I tend to have a routine when I get to a new European city: I walk it until I practically collapse. Munich was no different. I took the 45-minute S-bahn train from the airport down into Marienplatz and found myself, again, in the tourist clusterfuck. I grabbed some roasted chestnuts (a slight improvement from the chestnuts in Lucerne) and hit the sidestreets, ducking the massive flocks of Japanese in the process. Here were my highlights from Marienplatz:
New Town Hall, Old Town Hall, and the Carillon were obviously the architectural highlights. Spent a good number of megapixels on those babies. The western end of the walking street has a fantastic fountain.
The Hofbrauhaus (across the street from the Hard Rock Cafe) had to be the biggest example of the tourist-sellout. I bought a polo anyway, just don't tell anyone.
A nice discovery was Hirmer - the 4-story men's ONLY store in downtown Munich. It rocked. It's about time that men had our own store. It was funny actually seeing women holding dude's jackets as guys tried on crap. I don't think there's a feminine equivalent for the emasculating act of a man holding a woman's purse, but at least it comes close.
I giggled as I looked at a coinstore that was trying to sell a collection of coins from 1939-1950 with strategically placed tape. See if you can figure out what they're trying to hide.
I ran into a bunch of drunk Chinese tourists and found out they can be as loud and obnoxious as American tourists.
Jumping into a secondhand clothing store, I expected to see some bad-ass German t-shirts. I imagined bringing back a handful of "Munich Junior Bundesliga" or "Ich ging nach Hamburg und ich empfing nur diesen Hautausschlag." Instead, I was greeted with a treasure trove that looked like it had been hauled out of the Goodwill in Biloxi, Mississippi. NFL shirts, NBA hats, and all of the other dreck that our American society manages to produce (via China or Taiwan) seems to be clogging the secondhand stores of foreign countries too. I don't think it was coincidence that I documented another example of English gone horribly wrong on t-shirts here.
My experience with German clothing would get fantastically better, however. Walking around the corner, I ran into a traditional German clothing store that was doing ridiculous business thanks to us tourists willing to shell out the bucks to wear lederhosen and God's gift to Bavarian men, the dirndl. If you don't know what a dirndl is, it's best not to even know. You too will be absorbed by the mysterious allure of the German attire. After witnessing hordes of not-so-shy German women trying on and exhibiting their dirndls in the store, I decided to exit quickly before some big, fat, German fist came knocking on my jaw. Round 1 to dirndl.
I dined on a handful of bratwurst sandwiches that were being sold out of a train station kiosk and finished them off with some takeout sushi. Yeah. Sushi. Gimme a break.
Exhausted and weary, I took the train back to the spacestation / hotel (near the airport) and collapsed on the bed watching the equivalent of German porno-informercials. I would have to bring my A-game for Oktoberfest.
New Town Hall, Old Town Hall, and the Carillon were obviously the architectural highlights. Spent a good number of megapixels on those babies. The western end of the walking street has a fantastic fountain.
The Hofbrauhaus (across the street from the Hard Rock Cafe) had to be the biggest example of the tourist-sellout. I bought a polo anyway, just don't tell anyone.
A nice discovery was Hirmer - the 4-story men's ONLY store in downtown Munich. It rocked. It's about time that men had our own store. It was funny actually seeing women holding dude's jackets as guys tried on crap. I don't think there's a feminine equivalent for the emasculating act of a man holding a woman's purse, but at least it comes close.
I giggled as I looked at a coinstore that was trying to sell a collection of coins from 1939-1950 with strategically placed tape. See if you can figure out what they're trying to hide.
I ran into a bunch of drunk Chinese tourists and found out they can be as loud and obnoxious as American tourists.
Jumping into a secondhand clothing store, I expected to see some bad-ass German t-shirts. I imagined bringing back a handful of "Munich Junior Bundesliga" or "Ich ging nach Hamburg und ich empfing nur diesen Hautausschlag." Instead, I was greeted with a treasure trove that looked like it had been hauled out of the Goodwill in Biloxi, Mississippi. NFL shirts, NBA hats, and all of the other dreck that our American society manages to produce (via China or Taiwan) seems to be clogging the secondhand stores of foreign countries too. I don't think it was coincidence that I documented another example of English gone horribly wrong on t-shirts here.
My experience with German clothing would get fantastically better, however. Walking around the corner, I ran into a traditional German clothing store that was doing ridiculous business thanks to us tourists willing to shell out the bucks to wear lederhosen and God's gift to Bavarian men, the dirndl. If you don't know what a dirndl is, it's best not to even know. You too will be absorbed by the mysterious allure of the German attire. After witnessing hordes of not-so-shy German women trying on and exhibiting their dirndls in the store, I decided to exit quickly before some big, fat, German fist came knocking on my jaw. Round 1 to dirndl.
I dined on a handful of bratwurst sandwiches that were being sold out of a train station kiosk and finished them off with some takeout sushi. Yeah. Sushi. Gimme a break.
Exhausted and weary, I took the train back to the spacestation / hotel (near the airport) and collapsed on the bed watching the equivalent of German porno-informercials. I would have to bring my A-game for Oktoberfest.
Flickr set is here.
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