We have breakfast at the hotel, then walk back to the main train station to find the hop-on/off bus. It departs at 10, and we ride it only part way through the city tour as we arrive at the main city square, called Marienplatz, at about 10:40, and we want to be in the square to see the famous glockenspiel clock, which performs at 11 am, noon, and 5 pm. We walk into the square which is filling with people, and has many patrons at the sidewalk cafes at the sides of the square. This mechanism first rings bells for about three minutes, then has a series of three medieval performances on the face of the clock tower just below the clock. The first is a joust, where two knights on horseback try to unseat each other. Of course the Bavarian knight always wins on the second pass. Below this area follows another performance which is supposed to be aboout surviving the plague. It has various characters dancing and moving. Finally, at the top of the area is a rooster, who slides forward and makes a noise.
I overhear an English speaking guide in the square telling all about this. She says this famous feature in Munich is the second most over-rated tourist sight in Europe. The bells are so out of tune that the songs are not recognizable, and the rooster crow is pretty lame. But it is tradition. And we can say we have seen it. The guide goes on to explain that she is a free lance guide and will be conducting a three-hour walking tour and people can pay at the end what they think it was worth. We decide to tag along and this is a terrific decision. She is from the UK, so her English is good, and she tells the greatest stories, and has a fun sense of humor. We follow her around for the full three hours, really enjoying learning about the city. She talks about the square, takes us to two of the famous churches, the open-air market, the beer garden, the opera house, and many other sights, giving us insider details. For example, she points out in the huge Catholic church a number of symbols placed at intervals along the ceiling. One of them is a Menorah. Why a Menorah in a Catholic church? During the war, the church assisted the Jews by hiding inside the church many of the Jewish religious treasures. This was strictly forbidden under penalty of death. But the Catholics saved the treasures and the Jews helped to rebuild the bombed Catholic church. Some of the things she points out are ones we would not have otherwise noticed, like a small cannon ball stuck into the side of a church. She even covers the Hitler era with an abbreviated history which makes great sense. She talks about the damage to the city from the war and how the city was rebuilt. She is by far the best tour guide we have had so far. We are happy to give her a generous tip.
The tour ends about 2 and we are ready for lunch, so choose a restaurant near the square to rest and eat and people watch. I have yummy pumpkin soup and David has a plate with three kinds of sausages, sourkraut and mashed potatoes. Great food. And of course, he has a beer.
By now it is after 4. We want to go to Rothenberg tomorrow, so need to buy a ticket at the train station. We take the metro there and purchase the tour tickets.
I read in the guidebook about the huge English garden in Munich. It is larger than Central Park in NY, and larger than Hyde Park in London. We ask the info desk at the station the best metro to take and he says" take the 100 bus which goes directly there." So we catch this bus and soon have arrived. We see a crowd of people and walk over to see what they are looking at. They are standing on a bridge looking down at the water. The fast-running water comes rushing out from under the bridge and meets a concrete barrier under the water. This causes a motion like rapids or similar to the ocean surf and there are about 20 people, men and women, who are taking turns jumping in and surfing on the water! Each turn lasts as long as the person can keep their balance, some not at all and some for up to a minute, shifting their weight and surfing the board back and forth across the rushing water. Soon each one goes down and falls into the water, bobs downstream with their board attached to their ankle, recovers and swims back up to the spot to climb out and gets back in line to do it again. We watched for quite a while before moving further inside the park. Like the other parks I have described, this one is soothing, lots of beautiful flowers, people sunbathing on the grass, a woman throwing a stick for her dog to retrieve out of the water, kids in strollers, a toddler feeding swans. We sit for a while. After all, we walked all morning.
Ready to head back to the room, we decide we are not hungry for dinner after our late lunch. We come back to blog and prepare for tomorrow. The folks outside the hotel are celebrating Oktoberfest in the bar across the street and their revelry is noisy enough to keep us awake. David shuts the window and that helps. We are down for the count.
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