january 06 1997 - day eleven - munich, germany

hey!! i'm in deutschland. we got to munich today. we found that the place we wanted to stay was closed for remodeling, so we ventured to another one. and with the repeated assistance of a very nice, yet kind of spooky, old german man, we found it. i keep expecting to run into him again sometime, he was around every corner. it's like a bad movie or something.
anyway, we did our usual, 'drop off the bags and head to the city center for food' thing and found it quite nice. lunch was good. i had a cream cheese strudel for desert that was to die for. as we walked the street, after lunch, i noticed something. it was a very large brick building with two towers like a cathedral. i haven't seen any buildings over here that are made of brick and that large, so i was interested.

come to find out, it is a cathedral. frauenkirche, to be exact. it was built in the 1400's. i was blown away by it and know my dad (a brick layer) would go nuts over it. it's huge! one drawback, though, it is surrounded by buildings, not the typical courtyard or plaza. this made it quite difficult to get a good picture of it. this kirche was bombed out in the war (big surprise) and was just refinished a few years ago. it also marks the first major religious venue that i have been to in europe that is not under scaffolding.
inside, we saw the 'black foot of satan, which has an interesting story to it.****
frauenkirche - munich
after the church, we walked to the glockenspeil at the town center. it is a huge clock that, when it chimes, dancers (wooden of course, not real) come out and move around. it's like a huge cuckoo clock. pretty cool. we walked around a bit and saw more churches and a palace and stuff, most of which were closed because of three kings day. i really liked a lot of the buildings. i think i got some nice shots of the city.
teatrekirche - munich

we also went for a half hour to the deutsches museum, which is a science and technology museum. it's alot like the smithsonian in d.c. only bigger. anyway, it watered our pallettes, so i know that at least dave and i are going back tomorrow. also, tomorrow, we are going to dachau, the concentration camp. i'm positive it will be a humbling, sobering place, but i am really looking forward to it. (at least the historic side of me is) it's only 20 minutes from here, so it'll take about half fo the day.

some interesting news today. i found the castle that i was wanting to go to. it's called neuschwannstein and it's about an hour and a half south of here. i have decided to skip out on heidlburg and go there instead. i may end up alone, but that's okay because it's something i really want to do. so, i guess we'll see how that turns out. see ya tomorrow.
ps..we ate at weinerwald!
****the story has it that when the devil stepped into frauenkirche after it was built, he saw that there were no windows and stomped his foot in triumph. of course, there are windows, but the one place you cannot see any of them is a spot where there is now a single black foot print.
black foot of satan - frauenkirche

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