Writing from memory is always a pain in the ass. Events get jumbled and twisted, continuity is snarled and blurred in a haze of good cheer, embarrassment, and time, and the whole course of the history being written is changed in the recollection. Still, since I was too lazy or occupied to write down events as they happened in Munich, I’ll have to settle for this solution instead. I’m going to condense the events of the 20th, 21st, and 22nd into one entry. This will cover all of my time in Munich. Then, there will be another entry, probably quite short, covering our day trip to Salzburg on the 23rd, and then a third entry for Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and Boxing Day (the 26th of December for Americans and other aliens).
I arrived in Munich about 15 minutes delayed for one reason or another (European train conductors never tell you the reason for any delay, but personally I blame a combination of weather and Italians) to find my family waiting for me in the train station. Their hotel room wasn’t ready, so they had decided to come and wait for me their, which was a good thing because the hotel didn’t have much to speak of in the way of a lobby. We ate a quick lunch at the airport, dining on kebaps. These sandwiches, which have nothing to do with shish-kabob, are the German/Austrian equivalent of a hamburger, and arrived in Europe thanks to the wave of Turkish immigration in the 1990s. A kebap is a sandwich composed of a kaiser roll, or equivalent bun product, stuffed with roasted sliced lamb or turkey, yogurt sauce, onions, lettuce, and tomatoes. It’s not all that good for you, but satisfying in the same way that a McDonald’s hamburger is satisfying (that is, up until about 2 hours after the fact).
We proceeded to the hotel under a threatening sky which was probably the tail end of the snowstorm I had experienced coming out of Austria. Bavaria, the region of Germany where Munich is located, is primarily plains and forests, with a few mountains in the south called the Bavarian Alps. The storm, it seemed, had been trapped by the true Austrian Alps, and so left Munich with rain, damp, and cold. After settling into the room, I, Mom, and Hannah went for a walk to the Munich Christkindlmarkt, which proved hideously overcrowded. We stopped for a few pictures before heading back to the hotel. That night we had dinner with an old colleague of Dad’s, Thomas Pruegl, and his family, who served us one of the best meals I’ve ever eaten: dumplings in beef broth, roast pork and more dumplings (but of a different variety), and cabbage salad. We went home that night tired and stuffed to the gills.
The next morning we breakfasted at the hotel, under the watchful eyes of the breakfast chef/waitress person, a severe woman with an unending flow of sarcasm (in several languages) who soon garnered the nickname of “Frau Harrumph” from me and my sisters. Then it was time for mass at the cathedral, and then for a walk around the city center. The Christkindlmarkt was just starting up when we arrived, so we walked through the Rathaus, the “town hall” of Munich, although it was quite grand and gothic, looking more like a cathedral than anything else. Afterwards (at around 1:30) we embarked for the Alte Pinakothek, one of Munich’s three famous art museums. The Alte Pinakothek (which is mostly untranslatable, but which means something like “Collection of Old Paintings”) houses works from the late Middle Ages through the 18th Century; the Neue Pinakothek (“Collection of New Paintings”) is devoted to the 19th Century, and the Pinakothek der Moderne (“Collection of Paintings of the Modern Artists) has 20th Century works. We only saw the Alte, which houses no particularly famous work, but many minor works by famous painters (Rubens, Dürer, Raphael, and Da Vinci) as well as a particularly expansive collection of 17th and 18th century art, especially from France and the Netherlands.
That took us most of the afternoon, until about 5 o’clock. We then departed to find a restaurant that Dad had read of which served authentic Bavarian food. The search took us well over an hour, as it was quite dark and the restaurant was located in a small square off the beaten path. It was also closed, unsurprisingly, since it was a Sunday (when nearly all shops and stores are closed). We instead went to the Ratskeller, a restaurant in the basement of the Rathaus. While expensive, the food was superb if rather hard to describe. The menu was entirely in German, and contained a lot of Bavarian-dialect terms that I was unfamiliar with. Still, it turned out well, and we dined on plates of sausages, sauerkraut, tiny dumplings in a cheese sauce in Rose’s case, and Wiener Schnitzel (a cut of tender veal, pounded thin and deep fried) in Hannah’s. Stuffed to the gills again, we walked around the Christkindlmarkt for awhile and took a few pictures before returning to the hotel.
The next day a bitterly cold wind blew, rather than the drizzle of the day before. We went to the Toy Museum, which was rather unconventionally housed in an old tower, with each exhibit located in rooms off of the tight circular stairwell. It was an amusing side trip, and certainly nothing like what you’d find in the US. After the Toy Museum, we took a detour to the Asamkirche (officially the Church of St. John Nepomuk, but nicknamed Asam after the two brothers who designed and built it). While small, the church is crammed with every bit of Baroque finery that could fit: painted ceilings and walls, gold and silver ornamentation, and marble statues. Everything on the walls and ceilings that isn’t a painting is gold or silver, and my poor skill with words cannot possibly do it justice. Check out the webalbum for more pictures.
The Asamkirche was followed by a shopping expedition to the Christkindlmarkt, in which Dad tried glühwein for the first time and started a long-running joke which I’m sure will be with our family until the end of time, and in which I made a rather elementary mistake in my German and which lead to subsequent embarrassment (although, like all good mistakes, I don’t think I’m likely to repeat it in the near future). Around 4, we returned to the hotel, cold and somewhat cranky, and didn’t leave the room except for one expedition to the train station to buy some pizza. Then we bedded down for the night, determined to get a good rest for our trip to Salzburg the next day.
Next, on Cage of Monkeys: What happened in Salzburg! Strange Meetings! Long Walks! Tourists! And the Lions Club! Tune in tomorrow, same Monkey Time, same Monkey Channel!
-JA
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Achtung! Achtung! The Cage of Monkeys Christmas Special!
[Author’s Note: This entry was intended to be published on the 24th of December, Christmas Eve. It was not. Those responsible for this delay (the author’s bottle of scotch and his video games) have been sacked. This entry was completed with great expense and at the last minute with new assistance (a bag of coffee beans and hot water). We thank you for your understanding.]
Well, it’s that time of year, again. I hope that everyone who reads this is having a great holiday season, free from St. Stephen’s Day murders and the like. I’m going to be celebrating Christmas in Innsbruck with my family, but first we’re going to be spending time in Munich, Regensburg, and Salzburg. Blog entries for those days (the 21st, 22nd, and 23rd) will follow as I write them, and they’ll probably go up sometime after Christmas. This entry will go up on the 24th if I remember to post it; if not, then it will go up afterwards. Now, seeing as I’m writing this on a train (again. Funny how it seems I can only ever write this blog if I’m on a train or in train station), and there’s nothing really interesting going on (we’re waiting somewhere in the northern foothills of the Alps, delayed by the blizzard that is currently sweeping the land), I though I might beef up this post with a few observations and anecdotes on how Austrians celebrate Christmas.
Firstly, it’s important that you understand that Austria is (I believe) 65% Catholic and around 85% Christian, so there’s none of the American attempts at political correctness. You’ll see no “seasons’s greetings” or “happy holidays” in Innsbruck; rather, the shops will have signs reading “Frohe Weihnachten!” (Merry Christmas, in German), and every city or village has its own Christkindlmarkt (Christ Child Market. More on that later). There’s also no Santas, or elves, or reindeer, or any of that foolishness (explained by the Austrian belief that the Christ Child brings the presents on Christmas Eve). There’s the inevitable consumerism that you can’t escape anywhere that comes with the season: stores in the city’s shopping center have signs for “Das Merry-Xmas-Special” or “Das Christmas-Sale” (in keeping with the tradition of borrowing English words for advertisements, a trend which is inexplicably omnipresent in the German-speaking world).
For Austrians, the Christmas season begins on the Saturday before the first Sunday of Advent, when the Christkindlmarkts open. Every city and village has its own Christkindlmarkt, usually located in the oldest part of town, populated by vendors who are either prepare everything they sell by themselves, or who are representatives of a bigger store (this latter being obviously more present in cities like Innsbruck). Every year they load brown wooden kiosks or booths onto rented trailers and set themselves up in a rented spot. In cities with larger Christkindlmarkts, it looks as though a small village of people living in curiously kitschy houses has suddenly invaded the city.
What’s for sale falls into three different categories (usually): decorations, clothing, and FOOD. This last cannot be understated: the number of food booths at the Innsbruck Christkindlmarkt makes up roughly half the number of total vendors (by my rough estimate). The food is, in Innsbruck’s case, traditional Austrian winter dishes and drinks. There are the meats: all kinds of sausage (bratwürst, krainerwürst, knackwürst, extrawürst made from leftover bits of animal, blutwürst made from reduced blood), speck (a Tirolian term encompassing any kind of meat which is dried, salted, smoked, or any combination of the three), and other less appealing dishes (baked brain, intestines stuffed with speck, bull’s testicles). There are the starches: knödel (the Austrian dumpling, served either in soup or by itself, and coming in a wonderment of varieties, most famously spinach, cheese, and speck); krapfen (the Austrian equivalent of a doughnut, but better); and kirchl (my personal favorite, a puffed pastry shaped like a bowl and topped with sauerkraut, mountain cranberry jam, or powdered sugar). To wash all this down, the vendors will be more than happy to sell you coffee, hot chocolate, punch, beer, wine, prosecco, or glühwein, a cousin of mulled wine made by heating wine in a cauldron with two clove-studded oranges, and then adding sugar, more cloves, cinnamon, tea, and perhaps a dram or two of the local moonshine. Not a drink for the weak-of-stomach!
Once you have stuffed yourself, there’s still another half of the Christkindlmarkt left. Here you can buy scarves, sweaters, hats, and mittens; slippers, jewelry, nativity scenes, and kitsch of all forms. Generally, these items are not as untrustworthy as one might expect, although this benefit comes with a corresponding price hike. Expect expense, but the stuff won’t fall apart on you the minute you leave the city.
After the first Sunday of Advent, the Christkindlmarkt infiltrates all available corners of the city, and Austrians settle down for the feast of St. Nicholas. The mythos surrounding Nicholas is a bit different than it is in America. Rather than being attended by Rupert, his chimney-sweep servant, Nicholaus comes to the cities of Austria attended by a horde of Krampuse. The Krampus is a demon which delivers the naughty boys and girls bundles of sticks on St. Nicholas day, and is one of the things that young Austrian children live in fear of (eat your dinner or the Krampus will get you!) On the 5th of December, there is a great procession from the Church of St. Nicholas in the northern part of Innsbruck to the Cathedral of St. Jacob in the city center. Afterwards, the Krampuse (young men dressed in furry, horned demon suits) run through the city, whacking bemused passers-by and bystanders with bundles of reeds or sticks. The next morning, all the children receive sweets, nuts, and oranges in their shoes (which they leave by their front door the night beforehand), and those few silly people who decided it would be a good idea to hit a Krampus back (guess what? It isn’t) nurse their well-deserved welts. The weekend closest to the feast of St. Nicholas, around 30,000 Italians cram themselves into buses and invade the city and the Christkindlmarkt, while sensible Austrians stay at home.
The Austrian house is much like the American one at Christmas-time. There is a tree (although the Austrians decorate theirs with candles rather than colored light bulbs, and generally don’t have pounds of ornaments decorating every available square inch of branch and needle), and the Austrians also decorate their houses (although their decorations would probably be considered humorless, spartan, and severely lacking in holiday spirit by most Americans. Do not expect to see a light display which requires several African nations to power, or inflatable figures waiting to be popped by a drunk youth with a BB gun). Altogether, I would say that Austrians approach Christmas with a more sensible and definitely more devout frame of mind than we Americans.
On Christmas Eve (known as Heiliger Abend, or Holy Evening), some Austrians go to mass, either around 8 o’clock or at midnight, but most of them go to mass on Christmas day (here called Christtag, Christ Day) after their children have shredded wrapping paper, opened gifts, and wallowed in pure and unadulterated joy for awhile. Most families have a huge dinner at around 1 in the afternoon, replete with roast ducks and geese, as well as other Austrian cuisine (knödel, speck, and so forth). Wine is drunk, food is eaten, and everyone retires to sleep soundly through the night.
Well, my train’s pulling in now. Regardless of whatever faith or non-faith you subscribe to, Dear Reader, I would enjoin you to meditate on this: “If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.” Merry Christmas everyone!
-JA
Well, it’s that time of year, again. I hope that everyone who reads this is having a great holiday season, free from St. Stephen’s Day murders and the like. I’m going to be celebrating Christmas in Innsbruck with my family, but first we’re going to be spending time in Munich, Regensburg, and Salzburg. Blog entries for those days (the 21st, 22nd, and 23rd) will follow as I write them, and they’ll probably go up sometime after Christmas. This entry will go up on the 24th if I remember to post it; if not, then it will go up afterwards. Now, seeing as I’m writing this on a train (again. Funny how it seems I can only ever write this blog if I’m on a train or in train station), and there’s nothing really interesting going on (we’re waiting somewhere in the northern foothills of the Alps, delayed by the blizzard that is currently sweeping the land), I though I might beef up this post with a few observations and anecdotes on how Austrians celebrate Christmas.
Firstly, it’s important that you understand that Austria is (I believe) 65% Catholic and around 85% Christian, so there’s none of the American attempts at political correctness. You’ll see no “seasons’s greetings” or “happy holidays” in Innsbruck; rather, the shops will have signs reading “Frohe Weihnachten!” (Merry Christmas, in German), and every city or village has its own Christkindlmarkt (Christ Child Market. More on that later). There’s also no Santas, or elves, or reindeer, or any of that foolishness (explained by the Austrian belief that the Christ Child brings the presents on Christmas Eve). There’s the inevitable consumerism that you can’t escape anywhere that comes with the season: stores in the city’s shopping center have signs for “Das Merry-Xmas-Special” or “Das Christmas-Sale” (in keeping with the tradition of borrowing English words for advertisements, a trend which is inexplicably omnipresent in the German-speaking world).
For Austrians, the Christmas season begins on the Saturday before the first Sunday of Advent, when the Christkindlmarkts open. Every city and village has its own Christkindlmarkt, usually located in the oldest part of town, populated by vendors who are either prepare everything they sell by themselves, or who are representatives of a bigger store (this latter being obviously more present in cities like Innsbruck). Every year they load brown wooden kiosks or booths onto rented trailers and set themselves up in a rented spot. In cities with larger Christkindlmarkts, it looks as though a small village of people living in curiously kitschy houses has suddenly invaded the city.
What’s for sale falls into three different categories (usually): decorations, clothing, and FOOD. This last cannot be understated: the number of food booths at the Innsbruck Christkindlmarkt makes up roughly half the number of total vendors (by my rough estimate). The food is, in Innsbruck’s case, traditional Austrian winter dishes and drinks. There are the meats: all kinds of sausage (bratwürst, krainerwürst, knackwürst, extrawürst made from leftover bits of animal, blutwürst made from reduced blood), speck (a Tirolian term encompassing any kind of meat which is dried, salted, smoked, or any combination of the three), and other less appealing dishes (baked brain, intestines stuffed with speck, bull’s testicles). There are the starches: knödel (the Austrian dumpling, served either in soup or by itself, and coming in a wonderment of varieties, most famously spinach, cheese, and speck); krapfen (the Austrian equivalent of a doughnut, but better); and kirchl (my personal favorite, a puffed pastry shaped like a bowl and topped with sauerkraut, mountain cranberry jam, or powdered sugar). To wash all this down, the vendors will be more than happy to sell you coffee, hot chocolate, punch, beer, wine, prosecco, or glühwein, a cousin of mulled wine made by heating wine in a cauldron with two clove-studded oranges, and then adding sugar, more cloves, cinnamon, tea, and perhaps a dram or two of the local moonshine. Not a drink for the weak-of-stomach!
Once you have stuffed yourself, there’s still another half of the Christkindlmarkt left. Here you can buy scarves, sweaters, hats, and mittens; slippers, jewelry, nativity scenes, and kitsch of all forms. Generally, these items are not as untrustworthy as one might expect, although this benefit comes with a corresponding price hike. Expect expense, but the stuff won’t fall apart on you the minute you leave the city.
After the first Sunday of Advent, the Christkindlmarkt infiltrates all available corners of the city, and Austrians settle down for the feast of St. Nicholas. The mythos surrounding Nicholas is a bit different than it is in America. Rather than being attended by Rupert, his chimney-sweep servant, Nicholaus comes to the cities of Austria attended by a horde of Krampuse. The Krampus is a demon which delivers the naughty boys and girls bundles of sticks on St. Nicholas day, and is one of the things that young Austrian children live in fear of (eat your dinner or the Krampus will get you!) On the 5th of December, there is a great procession from the Church of St. Nicholas in the northern part of Innsbruck to the Cathedral of St. Jacob in the city center. Afterwards, the Krampuse (young men dressed in furry, horned demon suits) run through the city, whacking bemused passers-by and bystanders with bundles of reeds or sticks. The next morning, all the children receive sweets, nuts, and oranges in their shoes (which they leave by their front door the night beforehand), and those few silly people who decided it would be a good idea to hit a Krampus back (guess what? It isn’t) nurse their well-deserved welts. The weekend closest to the feast of St. Nicholas, around 30,000 Italians cram themselves into buses and invade the city and the Christkindlmarkt, while sensible Austrians stay at home.
The Austrian house is much like the American one at Christmas-time. There is a tree (although the Austrians decorate theirs with candles rather than colored light bulbs, and generally don’t have pounds of ornaments decorating every available square inch of branch and needle), and the Austrians also decorate their houses (although their decorations would probably be considered humorless, spartan, and severely lacking in holiday spirit by most Americans. Do not expect to see a light display which requires several African nations to power, or inflatable figures waiting to be popped by a drunk youth with a BB gun). Altogether, I would say that Austrians approach Christmas with a more sensible and definitely more devout frame of mind than we Americans.
On Christmas Eve (known as Heiliger Abend, or Holy Evening), some Austrians go to mass, either around 8 o’clock or at midnight, but most of them go to mass on Christmas day (here called Christtag, Christ Day) after their children have shredded wrapping paper, opened gifts, and wallowed in pure and unadulterated joy for awhile. Most families have a huge dinner at around 1 in the afternoon, replete with roast ducks and geese, as well as other Austrian cuisine (knödel, speck, and so forth). Wine is drunk, food is eaten, and everyone retires to sleep soundly through the night.
Well, my train’s pulling in now. Regardless of whatever faith or non-faith you subscribe to, Dear Reader, I would enjoin you to meditate on this: “If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.” Merry Christmas everyone!
-JA
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