This is my second blog post from Munich and today I want to talk about the art and culture in this historic city. Munich has a very nice art museum called the Neue Pinakothek, which I visited this past week, and there are truly some stellar works of art in this place. Lots of paintings by the greats of the past few centuries, like Van Gogh and Monet. And there’s a lot of great paintings of the local landscape done by relatively famous artists from Germany.
Besides the great art, I also got to experience some local culture when I visited the English Garden with some friends. The English Garden is the largest city park in the world, and thousands of people spend time there every day to relax and unwind. Generally these people go about scantily clad (with the apparent motive of sunbathing) or wearing nothing at all. I confess that to me this seemed rather uncouth, and so I refrained from photographing the immodest locals, as I didn’t think it appropriate for this blog.
Another encounter with German culture occurred when I visited the Italian restaurant Eataly with some friends. The food was excellent, and the waiters all spoke Italian, much to the delight of my Italian friend, who stopped every waiter walking by to ask them in Italian for one thing or another.
I really do consider restaurants like Eataly or the kebap shop in nearby Dachau (which I heartily recommend if you ever find yourself in Munich) to be authentic pieces of German culture, just like I consider Chinese fast food places in America to be authentic pieces of American culture. These are places that locals really do frequent, and I consider them more authentic than places like the open air market, where they sell pretzels and beer, and which is packed full of tourists.
That’s all for today, but I hope you enjoyed this glimpse at the life of an SLA grant recipient in Munich.