I know, I know…what’s with me dragging you to all the churches, right?
Well, for centuries the money for art and architecture flowed either to/from the Royalty or to/from the Church.
I think it’s time to cover a few of the churches that I think are the most impressive and worth seeing in the city of Munich (I’ll include the burbs too).
Here’s my top 5 churches to see while you’re in Munich:

1. The Asam Church (Asamkirche)
If you like Rococo, you’ll like this church, my personal favorite…although not on the route of most tours of the city.

2. Fürstenfeld Abbey
This one is visited by very few tourists a year in comparison to all the others on the list, mostly because it’s out in the burbs and not downtown Munich. However, it’s a beautiful church and well worth seeing.

3. St. Michael’s
Similar to one of my favorites in Rome, Il Gesu. Some just visit St. Michael’s for the crypt alone, but this church can be one of the highlights of a trip to Munich.

4. St. Peter’s
I feel guilty about not ranking this one higher, purely because of its importance to the city of Munich. This is my 2nd stop on all city tours for a reason!

5. Theatinerkirche
You might know it as “the yellow church in Munich” from other travelers, the crypt (only open in the summer) includes the first king of Greece, who was Bavarian…the brother of King Ludwig I.

…and as always, if you want the full story on these churches, take a tour or contact me directly…I find if I write too much on here about any specific church, I lose people’s interest.
As you can see these churches are all in the renaissance, baroque, or rococo styles. If you want to see Gothic or Romanesque: Munich is probably not the place to visit.

Sorry about not posting for a few days, I’d say I’ve been busy, but well…

Sunday we went to the Hellabrunn Zoo, here in Munich.  This is not necessarily what I’d send tourists to if they only have a few days, even a few weeks, in Munich…but yet it does come up every other month or so.  The zoo isn’t my favorite, but it’s not bad either.  It’s mostly outdoors, the animals have pretty good living conditions (quite a bit of space), and in the summer they look much happier.  This time, well, some are hibernating and others aren’t allowed out because they’d probably freeze to death.  So, they’re probably feeling a bit cooped up at the moment.

Highlights of the Hellabrunn Zoo for me always include the seals, sea lions, polar bears, and penguins. (in that order)

For those living in Munich, you can get a discount card like we have where you start saving € the third visit.  (basically half off)

Anyways, we went to the zoo…umm…today I had a very small tour, but it was nice…a woman from Norway and a woman from Argentina.  Fasching is in full swing.  Good times.

Well, things are going pretty good in my opinion.  Last night I went out for dinner as kind of a fare well dinner for one of the office people, Manu.  Her husband is one of the guides, so I’m sure I’ll still see her around sometimes.  She’ll be having a baby boy quite soon here, so she’ll take maybe a year off, which is quite normal here.  It was nice, but it’s always weird to sorta say good bye to people here as most of the expat community and tour guide community are not that permanent…just semi-permanent (usually at least a few years…but…not forever).

My tours have been very pleasant lately.  I had a castle tour which was mostly backpackers the other day, which is nice…they can be very entertaining, but they don’t tip.  That being said the very obviously well-to-do brits didn’t either.  Goes to show you never really know, which is why I try to go out of my way for everyone.  Good times, none the less.

I had a private tour scheduled Wednesday, but it appears a pipe burst in his kitchen wall.  That’s a sure thing to ruin a vacation 🙁  He won’t be coming over, so I think I’ll be travel writing instead.   It’s too bad as I was looking forward to the private tour.  I normally don’t do much in the way of Third Reich history on my tours, but have been re-reading much of the Third Reich information in preparation and got a new book on the subject as well, which I finished reading just recently.  Nothing really knew, but it’s good for a refresher sometimes.

Maybe he’ll visit next September or November and have better luck.

Also, it would have given me a reason to show someone the church of St. Anna, which I think is really cool as it was bombed…and restored…but they only had pictures in black and white…so when they re-did the church, the ceiling was restored…in black and white.  I think it’s neat. 

I haven’t done what I’ll refer to now as my “super tour” in quite some time, as most people want a quick 2-hour tour.  To really properly see the city, I think you need a good 3 hours, if not more…depending on the group size, etc.  Two hours is never enough.

Today I had a group of 2.  From Milwaukee, even…so I got to rub it in that the packers just lost and yet I still got a good tip, haha.  No, really, they were a great “group”, interested in everything, no walking problems, no language problem (what’s the language difference from Milwaukee to Owatonna, really?), and yeah…it’s a beautiful day, so it was nice.

Well, today I had no tour…mid-winter like this it does happen, especially city tours, the full-day trips usually go, it’s just the two hour ones that for some reaon, people don’t turn up for if it’s cold.  Then again, my last city tour, on saturday, had a good size group…so go figure.

Anyways, yesterday Petra and I decided to go down to a special exhibit showing the royal tombs of the Scythians…whom we had never really heard of, which is interesting in itself.  If you are going to be in Munich in the next week, I HIGHLY recommend going to this exhibit, it was absolutely fascinating and I am very glad I went. Here’s the wiki article on the scythians.  Unfortunately they don’t allow cameras in there, so I don’t have any pictures for you.  I’d also like to point out they have a full mummy where you can even clearly see the tattoos.  Very disturbing and cool at the same time.

It was a weird tour, but at least it actually happened unlike the Salzburg tour the day before.  There is snow down at Neuschwanstein, but very little.  It was pretty warm and an overall pleasant day, it just seems really long when you’re out of practice because of a break like the holidays.

 As many of you know, we have these Mexican amphibians known as axolotls.  They look like this:

They were quite young then, but today they are apparently old enough to have young ones today, as last week we noticed Murphy was laying eggs! (until then, we still weren’t sure if she was a girl)

Here’s a pic of the eggs:

of course if we don’t rescue them, their parents will eat them…apparently similar to polar bears in Nürnberg.

Everyone and their dog seems to be telling me how much snow MN has gotten, but what we’ve got here is what we have normally about this time of year, temps hovering just above freezing and a constant drizzle…making for general misery.

That being said, tomorrow I’m going to Neuschwanstein most likely with 20 very random new friends from 10 different countries…all pretty miserable about the weather, but kind of in awe of the palace none the less.

If there are any random readers out there that have never been to Munich, I also want to mention that I do private tours as well, if you have odd interests for example or just want a more casual or lengthier tour, I’m your man.  Recently I was talking to other guides about top sights of the Munich area that just don’t get tourists, I’d love to take tourists to these places, but the tourists only have 2 days in town total and they’re going to Neuschwanstein with one of them, so what do you do?

For any friends/family, please understand that Petra and I have to figure out our vacations by the end of January, so if you intend to visit us or stay at our place or whatever…unfortunately we’re not that flexible after Feb 1st…before that time, we can take a few days off or whatever for free private tours no problem.

Am I the only one who wishes Led Zepplin would die already?

Hola everybody,

 Let’s see, on Tuesday I had a Salzburg tour, a pretty good size group, but only a so-so tour from my point of view.  I guess partly because of the crap weather.  Wednesday I went postering around Munich, and the same for Thursday.  Today, I decided to try out visiting a German dentist.  Well, sorta.

 Since I don’t have dental insurance, I decided to head over to the Dental college and see what they could do.  Well, it only cost me €25, however, they only put in a “temporary filling”…so I’ll have to go to a normal dentist for that *sigh*.

I went out drinking with Brendan (office manager, dachau tour guide) last night…that was actually weird, not our most fun night out, but always good to get out and have a few with Brendan.  Apparently he wasn’t feeling that great toward the end *cough*

Our tour office has been ripped apart for the last month or more due to a rat…it’s being put together now, but still not close to done from what I’ve seen.  It’s kind of weird because we’re working out of our old office, which is just next door, but it’s no where near as flashy, hidden being our bike rental sorta.  Although this year’s season is long gone, my tours have been pretty sizable lately and I don’t see any real downturn there…which is good.  Lots of planning to do for next year, who knows what we’ll do as we prepare for yet another round with the various evil competitors…but I think the past year was pretty good overall, and certainly I did better than ever…I like doing better each year, it gives me a feeling of accomplishment, even if I didn’t make that much, it’s more than last year.

busy, busy.