Saturday – A slow Day in Munich

By Saturday we had all been going full tilt for almost a week and needed some downtime. Our original intent was to do some food shopping, so we spent an hour or so cruising around the Viktuelienmarkt getting vegetables and other supplies for the weekend. We then split up, with Rachel and Deb heading out for some shopping, and Jeremy and I heading off to the game store. Our intent was to meet up later at a local cafe for lunch and some coffee. Rachel took a few photos of some gentleman dressed in typical Bavarian outfits along with one of the local stalls and their wine selection. Yes, the fan is part of the hat!

Jeremy and I had as our objective a cool store that sold all sorts of games and knives and brushes and pool cues. It might be hard to find a similar store in Boston, but this place included an extensive variety of games and game boards like chess and checkers and backgammon, but also other games of which I had never seen before. In addition, there was a collection of brushes that just boggled the mind. I am sure you are familiar with a brush to sweep the floor, and maybe even one to shine your shoes, but this store had hundreds of different brushes some small, some large, some with uniform bristles, others with bristles of different shapes and colors. I have to admit, that of the hundred or so brushes I truly only understood the uses of one or two of them. Where was the Fuller Brush man when I needed him?

One of the things Deb and I have come to realize is how homogenized America has become. We have two types of brushes, and two type of coffee, two type of chocolate and so on. It is almost as if the great melting pot has in fact melted all of our cultural diversity and American business has distilled this into a very limited selection of everything. This store and the simple variety of brushes they offered really demonstrate this difference.

So, the reason we had headed down there was to do some shopping for Jeremy’s birthday on April 8^th. He will be back in the US, and Deb and I, for the first time in his life and ours, will not be there to celebrate his birthday with him. One of the items the store carries and he was interested in, was a pool cue for his ‘free’ time at his dormitory at Salem State. I am sure he spends more time playing pool than we might like, but I do remember the days of having a lot of free time in the dorm so why not spend it perfecting your pool game.

We went into the store and looked at the pool cues, all the way from the ‘cheap’ ones for 40 euro’s to the top end ones for 600+ euro’s. I had to contain Jeremy and the budget, but we were eventually able to find and decide upon a very nice 17 ounce pool cue with a nifty little case. I thought it was a very nice one, and I hope that Jeremy gets a lot of fun out of it.

Jeremy and I then headed back to Marienplatz, and on a busy Saturday there is such a sea of people crowding in and around this historic plaza. At one point I asked Jeremy to stand still and look in all directions. We were at the intersection of four of the major pedestrian walkways that bring people into Marienplatz and he was amazed at the massive number of people present. I have had local Munich folks tell me they never go to Marienplatz on a weekend because it is so congested and it takes so long to walk even the shortest distance.

I wanted to head down to a local gift shop that is about half way between Marienplatz and Karlsplatz. This required us to walk down probably the busiest avenue in the area, but after a while we finally arrived at the store. I was specifically looking for a Munich type key chain, and I thought Jeremy might also have some fun in the store looking at the mugs and key chains and knives and other tourist type objects. I finally found a key chain for Deb (with the traditional cow bell on it – just like the key chain she had originally bought in Austria, but which had since broken) and Jeremy found one that contained some crazy knife. The oddest thing we saw in the store though was a Swiss Army knife that cost over 1,000 euro’s and had 87 instruments inside!

Well, time was up for us as the store was small and we had seen all there was to see so we headed back down the avenue towards our rendezvous with Deb and Rachel. We still had about 45 minutes until we were to meet them so we were in no great hurry. As you head back in this direction you pass the German Hunting and Fishing museum that has a giant bronze boar and catfish outside the entrance. On a whim I asked Jeremy if he might want to step in and see what there was to see. He agreed, which was nice, and we headed indoors passing in between the massive boar and catfish.

It turned out this was a great stop for they sold the exact type of key chain I was looking for (made from a deer antler, which is big in Bavarian culture) and the museum itself was a lot of fun. I am not sure why it has fishing in its name as we must have missed that part of the museum, but there was a wealth of material covering the long and gory history of hunting in southern Germany. There were lots of swords, crossbows, and rifles from the Bavarian past with many of them magnificent works of art in themselves.

The first floor was composed of a massive collection of stuffed animals and birds. It was a crowded, cramped space, and did not give you a strong sense that this was worth the 4 euro’s we spent to get in. We passed though these exhibits quickly and then headed upstairs. Well this was a completely different type of room as you can see below.

The upstairs was this long elegant room, with chandeliers and a high ceiling, and, as you might see in an old hunting lodge, had deer antlers lining the walls. There were a large number of display cases showing off the hunting instruments from the early swords, bows, and cross-bows, to the early rifles. The walls were lined with hunting pictures depicting some of the early hunting scenes. As I said to Jeremy, in those days I guess you didn’t get too close to your dogs as they were most likely going to get mauled or killed on your next hunting adventure. There were numerous horrific scenes of dogs and hunters and bears and boars, all with carnage galore on display.

Here are a few photos of some of the guns, along with a picture of Jeremy and his new pool cue. Finally, the far end of the room contained a number of sleighs, so I took a picture of one of the fancy carvings on the front of one of them.

Deb found out later, quite by accident, that the fishing museum is housed in an old church. That explains the splendor of the room on the second floor.