A Week in Germany: Saturday (Again)

28. 01. 2012


We woke up to snow this morning. Overnight snow had left a light covering, and the snowfall continued into mid-morning. Not much accumulation, but enough to look very pretty like icing decorating trees and buildings.

Munich's Opera House

An easy tourist schedule for the day, as promised to my doctors, was made possible by Munich’s excellent public transportation network.

First stop was Johanna Daimer’s Felt Shop, a tiny half size space filled with felt in all colours and all possible thicknesses. Megan and I discovered the shop when we were here, back in the day when felt was not a booming area of handcraft and good wool felt was hard to come by. It was Christmas Market, and every woman in Munich was lining up to push their way into the narrow shop to procure whatever local hausfrauen needed for their Christmas decorations. Not that I need any felt at the moment, but I wanted to make a tribute return visit. And their little packets of felt cutouts are very charming.

We followed the felt pilgrimage with "the best Wienerschnitzel in Munich" according to a 2010 article in The Guardian. And it was indeed superb, made with white veal, so principles had to be tossed out the same window used for French foie gras meals, but it really beats the pork or pink veal versions. The price has increased slightly to 24 euros.

Another thing I love about Germany is that you can eat meals when you are hungry.  No waiting until 12:30 or 7:00 p.m. for lunch and dinner as you must in London in their effort to be continental. The worst is having to wait until 10 p.m. for dinner in Spain! My scheduling for the morning took less time than expected, so we turned up at the restaurant shortly after 11:00, and there were people already eating. Since we had eaten little breakfast, we were ready for lunch, and by the time we left at 12:30, the restaurant was heaving.

The next thing to love about Munich is Bus Line 100, called the Museum Line, that does a loop around the major museums on the north side of the city. When we were looking at what Munich had to offer, Bob had seen a brochure for Villa Stuck, an Art Nouveau house museum, and said that was his first choice for an outing. From the restaurant we easily found the bus which dropped us right in front of the Villa, in an outer residential neighbourhood of the city. The ride took us through beautiful snow covered park lands along the banks of the River Isar.  (I forgot my camera, but Bob was able to take a few photos.)

The monument is the Friedensengel, or Angel of Peace, unveiled in 1899
to commemorate the 25 years of peace after the Franco-German Wars of the 1870s.  

The Villa Stuck was fantastic in every sense of the word. Over-decorated, over-gilded, over-dramatic, and utterly beautiful.  Franz Stuck — he became Franz Ritter von Stuck when he was knighted — was a leading artist of the German Jugendstil wing of the Art Nouveau movement, and his house with its Gold Medal winning (Chicago 1893; Paris 1900) furniture and decoration is his masterpiece. He was also a professor of art, who counted Paul Klee as one of his students, and he is said to have described the Villa as “frighteningly wonderful.” Sadly I have no interior photos, and I can't find any links that include photos, so I admit to brazenly lifting images from Google here.

Bob took this one of the exterior

Music Salon

The Museum also has additional gallery space that hosts exhibitions of work from the period around  1900. The current exhibit features French artist Jules Chéret who is known as the father of the modern poster for his work advertising cabarets and musical performances. He was also a painter, illustrator, designer, and decorator. A previously unknown artist to us, but his poster work is  clearly the foundation for work by artists whose names are very familiar. The link to the exhibit includes a slide show of some of the work on display, although the text is in German.

After a wander through the museum, it was time to rest my leg again, and Bus 100 took us across the city to the Railroad Station where our hotel is nearby. On the way we passed the many other museums we will have to save for a next visit.

And tomorrow we fly back to London.