München

Saturday June 18, 2011                                        Day 353

We set out for the Marianplatz, which is a major tourist area in Munich. Our goal was to see the Glockenspiel at 11:00, but we were there almost an hour early, so we separated and went in diverse directions for a while. It rained for most of the morning, and I found my Itty Bitty Brella inadequate for keeping me dry long term. Short term it is fine, but I was going to be soaking wet if I didn’t do something, so we located an umbrella at a United Colors of Benneton, of all places, and I was much happier after that. We returned to the plaza and watched the famed Glockenspiel dance. There was a festival ongoing in the plaza, with singers and dancers and bands performing on a stage and people on stilts walking through the crowd, soliciting blood donations.

Shelli needed to feed Brennan, so all of us but Roger went to a tea salon and had a cup of tea while she changed him and nursed him. While at the tea salon, we suddenly heard a rupture of what we first thought was thunder – really loud cracks, quite close. We soon realized it was, instead, gunfire, and we moved to the windows to watch as several men in costume fired round after round from muzzle-loading guns from atop a tower, apparently as part of the festival going on in the Marianplazt below. Brennan was particularly distracted by the gunfire and by the high-energy atmosphere of the restaurant and found it hard to focus on eating.

I left early and met Roger, and we scoped out a place for lunch. Many of the eating establishments are stand-up only – small butcher shops with wonderful-smelling meats for custom-made sandwiches, but we wanted to sit down. We finally located one suited to our needs and returned to pick up the rest of the group. We settled in for lunch while Brennan nursed a bit more, then fell asleep. 

Afterward, Roger and I escorted Kathy back to the hotel so she could rest, then Roger and I went to the Deutsches Museum – Munich’s science and technology museum. I wore out after a couple of hours and we returned to the hotel. Shelli, Ronnie, Pam and Brennan planned to stay longer at the museum, then go to the English Gardens, which are reputed to be quite lovely. However, they got a couple of blocks from the museum in the rain, looked at each other and asked what in the world they were thinking, then returned to the hotel themselves for some much-needed rest.

Before coming on this venture, we had agreed with Ronnie and Shelli that we would watch Brennan for a few hours while they rode bicycles at Mike’s Bikes. The weather refused to cooperate, however, and they did not separate from us to do any activities beyond the hour this morning at the Marianplatz.

For dinner we were going to go to Hofbräuhaus, a famous beer establishment in Munich. When we entered, however, it was noisy beyond belief with an oompah band and singing and general chatter. We would have had to shout to be heard to each other, and Brennan would have been overstimulated, so we backed out. Roger had eyeballed a restaurant across the street, and we headed there. We had a really great meal of good solid German food, with a waiter who made the meal a great experience. Afterward, we returned to the hotel.

Shelli invited us to the room for some more face time with Brennan, and I helped bathe him. Then we all hugged goodbye and we went to bed. It is hard to see them go, but we are consoled by the knowledge that we will see them again in about five weeks.