Munich — Middle Europe at its most urbane

Versions of this article appeared in both The Irish Times and The Irish Post

FOR SUCH a sophisticated, cosmopolitan place, Munich can boast only very modest origins. Basically, handbags between two feudal rulers over road tolls led to a community growing up on the banks of the Isar River. Crucially, in naming terms, this was near a Benedictine friary. Locals called it ‘the site of the little monks’, or Zu den München.
Prolix, but Munich was on its way.
Today, the city invariably features near the top of any survey of the world’s most livable-in metropolises — high culture, low crime and a general feeling of gemütlichkeit seem to do the trick.
But, of course, it hasn't always been plain sailing, to indulge in what might be called heartless understatement. The great mincing machine of central European politics has minutely sand-papered the history of Munich: the original squabble over salt (of all things) was followed by great wars, desperate tragedies, and more melancholy episodes than you'd want to shake a stick at. All left their imprimatur on this old city.

One man, however, more than any other, gave Munich its distinctive feel.
King Ludwig I of Bavaria effectively turned his city into a German version of Florence. Even more crucially, Ludwig (not the nutty one, by the way) left an admirable legacy: he licensed beer cellars. His far-sighted philosophy is responsible for a city that today has more than a thousand of these quintessentially Teutonic pubs.

Looking down on the beer cellars, cafes and restaurants are the twin domes of the Frauenkirche, the Cathedral of Our Blessed Lady, Munich’s most recognizable landmark. The reward for climbing the south tower is a blistering view of the Alps some 100km away.

Four kilometres or so from the city centre is another of Munich's great architectural set-pieces. The Italianate Palace of Nymphenburg is where the dancer Lola Montez would entertain admirers with exotic dances back in Ludwig I’s reign. He was much taken with Lola, and Ludwig and Lola became something of an item. With regards exotic dances, today you can do the same in the grounds of the palace (nobody will object) — or just lie back and admire the Rococo splendour of the buildings and the extravagance of the gardens.

Munich's most famous knees-up is the Oktoberfest.

The wedding of the Crown Prince Ludwig and Princess Therese in October 1810 was a significant event in the court calendar. A horse race was held on the meadow just outside the city, now called the Theresienwiese, in honour of the bride. It eventually turned into the world’s biggest festival of binge drinking, oompah bands and sausages.

If you’re culturally inclined as well as thirsty, you’re in luck. The fact that Munich is the capital of a federal state, Bavaria — stridently Catholic and conservative — seems not to have dampened its artistic ardour, nor indeed its Bohemian character: Munich has 70 art galleries, 80 museums, over 60 theatres and opera houses, 3 large orchestras and various clubs, catering for every taste and peccadillo.

The food

IN 1516 Munich passed Europe’s first law governing food and beverage.
These fledgling health & safety busybodies did nothing to dent Munich’s desire for food on the hoof. The city remains a centre of excellence for every type of takeaway, including the signature dish leberkassemmeln — corned beef, bacon, egg and onion baked in bread. This is a serious piece of food.

Everywhere, sausages are for sale: Nurnburgers (the thin spicy ones), bratwurst (the knobbly ones), currywurst (spicy) and many more regional varieties.

For a first class sausage experience try Würschtl Bude at Einsteinstrasses 84 (very fine sauerkraut and potato salad, the essential accompaniments to a good sausage meal), or Zum Würstlkönig at Lindwurmstrasse 77 (noted for its Bavarian beer-sausages) or Andechser am Dom8 at 7 Weinstrasse (for elevated sausage cuisine).
The Bergwolf, Frauenhoferstr 17 is noted for its currywurst. After midnight the bar and wooden tables get seriously crowded. All f these places do have healthy options — er, you can leave.

Being Middle Europe, cafe society still dominates. To sample, Cafe Glockenspiel overlooking Marienplatz is an excellent pit-stop. A crowd gathers here for coffee and cake (kaffee und küchen) every day and to watch the miniature tournament staged around the clock-face of the City Hall in traditional Middle Europe fashion.

Just around the corner from the Marienplatz is the Viktualienmarkt, with its giant maypole in blue and white stripes (Bavarian colours) and an array of rich Alpine cheeses, whole pigs’ heads and, yes, more sausages — just about every regional variety you can imagine.

You’re in Munich, so you have to do it: the world’s most famous beer hall, the Hofbräuhaus. This is a year-round Oktoberfest, heaving with tourists and even a limited number of locals. The folk in lederhosen, swaying to and fro in time to the live oompah band, are as likely to be from Iowa as the Black Forest.

Munich and war

The Hofbräukeller is some 20 minutes walk from the city centre. The route takes you over the Maximiliansbrücke, with an arresting view down the River Isar towards the Friedensengel, the Angel of Peace, marking the 1871 Treaty of Versailles. History is never far away in Munich.

The Hofbräukeller, built in 1892, is everything you might hope for in a bierkeller. Wooden beams, stone-flagged floor, vigorous Bavarian food and very cold beer.

It also holds one other distinction, but of a much darker nature: this is where a World War One veteran turned drifter gave his first political speech, in 1919. Two local art colleges had turned down the chance to tutor Adolf Hitler prior to his appearance here.
What suffering might the world have been spared had the Führer been a better painter, or the art colleges less exacting? The gaunt what-iffery of history will visit you more than once in the Bavarian capital.

Prior to the Second World War, Munich was home to 11,000 Jews. All of them perished in the Holocaust – the Nazi regime’s first concentration camp lies just down the road in Dachau. It's rumoured that the ashes of the Nazi leaders convicted and hanged after the Nuremberg were scattered at the camp.

Today the city is home once again to a thriving community of Jews. The Munich Jewish Museum, standing beside the new synagogue on St Jakobs-Platz, surveys the whole spectrum of the city’s Hebrew culture and history.

For further elucidation on the war, head for the Munich Documentation Centre for the history of National Socialism: it’s a stark white, modernist edifice built on the former site of the Nazi headquarters.
Munich is associated with the rise of the Nazis more so than any other German city, and the centre chronicles the story in unflinching detail.

Surf's up

OK, you might not be crossing sunny California in a Cadillac Cabriolet, or rocking down to Tarifa on Andalucia's Atlantic coast in a VW convertible in order to catch some hot waves. Nonetheless, Munich is home to a thriving surfing culture. As  the city is land-locked, you’ll have guessed that this is river-surfing; full marks if you did.

The Eisbach Wave 1 on the Isar (also known as Eisbach E1) is probably the world’s most famous river wave. Literally the “ice brook”, the Eisbach sits in the middle of Munich at the English Garden. Just a few hundred metres downstream, less advanced surfers can surf on smaller waves.

Munich museums

The three Pinakotheken galleries

The Alte Pinakothek, one of the oldest galleries in the world, houses one of Europe’s most significant art collections. Botticelli and Bosch jostle for space with local boys Dürer and Altdorfer. A couple of Rubens’ cherubs with pudgy faces give hope that sausages may be available in the afterlife.
The Neue Pinakothek focuses on European paintings from the 19th century — French impressionists, art nouveau etc. Completing the trio of galleries is the Pinakothek Modern with paintings from the 20th and 21st centuries.

At the Museum Brandhorst more than 1,000 works of modern art from classical avant-garde to American pop including works by Andy Warhol, Cy Twombly and Damien Hirst are on show.

The Deutsches Museum
The Deutsches, sitting on an island in the middle of the River Isar, is a tribute to something Germany is very good at: engineering. The world’s largest museum devoted to technology and science, you can climb aboard locomotives or be entranced by model-railway landscapes, early helicopters, Vietnam-era fighter planes and an original V2 rocket.

Lenbachhaus
The museum’s soaring atrium glitters is a whirl of coloured glass and steel, a work by Olafur Eliasson — the Danish-Icelandic artist — while the Norman Foster three-storey wing glitters with brass-coloured metal tubes. Inside is no less impressive, with the museum’s collection of Expressionist works on show — Kandinsky, Franz Marc, Paul Klee, Münter.

BMW Welt — the BMW Museum
For car fans the BMW museum standing next to the “four cylinder” BMW tower is an essential pit-stop. Even if you’re not a committed petrol-head you’ll enjoy this collection of vintage cars, aircraft engines, bubble cars, futuristic vehicles, and of course the oldest BMW to the latest.

Sporting monuments

The gigantic Allianz Arena built for the 2006 Word Cup is a must for footie fans while the Olympiapark is the other sporting must-see. Constructed for the blighted 1972 Olympics, it’s both an impressive and melancholy place.