Munich

My Munich squat is just inside an old city gate from the train station. It's not really a squat -- its a worn apartment, three-flights-up a circular wooden staircase, rehabbed over the decades, in a century-old building, shared by two students who rent out a room and their hospitality to make ends meet. And it's kept very clean. But I call it a squat because of its young, smart, socially-conscious inhabitants and its purple-painted bathtub.

Munich was the cradle of Nazism and it got the hell bombed out of it, but you'd never know it now. They put the old center back the way it was, so it looks medieval and pretty, probably even nicer than if it hadn't been bombed and had just been kept up.

But the pedestrianized street just inside the gate looks all modern, and it was flocking and surging with happy crowds of people, and lit up with big signs. I couldn't decide which of Bavaria's exotic wonders to explore first -- T.J. Maxx? Urban Outfitters? Crabtree & Evelyn? Foot Locker? Maybe the McDonalds has McSpätzle! Nah. I skipped all that stuff.

Instead, I walked around. It's a great walking city - lots to gawk at and read about. You could spend hours just sitting and figuring out the 17th- and 18th-century epitaphs built into the sides of the old churches. Here's a poor infantry general who fell on the field in 1709, in the War of the Spanish Succession, poor guy. Only 57 years old. I wonder if his side won.

It's Sunday, so after seeing the big museum I'll try to go to the evening service at the Frauenkirche and listen to the choirs and the brass concert.


A random thing I noticed: 24 out of 25 Germans will stand at a pedestrian crossing waiting for the signal to turn green, even if you can see for a long way in both directions and no traffic could possibly come for a while. They talk to one another or stare gormlessly into the middle distance, waiting for the little green man to light up.