WanderLust #4 Munich Adventures

Hello Steemit!

WanderLust is a blog run by two German sisters Erika and Johanna! We both travel around the world for work and play and hope to be able to take the Steemit community on some of our journeys with us. Today’s posting is all about our trip to Munich when we went to Oktoberfest!

Erika enjoying the weather before we head to the city center.

Munich is located in the farmlands of southeast Germany along the river Isar just north of the Bavarian Alps. As you can see from the photo flying in to Munich Airport, the city is surrounded by rolling farmland that can be a very pleasant view if you are accustomed to city life.

Munich is called München in German and Minga in Bavarian. Bavarian is a dialect of German primarily found in the state of Bavaria. As a side note, The language that most people think of as “German” is commonly called “Hochdeutsch” and developed as a means for the different Germanic kingdoms to communicate with each other even though they had their own regional languages. We could discuss this further in a specialized blog post if people are interested in a history of German. (Please let us know in the replies if that is something that you would be interested in.)

As you might have guessed from the fact that we provided the Bavarian name for Munich, Munich is in the German state of Bavaria, and is, in fact, the capital of Bavaria. Depending on where you live in the world, Munich might appear to be a very old city, or just a standard age. Munich was first mentioned in the 12th century and has been the seat of power of many South German governments throughout history. Although Munich has been damaged by war many times throughout history, modern reconstruction has done a good job of trying to repair buildings in a manner that is consistent with older images that exist of the buildings before they were damaged.

At the center of Munich, and the start of our adventure, was Marienplatz, or Mary’s Square. Surrounding Marienplatz are many smaller streets where you can still see very intricate architecture that has survived from the 19th century and before.

Once you arrive in Marienplatz itself, you can see both the Neues Rathaus, or the New City Hall, and a reconstruction of the Altes Rathaus, or the Old City Hall. The New City Hall is very intricately designed, and, as you can see from the following photo, has a traditional mechanized “scene” built into it just below the clock on the clock tower. This is surrounded by copper that has turned green, so it is always easy for tourists to notice when they are looking up at the tower.

The Old City Hall has a much less ornate look and appears to have been built with far more function than style in mind. The following photo shows you both the clock tower and the ballroom/dance hall. It is important to remember that although a lot of what you see on the Old City Hall was built in the 1970s, it is a nearly exact replica of the damaged building that they were replacing.

If you are a futbol/football/soccer fan, you might recognize Marienplatz from FC Bayern celebrations as this is where they often go after major wins. Johanna is a fan of FC Bayern, so of course we had to take the train out to Allianz Arena to see it. We recommend going to the Arena at night, even if you aren’t a fan, just to see the unique way that they light it up.

They can change the color of the different diamonds, and so you can see it look different depending on the night that you go to see it.

As with most European cities, Munich is very cyclist friendly. Munich also has bike rental programs, so we definitely recommend biking around the city if you ever get the chance to visit. You never know what you will find, like this beautifully pleasant picture of a residential street on the edge of the city.

Before we left Munich we also wanted to see the Siegestor. The Siegestor, or Victory Gate is an archway topped with a statue of Bavaria riding in a chariot led by lions. You will remember the figure of Bavaria from our posting about Oktoberfest. The Siegestor is visibly quite similar to the other Victory Gate’s that can be found throughout Europe, with the most famous being the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, France.

We are considering beginning a blog series on different aspects of German culture. We hope that you find that series as interesting as you do this one, and we look forward to providing you with a lot of great content on into the future!

We hope to hear from you and will incorporate your suggestions into our future posts. You can expect our next posting shortly and we will try to include any good suggestions that we see before that posting.

Auf Wiedersehen!
E&J