2010

Leopoldstrasse immediately struck me as looking very un-German, although not unattractive. The main thing that makes it look odd are these (generally attractive) trees. I looked up photos on an arborist website to try and find out what they were, but because I'm not an arborist I really didn't learn anything. I've seen trees that look similar to this in Italy and Greece, and I know that there are some that look similar on the Le Mans racecourse in France. Does anybody know the correct term for these?

Here's an alternate shot that I took just of the trees.

The Augustiner Brewery isn't as well known, and Augustiner beer isn't as well known, internationally as for example Becks, but it is a major manufacturer, as you can see. There's an equally impressive brewpub attached to it that I drank at on the night that I took this photo (It was dusk already.). In addition to the rather old brewery (which dates to 1328, although these particular buildings look newer since they were built in 1885, this being the brewery's third location.), I think that the street outside is also interesting. This is Landsbergerstrasse, which hosts car, tram, and bike traffic, each with their own dedicated lanes. This is quite a contrast from where I'm from in the U.S. where the auto lobby are able to monopolize the taxpayers' money. The bike lanes in Munich are especially impressive to me, mainly because they're everywhere and quite usable, even in comparison with Prague. Bikes work best in city centres, but in Prague the irony is that they're most useful (or at least safest) in the suburbs, where there are better bike lanes!! In Munich it doesn't matter where you ride, at least as far as I can tell, as every neighborhood is well provided with bike lanes.

Here's the brewpub at the Augustiner brewery, which looks deceptively small. In reality, that corner building is only the entrance and one of the smaller bars. Most of the action is over to the right, in a building that's several times longer than you can see here.

Here's the Augustiner logo on the corner of Landsbergerstrasse and Holzapfelstrasse.

Although you can still get the EU standard half-litre mugs at the Augustiner brewpub, they seem to prefer the full-litre mugs that they're known for, and which my flatmates back in Prague have.

This room looks big, but I have maybe a third of the room behind me, plus the corner building, and behind the big screen television there's another whole room. All in all, I think this may have been the biggest pub I've ever been in, and it took me 10 or 20 minutes to get a beer and a seat. In the end, I had to get my dinner elsewhere since there was no way that I would be served before closing time. The most interesting thing about this place, in my opinion, is that in spite of globalization, and the obvious intention at this pub of catering to tourists, almost everybody there was German (with the exception of one or two tables of Americans), and the food was traditional German in every way.

This was the horse stable at the brewery, surprisingly right next to the brewpub. Although it's a bit hard to see the horses, they're in there hidden in the shadows of those stalls on the left.

In contrast to Prague's DPP, MVV, the Munich transit authority, is absolutely meticulous about cleaning. DPP do indeed have cleaning staff, but my sense is that they're badly underfunded and/or understaffed, so there are few tram stops in Prague as well maintained as this one.

I had forgotten all about this shot until I went through the roll of Kodacolor Gold 200 that I shot in Munich. So....this is jumping from the morning of the 18th back to the evening of the 17th. If you look carefully in the middle of the street, you can see some old tram tracks still in place. To the best of my knowledge, they're out of service due to there being no cantenary on this street. If you follow the tracks back, you eventually get to the park where they hold the Oktoberfest celebrations, arguably the most famous in Germany. Does anybody know the history of these tracks? I'm curious.

As I said earlier, the heavy use of bicycles in Germany is really striking in comparison with the Czech Republic (and of course the United States), and many of the bikes that I saw in Munich were either customised or were factory painted or designed to look custom. This bike particularly caught my eye, but there were plenty of others.

This building was also colourful and memorable, although as I understand it's just being used for offices. It's on Georgenstrasse, which is a bit out of the city centre, but still a nice neighborhood, partly because of the bikes and the U-Bahn keeping auto use down. Notice this building hasn't been trashed by air pollution yet. Those portraits are of famous intellectuals like Leonardo da Vinci, seen second from the left.

The colors of this building tempted me to try out the Technicolor 3 Gimp filter on it, but I'm not sure if I like the result. It looks discoloured to me even after the removal of the "retro" layer that's supposed to make the filtered photo look like cheap 16mm that's gone bad.

In addition to bicycles, some people in Munich go halfway and get scooters and mopeds. Vespas are especially common, even though they're Italian and Germany produces a number of high-end motorbike makes like BMW.

This is the New Town Hall in Munich, which is actually newer than it looks. It looks like a very authentic gothic building, until you notice just how over-the-top the ornamentation is. It actually is a gothic revival, built between 1867 and 1908, although the city government moved there as early as 1874. In addition to all of the stationary statues, flowerboxes, and other ornamentation, the clock has automatons similar to the ones on the Prazky Orloj (Prague Astronomical Clock) on the Prague Old City Hall, although technically this clock isn't astronomical as far as I know.

The flower boxes were especially noticable on the City Hall when I visited in June, and it was raining for most of the time I was there so they were growing well.

I decided given the way their colors stood out against the faded, drab parts of the building, the flowered required a high-saturation edit in Gimp.

Here's an alternate to Picture 2.