Today's pic spam brought to you by my walking through the park of Nymphenburg whereupon I found that now that it's spring, all the minor small palaces in addition to the big palace have opened their doors for the visitors. And they're just drop gorgeous excessive Rococo, and I felt like sharing. So: here's how the Princes (Elector) of Bavaria lived. (When they became Kings of Bavaria, they mostly chose other residences, for practical reasons. And that was before Ludwig II. got the building bug.) Behold the late Baroque, early Rococo beauty of a Wittelsbach residence. Here's the main building: (On the right side which you can't see on the photo, there's the Nymphenburg porcellain manufactory. In the buildings on the left side, also beyond the picture frame, the former stables, the current Wittelsbach duke has his living quarters. The palaces themselves are state property now.



( Follow me to the park beyond this main building )

Obviously, this selection, prepared for oracne, is highly subjective. (And based in pre-pandemic times.) Not to mention that as in every country, where to go partly depends on how mobile you are. I enjoy walking and exploring new towns and landscapes very much, but it's not possible for everyone. In 2019, an older couple I'd met in New Zealand visited Europe; he had a shattered knee and she had a bad hip. They went by ship, from Budapest to Amsterdam, which you can do when going from the Danube to the Main to the Rhine, and enjoyed it very much, with the travel organization they'd booked their trip on providing excursions via bus on the various towns their ship anchored at. (Including my hometown.)

Speaking of which: naturally, Bamberg heads my list of places to visit in Germany. This isn't just local bias speaking. Bamberg, which is over a 1000 years old, has the good luck of having its city centre almost intact, which means it looks great and you can go on foot almost everywhere. (In fact, you should go on foot, because good luck finding a parking spot in the city centre.) You don't have to take my word for it; check out the pictorial posts I did in the past.

Bamberg in the winter

Bamberg in the summer

Bamberg from above

And lastly, a post not by my but by kathyh on Bamberg, here.

Fortunately for travellers, Bamberg is a station on the direct train connection between Munich and Berlin, which means if you visit either of these cities, which you should, you can make a stop in Bamberg easily. (Nuremberg is also part of the same railway connection, and certainly worth a stop both if you're interested in older history or 20th century history (obviously), but as 95% of the city was bombed into oblivion in WWII, anything old looking you see other than the house of Albrecht Dürer is almost certainly reconstructed.

Berlin: hardly needs advertisement, between being the capital, and in the English speaking world known as a mixture between Cabaret and Bridge of Spies, pop culture wise. I would add that you should take one of the Spree boat trips offered there so you can see a lot of the city, east and west, from immensely picturesque perspectives. Also once they reopen the Pergamon Museum completely, go there. Previous photo posts of mine on Berlin are here and here, and for good measure, I'll throw in a 13 minutes tv special on David Bowie in Berlin, David Bowie: Hero of Berlin. Depending on how much time you have, you might also want to check out Potsdam, where they have not only the Babelsberg Studios (very much back in demand now; they shot several of the later MCU movies partially there, which is why we Germans got to watch them a week or so before the Americans did) but also Sanssouci.

Now if you are from a small-to-middle sized Franconian town, like me, a great many of your classmates after school either go to Berlin or to Munich in order to study. I went to Munich. Which is older than Berlin, like Berlin has a past both famous and infamous, and has the geographical advantage of being near the Alps, only three hours away from Italy on the road. (Again, in pre pandemic times.) It's not just in the most southern of the big German cities in terms of location but also in spirit: Monaco di Bavaria. Have two photo posts on Munich in autumn here and here, and one on Munich in winter. If its raining, Munich offers some great museums (both in terms of painting - the Alte Pinakothek - and in terms of science - I haven't met the kid yet which dislikes the Deutsches Museum with its electric demonstrations and original Konrad Zuse coomputer. If you're into cars, it also has BMW. Depending on your schedule, you might want to check out the surrounding area, like Tegernsee. (Do not go to Neuschwanstein unless you really have a lot of time. Firstly, it's in the middle of the countryside, far from the nearest Autobahn, secondly, it's overcrowded, and thirdly, its charm lies in being seen from outside, where from the right spot it does look fairy tale like. Inside, you have a never finished castle with incredibly camp 19th century interior design. And hordes of queueing people. If you absolutely want to visit one of the palaces Ludwig II. built for himself, go to Herrenchiemsee instead. That's in the middle of a league and looks like Versailles which is why it's currently doubling for Versailles in most movies you've seen made in the last decade.

But selenak, I can hear you say, Berlin and Munich are on everyone's rec list, don't you have any less obvious destinations other than your hometown? Of course I do, and again they come with photo posts of their own.

Schwäbisch Hall: small, old, gorgeous

Hannover: not just of interest to Brits who want to know where their German Kings kept disappearing to for the holidays.

Speyer: has not just a wonderful cathedral but one of the best preserved Mikwas in Germany.

Marburg: where the Brothers Grimm studied.

Trier: oldest still existing city of Germany (courtesy of the Romans, who left a lot of great ruins there), hometown of Karl Marx.

Erfurt, in GDR times arguably the most beautiful town of East Germany (it's still beautiful, but now several other East German towns have gone through rebuildings and renovations)

Then again, maybe you're after landscapes more than towns and cities. In which case: there's a train connection that for a long time runs parallel to the Rhine, so from Frankfurt to Düsseldorf via Bonn and Cologne you can see the river, the picturesque mountains and castles, the vineyards. (Or you can do what kathyh and my New Zealand pals did and take the boat for the same purpose.) If you're feeling up to a natural park, well, there's the Bayrischer Wald (offers lynx and bears along with mountains and forests). If you feel more like a mixture of landscapes and picturesque little towns, see Tegernsee above, but also, on a larger scale, the Bodensee, which is shared between Germany, Switzerland and Austria. If you want the ocean and the beach: I have a deep childhood fondness for the island Sylt in the Northern sea. (You can get there either via ferry or by train.) While en route to Sylt, there is of course the chance to check out the Belle of the North, i.e. Hamburg, see also here. Be sure to take warm clothing with you, because I haven't been there yet in all the years of my life when it wasn't either windy, rainy, or both. But it has a cool, stunning elegance in some parts and a raw vitality in others.

Now, like I said: this is by no means a complete list, and it's entirely subjective. But I swear that visiting any of these places is something no visitor will regret.

The other days

You've probably heard by now what happened in Munich last night. I wasn't anywhere near the Olympiazentrum, I'm in the mountains an hour form Munich right now and in another part of Germany tomorrow, so I did what most people outside Munich did - follow the news and social media in between texting friends to check on them.

Incidentally: re: social media, the people managing the twitter account for the Munich police did a great job (as they've done last year when the refugees from Hungary arrived), reporting what happened, explaining as far as they knew, providing people with landlines and coordinating efforts from helpers. (Not just in German but also in English and French, and Turkish.) Also, the press officer, Marcus da Gloria Martins, who had to do the press conferences, became everyone's instant hero for refusing to be drawn into baiting and insinuating questions, staying calm, and projecting gravitas. (This is him.) Given that wild rumors had several shootings happen all over Munich (not true), and that for hours it wasn't clear whether it was one shooter or several, up to three (it was one), having someone providing information who refused to speculate and stuck to the facts while also communicating, not shutting people's questions down, was really a good thing.

Still: people are dead, killed in the city where I live. Within a week of the axe murderer in the train from Würzburg (which I often take). And a friend of mine, who is working in an organization devoted to helping underage refugees, says they're getting vile hatemail now. (Which has also been reported in the news.) These are terrible times we live in. Which reminds me of something Tolkien wrote:

“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

While what's euphemistically called "refugee crisis" continues to worry and horrify me, I have to admit that events in Munich this week made me feel a bit better about my part of the world (at least the people, not the politicians in same). If you have no idea what I'm talking about, I mean the way the people of Munich responded to the ca. 2000 refugees arriving on Tuesday via train from Hungary; reports in English are here and here.

(I'm in Bamberg right now and will be for another week, otherwise I could tell you first hand, since Munich is my main place of residence.)

Another great Munich fact from last week: when the right wing nutters from Pegida wanted to have an anti-asylum demonstration last week, they had to cancel not because of intervention but because nobody showed up. Seriously. Nobody, as in zero. Whereas half of Munich came to the main train station to help the refugees. Take that, hate speech producers!

Of course, it's important that this spirit of help remains instead of dissipating, because the situation in Syria and elsewhere grows only worse and the refugees will become ever more (Germany expects up to 800.000 to arrive 2015 officially, unofficially people say it's probably going to be more like 1 Million), but it's still something hope-inspiring in days of terrible news otherwise.

Merry Christmas to those who celebrate it and season's greetings to those who don't! (Also, thank you for the lj gifts, various friends, and kathyh & elisi for the new lj banner being put up.) The Aged Parents & self as ever did our annual nativity scenes walk through Bamberg and its churches. However, this year's pic spam also contains some Munich in winter from snapshots I took through the last weeks that were never enough to post them.

( Munich winter impressions )

On to my hometown and various artisans recreating the nativity in various churches. Also starring: the snowstorm through which we walked, surrounding the cathedral.

( This time, there was even a Tanzanian natvity )

And thus I leave you for now, wishing you once more frohe Weihnachten!

A few photographic weekend impressions, because I had a young visitor who had never seen either Munich or the Alps before, so I showed him a little bit of both. Also, there was football. Am v. worn out now. All you parents on my flist, how do you it on a constant basis? You're amazing, you are.

( City Halls, Vikings, Alps and cute kid ahoy! )