Munich observations

UPDATE: See photo gallery of the City of Munich here.

I spent another day exploring the city on my bike, this time with a map in hand though so I could get back to my apt. It was cool today, overcast with pockets of rain. I stayed dry the whole day until I was about 2km from the apartment and the sky opened up and it rained like crazy. I did bring a rain jacket with me, so at least I kept my map and camera dry. Saw some cool sites and took a good amount of pictures – some of them i’ll post here, but i’m going to make a gallery sometime to manage all the pictures that I’ll link up later.

Just some general observations about the city:

• The dogs must be really well trained, or something, because I saw almost no dogs on leashes. The owners were just walking down the city streets, and their dogs would trot along beside or in front of them. Even at cross walks, the dogs would just stop with the owner, and nobody seemed worried that their dog would dart into traffic or anything.
• The cars are comprised probably 85% of Audi, VW and BMW, with the remaining 15% mostly Mercedes, Opel, and the little tiny cars that are about 6 feet long.
• Every single stop light has a walk signal, and a number of them have a dedicated bike-signal.
• There’s absolutely no question that bikes and pedestrians get the right of way. I haven’t been cut off once, and every single car has yielded every time to me at all intersections.
• The city is very clean. I’ve run across no slummy neighborhoods, all the sidewalks and buildings are clean, there is no litter (come to think of it, there are not many public trashcans either….), and I haven’t seen any beggers or homeless people, despite the reported 12% unemployment in the country.

Onto some pictures –

They say “nothing draws a crowd like a crowd.” So what’s this crowd looking at?

This:

This is in the middle of the city – there was a river under a major street, and there was some rocks or something at the mouth of the tunnel that caused a persistant wave all the way across. There were several surfers that would jump in and surf the wave for up to a minute.

This is apparently part of the first Nazi headquarters, before it was moved to Berlin. They were showing Evita there tonight, so the torture there still continues. JUST KIDDING

Here’s some nice architecture. From what I’ve read and heard, much/most of Munich was destroyed in WWII, so there is a ton of new buildings that are meant to look old. You can spot them pretty easily. But buildings like this appear to be true pre-war construction.
This was in the main shopping district downtown. Just off to the right you can see the back of a stage. I could barely see the stage, and I couldn’t understand anything they were saying, but from what I could see, there were lots of men in drag and rainbow banners, so you can draw your own conclusions from that! 😉

I start work tomorrow. I’d better get to bed because I still haven’t worked out my jet lag.