A KiKA In The Balls

[lupestripe]

There is an odd 10-minute filler programme here starring a piece of toast called Bernd. It is on KiKA, a German TV channel, and it seems to concern this piece of toast being bullied to join the World Wide Web by a computer as he wants friends and doesn't want to be alone. He then gets blackmailed into giving his details to said computer to stop the publication of various naughty photos while he realises that despite having over one thousand web friends he is, in fact, alone. There is something about a pink pony farm in there too and webcam roulette, which I just don't understand, but I think the computer blackmails the toast because he may out him as a sissy due to his love of pink pony farm. Puppy likes pink pony farm. It's played on loop at this time of night as there are no programmes on and it's tantamount to toast bullying, I feel most sorry for him as he seems so hapless. He says "ich hasse dich" and the computer goes "ich weiss" at the end. He also says "Mist" a lot. All quite sad. It's most strange but not as strange as those fantastic late night sex ads they get here, with grinding woman (teens, fetish, elderly types) urging you to call a number for sex chat. They're only 15 seconds long but they are repeated alternately so it's most peculiar. They're also quite unappealing, not erotic at all. I particularly love it when they moan the digits of the phone number or worse still, sing it.

Today was the day I was supposed to meet my German colleague in Munich but he blew me off at 8pm citing traffic jams in Italy, from where he was returning from holiday. This holiday was arranged AFTER I had arranged this trip to see him and why he couldn't let me know about the situation before 8pm I don't know. Suffice to say, to have travelled all this way and effectively been shat on, does not make me a happy puppy, despite the fact that I have made the best of things.

It was a gloriously sunny day in Munich, with temperatures up to 33C so the whole city was out and about. Despite the heat, I opted to check out the Alte Pinakothek and the Neue Pinakothek, two of the art galleries here. They are situated, rather aptly, in the Museum District on Theresienstrasse, the same street that becomes a huge carnival for Oktoberfest. The galleries contain some of the finest paintings in the world from the likes of Rembrandt, Botticelli, Titian, Albrecht Durer, Holbein and Edouard Manet among many others. Vincent Van Gogh's famous Sunflowers is also exhibited here and it was a pleasure to view such an exquisite piece at close quarters.

The Alte Pinakothek is currently undergoing renovation so about one quarter of it is closed. It is housed in a huge imposing industrial brick building not to dissimilar to the university library in Cambridge. It was founded by Ludwig I in 1836 and contains the treasures of the Bavarian dukes and royalty as well as what was seized by the dissolution of the monasteries, which happened here in 1803. It is split into four sections dependent on era and provenance, meaning it was quite easy to find what you were after. I walked around the whole gallery - suffice to say there were many portraits and religious paintings, specifically involving the adoration of the magi, the crucifixion or weeping over Christ. The paintings I found most evocative though, unsurprisingly perhaps, were the more secular or historical ones. Altdorfer's 1529 painting depicting Alexander the Great's victory over King Darius of Persia was extremely detailed, with the dark colours adding a sense of importance and magnificence to the battlefield. Indeed, there was a whole section dedicated to battlefield paintings, specifically throughout the nineteenth century at a time when the genre was seen as becoming staid and anachronistic.

Beforehand, battle paintings often depicted a king or nobleman's bravery but with the nation state developing in this era, war paintings came to depict generals and nationhood more, with an increased focus on the individual soldier and the more human aspect of war. Charting these changes throughout this period was certainly interesting, along with following the differing styles which were developed from the fifteenth through to the eighteenth centuries. Getting an eye in on the use of colour and form became quite easy and I feel I have learnt a fair bit about artists techniques from visiting the museum.

The renovations which were taking place were largely to correct the lighting, and I admit that it was difficult to see some of the pictures due to their height and the light reflecting off their surfaces. There were a good few paintings though and the less famous ones grabbed me the most, including Breughel's Land of Cockaigne, a 1566 piece warning against the trials of gluttony.

The Neue Pinakothek was an airier building across the road, and it housed a range of nineteenth and twentieth century masterpieces, some of which I have previously mentioned. There was a special section dedicated to the Greek Landscapes of Carl Rottmann, huge plaster artwork which covered the entire room. The gallery was of 22 rooms and it largely went with age, from oldest to newest, with the art of 1800 coming first and ending with the likes of Manet, Van Gogh, Paul Cezanne, the French Impressionists and Post-Impressionism. Both of these styles I particularly like due to the clever use of brush work as well as simplistic shapes which was quite a nice antidote to the landscape and religious paintings which had preceded it. Having said that, I do like a good landscape as it's something to which I can relate, which is different to the distance I find I have with portraits and religious iconography. Neptune's Horses by Walter Crane from 1892 was probably my favourite picture here, the form of the horses marrying with the waves so perfectly.

After the art gallery trip, I decided to walk down Thereseinstrasse in the sunshine, feeling its delicious warmth on my pallid skin. I turned right down Leopoldstrasse and back into the city centre, where I stopped off at a rather expensive outdoor cafe at the Hofgarten to enjoy a beer. The beer is incredibly easy to drink in this city - you can have five or six without really realising it, with the sense of drunkeness only later coming up to mug you. Meanwhile it's also so cheap, at my hotel it's €2.30 for 0.2l of Coke and €3.70 for 0.5l of beer. Anyway, with sumptuous views over the Hofgarten, which is part of the Residenz, I didn't mind paying a premium but I opted just for the one while I waited for my friend to text me whether he was coming to meet or not. I tried phoning but to no avail - on three occasions - so I downed my beer and opted to head over to Max Weber Platz on the other side of the River Isar.

I grabbed a nice biscuit rainbow from a pleasant lady in one of the only open bakeries in the city - Munich isn't as bad as the rest of Germany but there is very little open on Sundays - and headed to Maximilianeum, built by Friedrich Burklein between 1857 and 1874. It overlooks the banks of the Iser, with the water roaring below, and it takes the form of a palace which has been the seat of the Bavarian government since 1949. The building was initially a school for impoverished children, built on the orders of Maximilian II. It's certainly the most impressive school I have seen, sitting on its own little island with fortified walls beneath it and the road and tramlines acting like a moat.

Before this building and heading back into the city centre is the Maximilian Bridge over the gushing River Isar. This stone bridge has statues across it at intermittent points and from it you can see Ludwigsbrucke. This bridge initially stood elsewhere but was ordered to be demolished by Henry The Lion (like Simba I guess - not sure how a leonine ruler would work :S) in 1157-58 so as to divert the salt road and thus take the lucrative customs fees off the bishopric and into royalty. Monks soon formed a settlement near the new bridge and it was from here that Munich got its name, Munchen meaning to be near the monks.

I beared right and walked along the banks of the Isar, looking at happy couples sunbathing on the white shingle beaches around which this shallow wide course ran. I walked all the way up to Luitpoldbrucke to see the shimmering golden Friedensengel which shone majestically in the summer sunlight. Built between 1896 and 1899 to commemorate the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71, the gilded figure is based of Nike and stands atop a 23m tall column.

After this, I was concerned I wasn't getting my friend's text messages so I went back to the hotel to see if having wifi would help. Alas not so I caught the back end of the opening World Cup match and headed out for food. I spied a couple of churches in the way - one at Max Weber Platz to which I had initially returned following my circular wall and one near my hotel. Munich is full of resplendent large churches, many built mainly with brick, with spires penetrating the sky and providing handy markers around the city. I love losing myself in a city and this makes navigation tremendously so it's great to just explore and go off the beaten track. Having a five-day public transport card helps too of course, which it did as I could go anywhere for dinner. I opted for Munchner Freiheit, the trendy student district to the north of the city where I had a perfectly passable pizza, saw a large dog who kept staring at me and then sniffing his balls and watched some more of the World Cup. It was while I was on my way there that my friend finally text me, which was frustrating as I wouldn't have eaten so late had he been more communicative. Still, no great loss I guess and at least I had had a great day.