We got to spend forty-eight incredible hours in Munich and it was two of my favorite days in Europe.
Let me start with a bit of a disclaimer. Munich (Germany in general) presents a bit of a problem because there is so much Nazi history. Munich was the start and staging point of early Nazism. I don’t want to dismiss the terrible atrocities that happened and began in Munich, but I also don’t believe it is nearly all, or close to mostly, what Munich is about. The Holocaust has taken so much already. Honestly, it isn’t the most important truth about Munich, so I want to acknowledge it (we went to Dachau and had our hearts broken and saw Third Reich sights and felt all the stirs of emotion), but it isn’t what we’ll remember most about Munich.
I have a friend whose life motto is “whimsy and grace”. I don’t know if I know a person that has matched a simple motto with an identity and a set of giftings so perfectly. I thought of my friend Chelsey a lot in Munich because Munich is a lace of whimsy. Ky and I write down notes in a journal we are keeping and one section is set aside for the fun little stories we hear. Munich has the most of them.
We heard about how the people of Munich saved the National Theater by assembling a fire brigade of beer (the water was frozen when the fire broke out). Munich is called ‘the place of the monks’ and the monks in the hillside monasteries have been brewing Bavarian beer for a long time. We heard about the MayFair pole (a giant pole in the middle of the city) and how the villages try to steal them from each other. Also, the Mayfair pole is an engagement ring with grooms proposing not-so-subtly in their beloved’s front yard. We visited an old royal residence and heard about when the prince was given a monkey and his pet monkey took him to the top of one of the towers and dangled him over the edge. They eventually lured him down safely, the legend says the monkey came down for beer. Even Hitler himself came to Munich to be an artist (you can google ‘Hitler water-color paintings to see some of his works of the city sites) before he completely lost his way. And my favorite place in Munich is Dodgers Alley, a small one-city-block road that the people of Munich started to use because to use the main adjacent road, the law stated they had to salute a commemoration site the Nazis had set up. Two guards watched the passers-by like hawks and jumped on anyone who didn’t obey the order. So, in a small rebellion, some of the people of Munich took this little street to avoid having to make the pledge. The Nazis discovered this and set up another guard, but the people kept diverting, leading to imprisonments and executions.
Munich is so much more than Nazis and drunk tourists at Octoberfest. It is a place of whimsy, a place of story, of adventure and danger, of joy and imagination. Kylie has said that Bavaria is one of the places she could most see us living in and that Munich was the most livable city of the ones we visited in Europe. There is a realness to its whimsy, just like in Chelsey’s life. There is a practicality to their hilarity and a purpose to their story-telling. Munich’s lowest moments, just like for all of us, are when their best attributes get perverted and steered in an unhealthy direction.
As simple as this sounds, Munich inspired me. It inspired me to live a good story, to pursue adventure and to celebrate the life and the moments that have been given to me. It is a very celebratory culture. It made this little introvert want to be more a part of the world and collide with the whimsy floating around in everyone.
