Quiet day in Munich

Before anything, the captions have been on the last two posts...at long last.

My weekend here in Munich, with one of my friends, was nothing short of hectic. My first beer festival (starkbeirfest - stout beer festival) was grandiose. Munich's night life is quite diversified, generously sprinkled with beer.

Today was way quieter: long, long walk in the Englischer Garten, occasionally pausing now and then to read from Bashō's The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches. I meant to read this book for a long time, but it is difficult to find, and my stumbling on it in one of Camden Town's second-hand bookshops (the one inside the market - there's another one quite away from the crowds, which is equally good) was a godsend. To top it all, it's a first UK edition (1966), only very slightly foxed.

Also, I got to see a downy woodpecker (see pictures below, underneath the Chinesischer Turm). I'm sure it was a specimen of downy (which is more spotted than the hairy woodpecker), and a female one (no red spot behind the head). I couldn't take the male because it was higher up in another tree, and this one proved difficult to catch: she was climbing around the tree as I was going around it, always keeping out of my sight. I eventually proved too cunning for her.

Chinesischer Turm, Englisher Garten

Thank God Spring is here...I was in great need of heliotherapy.

Munich II

"Either follow Jesus Christ and go to Paradise, or be like a puppet of the Devil and go to Hell!"

Seen on the wall of a church.

(My translation...)

Detail on a tombstone set in the Western outer wall of Alter Peter

All of the above are pictures of Asamkirche, Asam's Church (aka St Johann Nepomuk). Easy-to-miss, tiny church (from the outside). The interior is well, nothing short of grandiose.

My apologies for those pictures, taken in the Alte Pinakothek, but the lighting there is quite poor and very badly designed. Cherry on top: they have kept the old glass panes over the paintings (nowadays they only use antireflective glass)

Munich I

I know you can't see much, but right at the centre of the pictures, there is a grey mass. It's a hawk, busy playing with food (in that case, a mouse). I was reading on a bench in the English Garden, and I could hear squealing and leaves rustling, but couldn't see anything. It took me a while to figure out what was happening not five feet behind me.

Three pictures above were taken in the Theatinerkirche

Inside the small square of the Neues Rathaus (New town hall)

View of the tower from the square

Tower, but viewed from Marienplatz

Same, but different.

From Marienplatz, Heilig Geist Kirche in the background

Detail from a tombstone set in the wall of the Heilig Geist Kirche

Alter Peter Kirche ("Old Peter's Church", but really it's St Peter's church)

Remains of St Munditia (Christian martyr, beheaded with a hatchet in 310 AD).

Patron saint of single and unmarried women.

House on Rindermarkt

Frauenkirche - black marble memorial grave of Prince Elector Kurfürst Maximilan I

Frauenkirche, front

Two memorials in one! The statue honours the Franco-Flemish Renaissance composer Orlande de Lassus (1532-1594) on Promenadeplatz. 

At the foot of the memorial is, well, a makeshift votive altar honouring the late Michael Jackson (he apparently stayed in a hotel across the street when he came to Munich, that's why the fans picked this location, otherwise I really can't see any common point between Orlande and Michael). 

The aptly-named Obelisk, on Karolinenplatz. Designed by Leo von Klenze, court architect to King Ludwig I. Erected in 1833, it honours the 30,000 Bavarian soldiers who gave their lives in Napoleon's 1812 campaign against Russia. It's 29 meters high and, much like the lions on Trafalgar Square which were melted from Napoleon's cannonballs, the metal plates on it were melted from weapons of the Turkish army taken during the Battle of Navarino.

Glyptothek, on Königsplatz

Staatliche Antikensammlungen, on Königsplatz

Propyläen, still on Königsplatz

Same as in Bern!

Lawn behind the Alte Pinakothek (Old Painting Gallery)

University of Television and Film

Pinakothek der Moderne

Tidbits 1...

...2...

...and 3!

My life is all about life then

"Life is what happens to you when you are busy making other plans."

John Lennon, singer, songwriter, musician (1940-1980)

The Perfect World

"God of lost souls, thou who art lost amongst the gods, hear me:

Gentle Destiny that watchest over us, mad, wandering spirits, hear me:

I dwell in the midst of a perfect race, I the most imperfect.

I, a human chaos, a nebula of confused elements, I move amongst finished worlds -- peoples of complete laws and pure order, whose thoughts are assorted, whose dreams are arranged, and whose visions are enrolled and registered.

Their virtues, O God, are measured, their sins are weighed, and even the countless things that pass in the dim twilight of neither sin nor virtue are recorded and catalogued.

Here days and nights are divided into seasons of conduct and governed by rules of blameless accuracy.

To eat, to drink, to sleep, to cover one’s nudity, and then to be weary in due time.

To work, to play, to sing, to dance, and then to lie still when the clock strikes the hour.

To think thus, to feel thus much, and then to cease thinking and feeling when a certain star rises above yonder horizon.

To rob a neighbour with a smile, to bestow gifts with a graceful wave of the hand, to praise prudently, to blame cautiously, to destroy a soul with a word, to burn a body with a breath, and then to wash the hands when the day’s work is done.

To love according to an established order, to entertain one’s best self in a preconceived manner, to worship the gods becomingly, to intrigue the devils artfully -- and then to forget all as though memory were dead.

To fancy with a motive, to contemplate with consideration, to be happy sweetly, to suffer nobly -- and then to empty the cup so that tomorrow may fill it again.

All these things, O God, are conceived with forethought, born with determination, nursed with exactness, governed by rules, directed by reason, and then slain and buried after a prescribed method. And even their silent graves that lie within the human soul are marked and numbered.

It is a perfect world, a world of consummate excellence, a world of supreme won- ders, the ripest fruit in God’s garden, the master-thought of the universe.

But why should I be here, O God, I a green seed of unfulfilled passion, a mad tempest that seeketh neither east nor west, a bewildered fragment from a burnt planet?

Why am I here, O God of lost souls, thou who art lost amongst the gods?"

Khalil Gibran, The Madman (1918)

Done with an Ipad while waiting for my friend in an Apple store...

...and I don't want anyone to draw any hasty conclusions about me or about recent events in my life...Only the spur of the moment directed my hand.