BOX 246: Bavaria.

June 10, 2003. If you look closely at the poster on the right, you see that Bruce Springsteen is performing that night in Munich's Olympic Stadium. Anne and I, who had planned in advance to be in Munich at that time, had bought tickets and were excitedly walking through the Olympic grounds to the Stadium.

After our Berlin stay (see previous post) we took a train southward to Munich. We would have liked to have stopped at quite a few places along the way, but our European vacation was coming to a close and we limited ourselves to one stopoff: Nuremberg, for two nights and one full day. The Old City is certainly beautiful and the whole area is rich in history, though some of that history is dark, and not just in the 20th Century. Anne and I both had a vague sense that the city was hiding something sinister beneath its picturesque surface--maybe our bias stemmed from our walking past some skinhead-looking types hanging around the train station when we arrived; in any case it increased when we read about some of the city's medieval history.

Still, we did have a good time strolling around, except for a point in the late afternoon when the continuing heat wave drove us off the streets (we cooled off at an IMAX theatre showing an animals documentary). And we were happy to find the restaurants all advertising Spargelwochen! (asparagus weeks) with special asparagus dishes on their menus. We found a self-guiding tour booklet and followed it, starting at the north end of the Old City. The photo I took from the start of our walk is unfortunately soft-focused but it shows the tower of the Nuremberg Imperial Castle. Better is this view of what was once the Hospital of the Holy Spirit, now used for various other functions:

Here is a closer view of part of Nuremberg Castle, plus a shot taken in the market square with part of the 1300s gothic Schöner Brunnen (the 'Beautiful Fountain') on the right.

Next in a series of--I admit--touristy photos is an island on the Pegnitz River that runs through Nuremberg:

And here is the Nuremberg skyline:

The artist Albrecht Dürer was a famous resident of Nuremberg:

The interior of St Sebaldus Church is especially attractive with its hanging plants among the gothic columns:

And here's a typical street:

Finally, here are three more vertical views of Nuremberg structures: the Rathaus (City Hall); the Fembohaus City Museum (the sign is advertising a show, "The Bratwurst: An Artistic Tidbit"); and the spires of the St Lorenz Church:

My first photo of Munich is of another pair of church towers: the austere Frauenkirche (Cathedral of Our Lady)

Next is a view looking up the Weinstrasse toward the Theatine Church, with Munich's Rathaus on the right:

Other than these I took only a few pics of Munich landmarks, probably for the not-very-good reason that I had been there 31 years earlier (see BOXES 53-55). I did take several at the famous (to some, infamous) Hofbräuhaus, which Anne and I visited twice, once with her cousin Gerry, who worked for BMW outside Munich:

We're in the outdoor courtyard in the pic above, where, by the way, Anne was having a 7up or seltzer rather than a beer.

One Munich spectacle that didn't exist in 1972 was surfers on a bit of the Eisbach River near the entrance to the Englischer Garten:

Inside the Englischer Garten we stopped at the beer garden near the Pagoda. (Looking at my older slides I see that I took a very similar photo in '72.)

This brings us up to the Bruce concert. We took the metro to the Olympic Village, a sprawling area whose buildings had been repurposed. (The swimming pool arena was now "Sauna Paradise.") Here we're following the crowd toward the Stadium:

After a sausage-and-beer supper at the beer garden just outside the Stadium we entered, seeing first this view from behind and just above the stage:

From our seats the stage looked like this, shortly after Bruce and the E Street came onstage:

Here's one more shot, after the show had started but before the sun set:

We had a great evening--not only because Bruce and the E Street were more than capable of putting on a sensational show in a venue that size but because it was fun to see them with a European crowd. (To our left was a fan who had come down from Hannover and chatted with us in English before the show and during moments between songs.)

While we we were in Germany we wanted to check out possibilities for future UW-Sheboygan trips abroad, which had always been based in interesting smaller cities not too far from capitals. (Readers of these posts will recall Canterbury, Bruges and Siena.) We hadn't had time to stop in Weimar, but one day while we were in Munich we did take a train north to Regensburg, which 'on paper' (a now quaint-sounding expression) looked like a good possibility for a Bavarian trip. We were a bit disappointed: the town certainly has an important history, but it seemed to us lacking in character compared to places we had stayed (including Segovia, planned for 2004). Still, the spire of the Cathedral was imposing, and the houses painted yellow and gold were handsome:

The city is attractively situated on the Danube:

This palace from the 1300s, called the Neue Waag, was once a residence of nobility:

But there was a plainness about many houses and buildings in Regensburg, even ones with a medieval foundation:

Also, the distance by train from Munich was just a little too great. Back in the Bavarian capital we had refreshments, and might have dined, in the Biergarten of the Viktualienmarkt:

My last photo of Munich is of Anne with her cousin Gerry, unfortunately not well focused--but I think it was taken outside the Hofbräuhaus and maybe we were all a bit unfocused. From Munich we went to Amsterdam with a side trip to Delft for the last part of our trip. I'll save pics of those Dutch cities for the next post.