Munich & trip to Venice

May 1, 2008 What a wonderful day we had today. Eckart Foerstner, a colleague of mine from IBM picked us up at our hotel in his BMW and drove us to his home in Fussen. On the way we caught up on 25 years of not seeing each other, where the only connection was our annual Christmas letter. We knew about events that had been significant in our lives, he recognized Bob from pictures in our letters and we chatted amicably and endlessly, for 90 minutes, from the time we left until the time we arrived at his house. We learned that on May day in Bavaria every village and town raises a May pole with a good deal of festivity. As we passed through one small town we saw the men in their Lederhosen and felt Tyrolean green hats working to raise their pole. Eckart explained that it is the custom for one town to try and steal the pole from another, and if successful the only way to get it back is to pay off the town with beer and dinner. It is also published in the papers and is quite an embarrassment. Not only was it May Day but it was also Ascension Day and Father’s Day so everyone was celebrating. As we continued on, the road became two-lane with beautiful mountains in the background – a little like Peacham were our hills a wee bit higher…but equally calm, bovine-laden and restful. We passed beautiful Baroque and Rococo churches with their onion domes, and passed right thru Neuschwanstein with its mobs of tourists all trying to get to Mad Ludwig’s Castle. This castle is the model against which Disney created the original Cinderella castle at Disneyland, and it couldn’t be more sugar coated. Eckart was a walking encyclopedia of knowledge about the king (he was gay), the lake (where the king swam the distance daily), the castle (in which he never really lived) and the second castle closer to the lake where he did live. It was so much more fun to be driving with someone who knew the territory and give us a kilometer by kilometer description. Fussen, where Eckart and his wife Johanna have retired, is a metropolis of 6000 people and they both are very engaged in the activities of the town and proud to show it off after we shared a long, gemutlich, and yummie meal at their home. Johanna had out done herself with fresh white asparagus soup, salad, veal stew, and a strawberry desert with coffee. We talked books and history, art and literature. Eckart is a collector of German Modern painting from 1947 – 1956, a specific period in which artists who had survived the war, or started just afterwards were able to express themselves in very abstract ways. He has collected works of all artists of this period and has even had his own exhibit in Fussen. The addition they built to their home (which until retirement had simply been a summer retreat) allowed him to design the absolutely perfect space for his art, and in the lower area a wonderful book-filled library. Taking a walk through town, to walk off our very satisfying lunch, we visited the old monastery which now serves as a historic museum of the 1700 Baroque period, as well as containing a quite magnificent museum of stringed instruments – lutes, violins etc. As we looked at the baroque inside with its ceiling paintings focused on death and angels, we came across a small salon where a lone pianist was happily playing Mozart and Shubert to an empty room. We stopped and listened a bit and then moved on. Of course Johanna and Eckart knew every inch of the museum as well as recognizing people along the way – including the mayor of whom they didn’t approve since he was a softy. It reminded me of when Bob and I show off Peacham and seem to know everyone as well…but Fussen was orders of magnitude larger. It was a warm, lazy afternoon and the town which is completely pedestrian was filled with families enjoying the sunshine, ice cream and window shopping. We returned to their house for tea on Meissen china, an absolutely amazing desert (whose recipe I have been promised) and more conversation. Both were quite convinced that my book could have quite a wide interest in Germany and so I told Eckart when he has read it carefully to figure out if there really was an audience, and if so we’d be glad to come back. He is also convinced that some form of publicity would be excellent. Its appeal is that period of world travel in the 20’s, and now even more so, the interest of what Jews were doing in that period before the war. We’ll see. Exhausted, sated with knowledge, good food, friendship and a feeling of gemutlichkeit, we were driven back to Munich with promises to meet the next afternoon to visit the Glyptothek Museum with their daughter Franziska. It is such a wonderful feeling to be able to re-connect with someone you haven’t seen for years and yet to chat as if you’d only seen each other yesterday. The two are so warm and welcoming that it made for a most special day. And as Johanna remarked, we needed to do this again before the next 25 years had passed. To have a real ‘home’ experience after weeks of hotels and dining out for every meal made a wonderful break for us. May 2, 2008 With a morning to ourselves before meeting the Foerstner family, Bob and I wandered to the Marienplatz. Munich was mobbed! Everyone had holiday, it was the first warm days of spring and one could hardly find the sidewalk for all the people. It was almost oppressive and it certainly detracted from looking at some of the classic buildings for which Munich is famous. We did take a picture of the Rathaus Glockenspiel surrounded by the steady annoying beat of hip hop music drowning out anything around us. We had our daily quota of wurst with mustard before ducking the rain drops to get back to the hotel in time to meet up with the F’s. Franziska has followed in her father’s footsteps and joined IBM where she is a project manager installing some package around the world. We had seen each other last in San Francisco when she stayed with me on Baker Street, and in the intervening 15+ years she had taken on a more serious demeanor. We all enjoyed the classic Greek artifacts at the Glyptothek – especially those from the temple of Aegina. Eckart pointed out that unlike other nations, Germany had never stolen or taken antiquities directly from Greece, they had bought them on the market. It seems that Frederick the Great had fallen in love with Greece and all things Greek and had built the museum to hold his acquired collection. Originally the building had been designed and decorated to imitate a Greek building with black walls, painted detail at cornices and very ornate ceiling detail. Even the statuary was meddled with. To give a feeling of completeness and accuracy the statuary was restored to such an extent that where there were parts missing, (arms, legs, shields etc), they simply added them and then painted the restored statuary in bright gaudy colors as they ‘may’ have been in their original state. After the war (when this building was pretty much destroyed by bombs) the museum was rebuilt without the black walls, the painted ceilings etc, and all the statuary was returned to its more accurate state – unpainted, and missing many arms, legs and shields. We were able to see how they were exhibited both before and after and while it certainly helped to be able to see rather than imagine the entire pedimental sculpture, it seemed more correct to see things as they were found. There were some wonderful gems which I had only seen in books and which were wonderful to see ‘in person’. After a careful walk through, a light snack in the museum courtyard in warm sunshine, and some more chats, we were dropped back at the hotel to once more pack our bags, and the three F’s returned to Fussen for the holiday weekend. May 3, 2008 Another day of travel. We picked up breakfast and lunch at the Munich train station. I tell you if Amtrak offered one half the fabulous food opportunities we’ve seen in the different German train stations, I’d be in heaven. Fresh hard rolls with truly hard crusts, fresh sausage or cheese, beautiful fresh fruit…even a Starbucks for god’s sake. We have gotten spoiled by our 1st class train accommodations on German trains and we were reminded of this as we boarded our Italian intercity train which would take us to Venice. The benefit of this particular train is that we didn’t have to get off – and with our luggage that had a certain charm – but it was a distinctly less gracious experience. Though we had an assigned seat in one compartment, it was filled to the gills (and one of the gills hadn’t taken a bath in at least a month), so we quickly snagged two seats in another compartment where our only other companion was a lovely Australian woman, recently retired, who was visiting friends in Munich and was ‘riding the rails’ with her Eurail pass… waking up each day to chose a different town to visit. We exchanged stories of towns we had visited, gave her some recommendations since she appeared to be a walker, and chatted until she suddenly decided to get off at one small town for lunch. We continued on in solitary splendor until we reached Venice. The entire ride provided breathtakingly beautiful scenery. I had to keep thinking of the two boys taking this exact same route 80 years earlier. Their train was obviously a bit slower as they climbed the Alps over the Brenner Pass since they spoke of sleeping in Bolzano. We in our more modern, if not hyper elegant train, climbed over the pass and through various mountain tunnels as if on flat ground. The mountain tops were covered with snow, the fields were green, it was most impressive. At the Brenner Pass we changed crews and suddenly the announcements instead of having a German accent as they pronounced things, had the lilting romantic sound of Italian. The difference was dramatic and made us smile. Italian has such a lyrical sound that even when the conductor, having given his spiel in Italian, tried to tell the entire thing in German it sounded lilting and Italian. (It’s damn hard to make German a lilting language, but they came close). We continued south stopping at Bolzano, Vicenzo, and Verona before we ‘turned east’ and found ourselves going through the lush, flat farmland landscape of the Po Valley. On past a few more towns mentioned in Shakespeare’s plays, and Kiss Me Kate, before we landed in Venice. It was a long day - 7+ hours on the train but it actually went quite quickly between conversations, staring out the window and reading sporadically if the view didn’t hold one’s attention. Train travel is such a relaxing experience: the world passes by your window providing an endlessly changing panorama – distant mountains, villages dotting the hillsides, modern factories close to the train tracks where you read the signs and try to figure out what they’re manufacturing. All this variety of eye candy, while sitting comfortably reading, chatting, snacking, pointing out sites, and watching people as you pull into the stations. I find train travel so human and appealing in comparison with airplane travel which has become so inhuman, so rushed, so frantic that it has lost a lot of magic. It is so sad that America has lost this form of commutation. Given time and opportunity and efficiency I would much rather cross our country on a train but the equipment is so old and worn out, the schedules so unreliable, the routes so limited and the food so awful, that it is just not a real option. To walk into a bustling station, to be able to easily locate the track and the exact location of your particular car and to know that your train will arrive exactly when and where promised is just plain delightful and amazing. And so we detrained into the chaos of Venice. We deciphered the Vaporetti process, bought a four day pass which allows us to get on any form of public transportation in Venice, boarded a vaporetto to a location near our hotel and humped our bags over a bridge or two until we reached the Hotel Olimpia. To say we have stepped down a few notches would be to put it mildly. Modest would be the kindest thing we can say of it. The bathroom is a practice session for the ship: one can shower, brush one’s teeth and use the toilet without moving more than an inch. The décor is rococo or bordello: a beautiful turquoise and clear glass chandelier dimly lights the room; gold filigree lamps at each side of the bed emit enough light to unpack; ornately painted furniture with curlicues and painted flowers finishes the effect. The Taschenbergerpalais it ain’t. But to give it its due it’s clean, convenient, and perfectly adequate. It’s just not quite up to the standards which we’ve set so far on this trip and unfortunately, even though it’s warm and stuffy in our room, the AC isn’t working because “it’s not summer yet” as the front desk informed us – that starts next week. But we’re here, and we have a chance to explore this wonderful fairy-tale city before boarding our ship.