When I lived in Erlangen, I visited Munich several times. My last trip would have been in 1979...

It was a city I really liked. I remember walking in the English Garden, loving the Treasury at the Residenz so much that I went twice (rare for me), and being wowed by the amazing art galleries, and sobered by a visit to the Dachau Memorial Site. I remember the overall grandeur of the buildings, and the vast extent of the green spaces.





Here are some highlights of this trip, 44 years later:

1. Watching the surfing on the Eisbachwelle. This has been a thing for 40 years, but that still means it postdates my experience in Munich. I actually found out about it through a description in A Case for Zeki Demirbilek, when a dead body bumps into a surfer...




2. Strolling the Glockenbachviertel and environs. There are lots of pretty and quirky things to see here:





3. Enjoying a Maxlreiner beer each, courtesy of our hotel:


4. Having breakfast at Wimmer, which is a really nice bakery. Actually, I got caught out here. We visited for coffee yesterday, but nobly abstained from cake, as we'd already had bread for breakfast. But tickling my food memory were great German names like Bienenstich and Streuselkuchen. So today we thought we'd go for breakfast, and enjoy some of these delicacies. But no... There's a different range of more specifically "breakfasty" baked goods on offer first thing. Kaffee und Kuchen obviously come later. Never mind. The pumpkin-seed-encrusted buns were excellent, and the Mohnschnecke (poppy-seed snail) was a nice treat:





5. Spending a wonderful few hours in Haidhausen. This little enclave lies across the Isar from the old town, and it's calm and atmospheric, a million miles from all the city Hektik. A strolling delight:








6. Listening to the Munich Glockenspiel. As well as playing lilting bell-tunes (which unfortunately the ubiquitous tour guides talk through, so that you have to keep moving away from them), the mechanism also displays two action scenes, complete with moving figures (first, a wedding, with accompanying jousting match, in which the Bavarian -- of course -- beats the Frenchman; and second, a dance, where the city's coopers show us moves thought to derive from the plague year of 1517, but actually probably older).










_*_*_

On Sunday, I wondered how it would feel to be back in Germany, given I'd not been here for 26 years. I wondered whether it would still feel like home, or whether we would have grown apart.

I guess the answer lies half-way between. It's definitely nice to be back. I like hearing German around me. There's still a feeling of familiarity.

But it has all felt a little hectic. We're staying in a hotel here, rather than in a self-catering pad. Nevertheless, given that Munich is ranked as Germany's most expensive city, we've been buying most of our food at the local supermarket (which is Rewe, and very good, incidentally). So the whole dining-out business has been missing from the experience.

And -- I know this is a very subjective judgement -- it somehow feels a little more frantic than the other cities we've been in recently.

Partly, it's the bicycles... Germany has always been a pedal-friendly nation, and when I lived here, the cities were already crisscrossed with cycle paths (which they definitely weren't in the UK back then). It was always (understandably) a no-no to obstruct the cycle path.

But cycle traffic now somehow seems very in-your-face, in a way that's different from anywhere else I can recall.

I understand, of course, that more cycling is great for the environment. Much better to have these bikes whizzing around than the equivalent number of cars. And loads of people here have "cargo bikes". These have big compartments at the front, which mainly seem to be used for carrying children. Again, 100% recommendable -- much better than taking Junior to kindy in a car, or having him/her perched on a little child seat at the back.

But pedestrians really need to have eyes in the backs of their heads... While the cycle path is running parallel to the walkway, there's no problem, but at the places where they intersect, you have to constantly take care not to get in the way of some cyclist barrelling along. An electric-assist cargo bike is definitely not something you want to be messing with...

It's also a bit annoying that if you ever see anyone breaking a traffic rule here, it's a cyclist...

Ho-hum... There are worse things, I guess...




What I'd like to do, if the opportunity ever presents itself, is come back to Germany for longer. Because I don't really feel I've given it a chance this time.

I'd like to self-cater in a smaller, cheaper, quieter town, maybe in what used to be East Germany, where I've never been... That would be really nice.

But for this time, it's nearly over. Tomorrow we head for Geneva.