(NOTE: We're trying to see different things on this trip to Munich than we did on our last trip. You might want to check out our previous trip to Bavaria to see some of the big sites we won't be covering on this trip as well)
(Please read our Covid 19 Statement first - Ed) Although, we're trying to concentrate on new experiences while we're in Munich on this trip, there are still a few places and experiences we want to have again. It's like visiting old friends, a comfortable and familiar feeling you want to have over and over.
Our hotel is not far from the Englischer Garten, Munich's large central park. It's a pleasant walk through the south of the park...past the families and naked Germans in the sun...along and rushing canal called the Eisbach.
Kids play along banks under the watchful eye of parents.
On this hot day, it's too inviting to just hop in and float downstream.
You know you've reached the southern end of this park when you see the surfers taking turns on the permanent wave created by the rushing water.
Keep walking and a couple of blocks later you'll be in the city's main square, Marienplatz. Last time here, it was a magical place with great sights and wonderful sidewalk entertainment. Today, construction projects take up much of the square.
We'll double back here in a little bit but we are focused on another destination just a block away, one of Europe's best markets, the Viktulienmarkt.
On the cobblestones, under shady trees, you find fish mongers, butchers, cheese vendors, honey dealers, along with various fruits and vegetables. In the middle, there's a biergarten.
Our last trip here, this was the first German biergarten we went to. I had about the best sausage I've ever had here and didn't get the name. I wanted to see if I could find it back in the states but didn't have any luck.
Well, now we're back and I've got a few more German lessons under my belt. I ask our server what that sausage is called.
"Which one?"
"That one, the red sausage."
"We just call it 'red sausage'"
Well, that clears that up then...
After lunch, we hit up a coffee stand for a pick me up along with a few sweet fruits. We wander back toward Marienplatz, stopping by St. Peters Kirche, a beautiful gothic church between the market and the square.
Wheelchairs enter on the side and then have pretty much free reign throughout the building. Various niches line the sides, including one with the bones of a saint, this is Saint Munditia. Munditia was martyred in the 4th century and is the patron saint of spinsters. Her slightly mummified skeleton with bright, fake eyeballs stares at us from her glass coffin.
Marienplatz starts here and we take in a glockenspiel show before heading off to dinner.
A couple of stops along the S Bahn later, we're at Augustiner Keller biergarten, one of my favorite places in the world.
This large biergarten by the Haupbahnhof is more park-like than restaurant. Although the brewery dates back to 1328, this biergarten and hall only from 1862.
We came here more for the dessert than the brew, to have that most awesome of donuts, the auszegone. About ten inches across, it's like a giant, raised donut without a hole. Instead, there's a flat bit of dough stretched across the middle. It''s deep-fried and then sprinkled with powdered sugar on top.
We get two, and they're every bit as delicious as we remember.
The schweinhocken (or pork shank) along the side is also delicious. It's so moist, tasty, and tender in the middle yet the skin is cooked to a very hard crispness that you can break off like chips...chips that come with succulent pork fat attached.
It is just the epitome of great biergarten food, washed down with liters of helles beer from the brewery's wooden kegs.
Kind of quiet in this early evening, nevertheless, we enjoy ourselves and talk it up with a few other customers before calling it a day and heading back to the hotel.
Darryl Musick
Copyright 2016 - All Rights Reserved
Photos by Letty Musick
Copyright 2016 - All Rights Reserved
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