July 22 - Royalty and Language Differences

(John) It was a long and tiring day. Most of our time was spent in the Munich Residence - home of the Duke and later King of Bavaria. This huge palace was built between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries. The Wittelsbach family ruled Bavaria for nearly 700 years, one of the longest lived dynasties in European history.

Finally, in the late nineteenth century, the constitutional monarchy was phased out as the German kingdoms were united under the Prussian Kaiser.

The Munich palace is a sprawling complex of buildings and parks. To the west is the bishop's palace and cathedral, and to the east is the Bavarian Parliament. All of these buildings were virtually flattened during the war. So what we tourists see today is 75 percent reconstruction.

Large amounts of art and furniture were destroyed during the war. In many of the palace rooms, paintings, plasterwork, and frescoes were restored using photographs. However, not every square inch has been restored because money was lacking and records were incomplete. Still, I found it impressive. We toured about 90 rooms, most of which were extraordinarily beautiful. Tge were a lot of tapestries, gold leaf, mirrors, marble and gorgeous wood floors.

It took us almost five hours to tour the full palace. Therefore we did not continue on to the Deutsches Museum as previously planned. Instead we walked to the Chinese Temple in the Englischer Garden (Munich's Central Park) and we had a beer while sitting and relaxing under the trees of a beer garden.

Tonight we will eat dinner in our room, watch a Mel Brooks movie in German, and ready ourselves for tomorrow's seven hour train trip to Berlin.

(Gene) It was interesting watching Mel Brooks' movie "Space Balls" in German. Not all the words in the jokes translated very well. One of the jokes involves a bottle of jam and a radar dish. Their radar had been jammed. Well, in the German version their radar had been marlmaladed.

Anyway, today was quite wonderful. While we were at the Residence we also visited the "Treasury". The series of 10 rooms contained the Bavarian rulers most rare and priceless items. If you only go to one museum on the continent of Europe, make sure this is it. As a comparison it it is like the Crown Jewels in London and the Vatican Museums all in one. Also, the Residence has an enoumous display of reliquroies. The largest that I have ever seen in one location.