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I spent a soaring morning just with aviation: a Wright Brothers plane, zeppelins, the first Messerschmitt jet fighter, Wernher von Braun's first multi-staged rocket. An excellent chef's salad in the museum restaurant for lunch and then the afternoon with motor cars — beginning at the beginning, inevitably: Karl Benz' first automobile. "I'll come back," I say to myself as the museum closes at 5. "I must." After a day with Benz, Diesel, Krupp, Siemens, Daimler, Otto, Maybach and Einstein, I am prepared to buy any product of German engineering or technology that is for sale — and I remember that my Marklin train still runs! I had forgotten how accomplished these people were/are at science and invention. I walk back to my hotel wondering how the Japanese ever managed to get in the back door to Germany's laboratories.

Munich is a walker's town. Its cobbles gleam in the rain and its air is everywhere scented with the pungent, all-nourishing drafts from the breweries' steaming malt-mash. The pace on the sidewalks is not New York-frantic, Tokyo-automated, nor a Neapolitan stroll. Muncheners are no laggards, but a certain way of life is also to be enjoyed. Young mothers in blue jeans take their infants on slow carriage rides in the parks. Older ladies walking small dogs on residential streets carry on leisurely conversations with their pets. Coffee shops are always busy. By the banks of a canal behind Nymphenburg palace, I see a groundskeeper mowing grass with the rhythmic, swaying strokes of a scythe. In the parks, I watch gardeners sweeping up fall's leaves with the traditional twig brooms that have done the job for centuries. I think, gasoline-powered weed-whackers and leaf-blowers would do these jobs quicker — but they would also shatter the spell of the 17th Century.

Munich's 400,000 bicyclists enjoy 1100 kilometers of officially dedicated bike lanes which parallel most sidewalks (and sometimes have their own traffic signals). When, innocently, I once trespassed into this space, a young man touched my elbow and gave me an earnest speech in German. When my eyes glazed over with incomprehension, he stopped. "For BI-cycles," he said finally, gripping imaginary handlebars and smiling.

When it's time for drinking and eating, Muncheners like nothing better than to get down all together in great, informal crowds — up to 7,000 together in the beer gardens, for example, a similar total in the largest of the brewers' beer tents at Oktoberfest, thousands sitting together under the vaulted gothic ceilings of beer halls like the popular Hofbrauhaus. "It is our democracy," you are told. "We like it this way because it brings us all together."

There are times when the togetherness of Mucheners seems a secret society, complete with its own flag, handshake, choppy dialect and uniforms ornamented with boars' teeth, old coins and bunches of goat whiskers. ("We like it when our people wear their traditional Bavarian costume because then we can recognize them as one of us.") During the division of Germany into east and west, however, membership in the "one-of-us" Bavarian society was diluted by many immigrants from Berlin and elsewhere. Lederhosen are not as common on the street as they once were. Yuppies from the north do not wear loden-cloth capes and white knee stockings; indeed, they laugh at such provincialism.

All the same, when some happy celebrant at Oktoberfest pays 50 Deutschmarks for the privilege of leading the band in any one musical number of his choice, he will likely choose Bayerischer Defilier, "our Bavarian national anthem." And who will stand and cheer? Sixty percent of the people at Oktoberfest are Muncheners. "It's our party that we give ourselves every year."

Bavarian restaurants usually operate on the same clubby, "our people" system. Six, ten or a dozen diners may sit at one table. You enter these dark, body-heated establishments and search for your own space; no hostess will seat you. Look for someone paying a check and pounce for his seat. Speak to the others at the table or not, it's up to you. Read your newspaper alone or invent a scenario to go with the domestic quarrel that the couple on the other side of the table is airing. Smoke any tobacco you wish without apology — but don't ask for a no-smoking section.

Caution: you may see an empty table with a small, brass sign on it which says "Stammtisch." This is a table reserved for the restaurant's old regulars. They will not want to find an outlander occupying their space.

It is possible, especially in the summer tourist season, to find other English-speakers at your table, but off-season, probably not. Some menus have English subtitles (blessedly), but most do not. Some Bavarian eateries take credit cards, but most do not. Some waitresses in their abrupt manner and bosomy-front costumes may speak a few words of English, but most do not. After my first meals in Augustinerbrau and Hundskugel and Haxnbauer, I came to realize two things: it's not such a bad system as it seems at first — and, Munich, a small town with a big population (1.3 million), doesn't exist for tourists anyway, but for Muncheners. It's their place, their system. The restaurants and cafés are all full anyway; most do not depend on tourists. You're welcome here, of course, but you're not essential. Tourism ranks only sixth on prosperous Munich's economic ladder (after electronics, chemicals, optical instruments, printing and automobile manufacture).

Choices for dining are not limited to traditional Bavarian or nouvelle high-bracket. There are more than 5,000 restaurants in Munich — Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Mexican, Arabian, Argentinean and even American food is available, not to mention scores of McDonald's and Burger King outlets.

I conclude there can't be much wrong with a town where there are always four kinds of soup on any menu — even if they are always the same four (liver dumpling, potato, pancake and goulash, all about $2). Also plenty of good meat and potato dishes. Soon, I could not be lured back to the supposed splendors of continental cuisine. "A mass please, fraulein — and vat is today's soup?"

Well fed and contented I continue, dutifully, to work my way through some of the more important museums. The famed Pinakotheks, for example, Old and New. These two collections alone make Munich one of the major art centers of the world. Early Bavarian rulers, particularly the House of Wittelsbach, were compulsive collectors. They scoured, bought, schemed and bribed to acquire an unparalleled collection of Old Masters: Breughel, Rubens, Van Dyke, Rembrandt, Botticelli, Raphael, Michaelangelo, El Greco, Goya — they are all here in the Old Pinakothek.

The adjacent New Pinakothek (in a controversial postmodern building completed in 1981) carries on with 19th and 20th Century works, including Warhol, de Kooning and many of the French Impressionists.

I mix culture with commerce, the past with the present. The BMW museum, adjacent to the 1972 Olympic village, is popular with visitors. It is housed in a soup-bowl shaped structure reminiscent of New York City's Guggenheim Museum. The exhibit is high-tech and glitzy, traces the history of the BMW firm in aviation, motorcycles and automobiles, makes some lofty stabs at 1980's-style techno-philosophy and charges admission for the sort of visionary commercial message that General Motors used to give away under the name "Futurama."

That reminds me — Bavarian businesses sometimes seem tightfisted with amenities. Restaurants count every piece of bread you eat and charge about 40 cents for each. Serve-yourself salad bars charge according to the size of the plate you fill — and no seconds. Lavatories seldom supply towels, only those despised hot-air blowers. My luxury hotel dispensed a single sliver of soap and one modest bath towel per day. Newspapers are not given to guests. Bars do not supply nuts, chips or popcorn — not even pretzels with beer. Free matches are almost unknown in restaurants. Credit cards are often accepted only reluctantly. And those poor unfortunates who have to sleep it off in the Oktoberfest's beer-corpse tent will be required to pay for a night's lodging in the morning!

Like all major travel destinations these days, Munich has shopping to please all tastes — from the absurd, gross, even pornographic souvenirs around the Marienplatz, to the world-class luxuries of Maximillian Strasse, a main avenue stocked for the up-market. I take a window-shopping stroll here one afternoon and find Ralph Lauren, Louis Vuiton, Daks, Yves St. Laurent, Guy LaRoche, Hermes, Gucci — all the usual suspects. I also discover that any lady looking for a classic Bavarian outfit could put together the basics (skirt, belt, blouse and vest) at Resi Hammerer's specialty shop for $750. Add $550 for a tailored wool jacket. (A male shopper who wants a matching Bavarian look can do the outfit — shirt, tie, belt, corduroy slacks and wool sports jacket — for $700.)

The trauma of this investigation causes me to stop in at Schumann's bar, just off Max'strasse, for a medication. It is a small, wood-paneled bistro, popular these days with the young movie crowd, minor celebrities and those tourists who must always search out the latest "in" spot. Schumann's rejects all the traditional decor of a Bavarian bar and, perversely it seems, serves an excellent selection of single-malt Scotches and — a sacrilege to Muncheners — Guinness Stout!

"Young people don't go for all the old Bavarian stuff," you are told at Schumann's. "We don't sing the old drinking songs any more — we don't even know the words. That was for East Germany, they used to sing all the old songs."

Not all of Munich's renowned Bohemian lifestyle has disappeared in the New Age, however. The Schwabing district, famous (if not notorious) as the SoHo/Greenwich Village of Germany in the years between the World Wars, has evolved from smoky cabarets into a solidly upper-middle class neighborhood where political satire and starving-artist quaintness have given way to good maintenance, high rents and gentrification. On summer evenings, a visitor can still find a replication of the old atmosphere in sidewalk cafés along Leopoldstrasse, however, and there remains some experimental theatre and jazz in the area. In the small streets around Wedekindplatz, once-humble secondhand clothing stores are now very chic, a few pubs have turned more British than Bavarian (dart boards and pool tables and English ales), some health-food shops still prosper, as well as a bookstore specializing exclusively in what the proprietor calls "psychology, esoterica and New Age."

Some say it was tourism that killed Schwabing. "Tourists drive genuine Bohemians away," you are told. "They went to Haidhausen." So did I.

In the years immediately following World War II, the Haidhausen district, across the Isar River from central Munich, was a poor neighborhood of small houses which had somehow escaped the worst of the bombing damage. It attracted migrant workers who came from Italy, Greece and Turkey to help build the S-bahn, U-bahn and the Olympic facilities prior to 1972. These worthies had no experience with, or expectations of, indoor plumbing or central heating. Soon, Greek tavernas, pizza parlors and Turkish grocery stores opened. Then all at once, "smart" Muncheners began crossing the river to find a new style of nightlife. Haidhausen became "off-Schwabing."

Alas, the dynamic prosperity of Munich will not allow any district to remain "off" for long. Even Haidhausen is now becoming gentrified and its many old, small houses are being expensively renovated and equipped with bathrooms and heat. Cafe Weiner Platz, once the cutting edge of counterculture nightlife in the area, is now packed with a young, well-dressed crowd that eats shrimp and pays with American Express cards.

Will there be an "off-off-Schwabing?" Of course. At this writing it is Geising, an even more remote district. "Geising is the place now," a young woman assures me, "especially the Kaffee Geising."

It is late, but we go take a look at this place — and I find some old time "decadence" at last! No lederhosen and dirndls here, but loud rock, punk hair, black leather and mini skirts worn with black tights and above-the-knee boots. (One young woman is drinking warm milk and Asbach Uralt, the sweetish German brandy. She has Bohemian runs in her thighs.) I wonder: Will Joel Gray, with his white face and pursed lips, now come on stage to savage Helmut Kohl?

Munich is bigger than time, and mine is running out. Like any other tourist, I try, in my last days, to see more than is enough. This leads me through an odd juxtaposition of activities and moods — feeding monkeys during a wonderful, sunny afternoon at the zoo and then attending a Mozart performance in a gilded, 18th Century opera house the same evening. Or being thoroughly disturbed by dozens of stunning, leggy models at a fashion-show luncheon and then, in the evening, being caught breathless by the pin-drop silence of a glittering concert hall that waits for the first notes of a Schubert symphony. Or strolling through downtown pedestrian streets late at night and listening, on the hour, to great bells as they talk to each other from tower to tower. ("They are our voices," a Munchener tells me, "we know each one by its accent.")

I reserve my last day for walking. Along the banks of the Isar. Through the teeming, pungent food stalls of the outdoor Viktualienmarkt. Into the botanical garden — and on to the beautiful Italian villa that is now the art gallery called Lenbachhaus.

In the broad, open space of the Konigsplatz, the classic, white-marble temples of the Propylaea, the Glyptotek (Statuary Collection) and the State Collection of Antiquities face each other across an expanse of green lawn. Here was Hitler's favorite parade ground, a place to mass and strut helmeted troops, military bands and swastika flags.

Just beyond, I have been told, was the Fuhrer's chancellery, the place where Britain's Neville Chamberlain came, umbrella in hand, to achieve "peace in our time" — in history's term, the Munich Agreement. The white marble building is the College of Music now. Two damaged areas where bronze Nazi eagles were torn from the facade have been conspicuously repaired. I go in.

The sound of a student practicing the piano drifts down the marble hall. A broad staircase leads up to where I want to go. On the second floor, Hitler's office, the great high-ceiling room with three tall windows and a balcony, is now divided into three rooms, 105, 106, 107. There is a bulletin board cluttered with the kind of notices one would see in any school. Class schedules, concert notices, a violin for sale, an ad for a pizza restaurant. Peace in our time.

I walk out and away, down Breiner Strasse. At the end, before you come to the $75,000 coupe in the window of the Mercedes-Benz dealership, a memorial stands on a plot of grass, a simple marble shaft with a prison-cage at the top. Within the cage an eternal flame burns. An inscription, in German, reads "To The Victims Of National Socialist Tyranny."

Under the protection of night, when the sounds of Munich's busy traffic die down, you can hear the fluttering of the flame.

Article Resources

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www.germany-tourism.com

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