St. Patrick's Day

Just wanted to share a few pictures from Munich's St. Patrick's Day celebrations last weekend. The weekend began with a Saturday night service in a Catholic church near Marienplatz and continued later that evening with some music.

The main celebration was a one-hour parade Sunday beginning at noon, followed by an afternoon of Irish music and dancing at Odeonsplatz (see the picture in the first blog entry for an idea of the locale). The parade had a very international flavor, with floats and performances from South American groups, German groups and, mostly of course, the Irish. The afternoon celebration included alternating music and dance numbers. Unfortunately, Irish dance is done mostly with the legs and the stage was not high enough, so it gave the appearance of a bunch of people with hands on hips bobbing up and down.

Without further ado, here are some photos from the parade:

Irish and Bavarian flags side by side to start the parade

Not much bigger than at the Hofbräuhaus

More Scottish than Irish, methinks

I think this group is Brazilian

The last of several groups of pretty horses

All in all, a lot of people having fun and not really that much different than you'd find in America or many other countries.

Fasching

Last week saw Munich's downtown area awash in costumed Germans for the Fasching festival, a celebration that dates back at least to the 13th century. The dates for the festival vary depending on the account. Some places list November 11 (at 11:11 a.m.) as the beginning, while other say it starts at Epiphany. The ending, however, is definitely on Ash Wednesday. While it has different historical significance, it shares many similarities with Mardi Gras as a celebration before the season of Lent.

While the festival's German center is Cologne, Munich's Marienplatz area was bustling with costumed revelers. The scene had the feel of a mix between Mardi Gras and Halloween. The costumes were not as dark and foreboding as Halloween, though, and while there was plenty of beer available, you would not find quite the drunken party atmosphere of New Orleans come Fat Tuesday.

 
The celebration last Sunday included a live band playing everything from 50s music to Spanish songs to Rolling Stones as people in costumes danced. A walk down the center square toward Karlsplatz saw more costumes, drumlines and another stage of live music, along lots of booths with snacks and beverages.

Tuesday's finale at a market just around the corner from Marienplatz featured people packed around all sides of a stage, as many as could be crammed in. Unfortunately, the announcements by a vivacious pair of hosts were made in German, so those were lost on me, but a group of ladies came up and did a series of dances to tango, waltz as well as more contemporary music.

People dressed as soldiers, cows, the Seven Dwarfs (I counted to make sure), barbarians, as well as ladies in 19th century full Mardi Gras style regalia milled about, drank and had a great time.

Greetings from Germany

First off, let me apologize for being so slow to post this. I have been in Germany for nearly two weeks but have just now gotten around to documenting some of the experiences. Part of this I will blame on Google, which in its quest for world domination has acquired blogspot. Google has a rather annoying habit of automatically assuming you wish to speak the language of the country you are in, so enter google.com in a navigation bar and you go to google.de . That, coupled with the fact I can not seem to log in to my prior blog from here has led me to make this move. I hope there will be a link somewhere on this page to my former blog by the time I'm done formatting this page, but if not go to franciseric.blogspot.com

The majority of the fault lies with me, however, with a significant assist to jet lag the first week. But now I am up and about in the mornings as well as late afternoons and have had plenty of opportunity to explore. I will share a few pictures with this post, and I think one or two more posts will follow shortly.

The Germans are not a smiling people. Traveling extensively on the U-Bahn and to a lesser extent on above-ground trams, and even wandering through the Fasching festival (more on this next post) grins are few and far between. I think this, even more so than my few words of atrocious German, may be giving me away as a foreigner. Looking around at this beautiful city, it is hard to stop smiling.

Odeonsplatz

I have visited many of the more spectacular area of the central city, including Marienplatz (the center square) several times, the Englischer Gardens, the Residenz, Odeonsplatz and others.

The Bavaria

I also visited Theresienweise, which I can not pronounce, but for much of the year is a spectacularly large and barren open ground overseen by the Bavaria, a huge 19th century statue of a woman and lion that symbolizes the heart of the homeland. The area the statue overlooks, an oval well over a kilometer across, plays host to many attractions throughout the year, but its most famous is Oktoberfest, when the grounds are filled with hundreds of thousands of drunk Germans.



As per my usual, I've also visited and included pictures from several churches (I would include the names except it can be hard to remember which is which). Agnostic or not, beautiful architecture is beautiful architecture.

Well, I will leave it at that for now. Check back for more pictures, completely ill-informed outsider opinions and observations on the German people, and hopefully great travel adventures.