015 when we both participated in the opening of another museum (Dokument Centrum) and found out more about the event and the families’ intertwined relationships. Man’s inhumanity to man, for sure.
I had an appointment to meet Martina’s parents and her kids for dinner. That took some doing because the phone number Martina gave me didn’t work on my phone but I found an old phone number (home phone) in my phone and got ahold of them and met them near their house for a nice dinner. At this point it was supposed to be Bararian fare, but after my sweet at 3:00 (sorry, 15:00) I was not hungry so I had a salad.
I noticed the German press carry the latest awful news from the US, including that trump passed a test for dementia (the newspaper had the test and just glancing at it I was able to determine that the two humped animal was a spider).
Anyway, a long day and there was an express bus that Martina’s father, Bernt, found that went from the restaurant to the Ostbahnhoff (next to my hotel). Nineteen minutes of nodding off.