Days 7 and 8 — Bouncing Back

Wednesday, May 8

Yesterday ended up a bit rocky.  As I was writing my blog on Monday night I felt myself falling victim to some sort of traveler’s ailment and ended up sleeping most of the day away, hence no blog from yesterday.

I did manage to get out and not make a total waste of the day though.  I took a cab to Alte Pinakothek primarily to see their Caravaggio exhibition.  This was meant to show how the Utrecht school of painters were influenced by Caravaggio.  I think it did that well enough, except the focus was beyond just the Utrecht Caravaggist painters, because one of my favorites, Valentin de Boulogne was well-featured and I’m pretty sure he is French.  Gerhardt von Honthorst was also featured and I became a big fan of his many years back when we saw an exhibition on him in Florence.  The collection of paintings they had was excellent and the program definitely delivered on the theme, but the layout was miserable.  The space was adjoining boxes that you could easily skip past without knowing.  Crowd control and a bunch of confused senior citizens really made it hard to move around.  But other than that I’m really glad I saw it.  There were only 4 actual Caravaggios in the show, as is likely to happen with a big name like this.  One from the Vatican Museum (which I’d seen in Rome, but I was surprised they loaned it out for this!), one from Montserrat (which I’d likely never see otherwise), a Medusa shield from the Uffizi which I’d seen before, and The Fortune Teller  from the Capitoline Museum, which I’d also seen.

After that show, I strolled through the permanent collection which had a couple of nice highlights like a da Vinci portrait, a nice Botticelli, and some Rembrandts, including a cycle of Jesus’ life, which were excellent.  But man, there were more Reubens there than I’ve ever seen in any museum.  Ugh.

After that I still felt ok so wandered over to the Nazi Documentation Center nearby.  (The Neue Pinakothek is closed for the year so no luck in seeing Impressionists collection here).  The Nazi Documentation Center chronicles the rise of the Nazi Party and Hitler, all of which happened here in Munich.  It’s not a claim to fame at all, and they are not celebrating it.  They are quite clearly documenting it in extreme detail, probably to ensure it doesn’t happen again.  I found it interesting that admission is free this month due to a large EU election happening at the end of the month; probably encouraging people to visit to remember what happens when you vote the wrong way.  There were a few school groups there doing presentations on various exhibits.

The one thing about this place is that it would require HOURS to read it all.  Every panel was text-heavy.  There were table displays that were all text and 31 tall floor panels that were a lot of text, plus the excellent audio-guide that went into way more detail on each one.  I wanted to read it all but I started to lose energy and felt crappy again so I sort of breezed through as much as I could before I headed back to the hotel, where I slept the rest of the day away. I will say that what I did make it through was well worth the effort for people interested in that point in history.

I woke today feeling somewhat better but didn’t rush to get up.  I had yogurt and toast with tea for breakfast and headed out again.  This time I decided to tour the Residenz, which was home to kings and royalty from the 1300s until 1918.  I did both the main residence and the treasury tours and they were pretty good.  I don’t normally find treasuries terribly interesting but some of the pieces in this one were really beautiful and ostentatious.  I was surprised by how many stones had been replaced with colored glass in order to sell the original stones for money.  Yikes.  It was also interesting how many pieces came from other royal families and weren’t returned for any reason.  

The residence was opulent of course, but it, like so much else of Munich, was hit hard in WWII and had to be reconstructed.  If there were photos of what ceiling paintings looked like, they were repainted but if there weren’t, they were left black.  Almost none of the furnishings are original to the palace, but I think you can still get a good idea of how they lived.

After this I grabbed a yogurt and a pretzel for lunch and then walked around the Marienplatz area more or less window shopping and people watching.  I came back to the room to rest for about an hour and then headed out for a pizza.  I needed something more substantive but didn’t want German food just yet.  It hit the spot and so far is agreeing with me.

I’m going to try to get a good night’s sleep since tomorrow is a long bus day to Neuschwanstein.  I’ve been looking forward to this.  Hoping for good weather!