Bless the lady at reception here. I knew her weakness, she spoke English! I can take my thirst no longer and storm down two flights of stairs and into the reception-cum-lounge. “GUTEN ABEND!” I proclaim in my usual overenthusiastic way. I segue immediately into English. “Do you know where I can get a beer?” I ask. “You can drink one here if you like?” she suggests. Top notch, dear. So that’s where I am now with a bottle of lovely pilsner in a glass, listening to Tubthumping on the stereo interspersed with occasional Windows error noises. I think their cash till, radio and booking system is all on the one PC. It all has a certain incompetent hi-tech charm to it.
Today’s efforts, my first totally free day in Munich, were centered around taking some photos of the city none of which you get to see until I’ve processed them. I’d been looking on Googlemaps at satellite photos of Munich and noticed a strange geometry to some of the nearby streets that looked intriguing. It turned out to be a cemetery, one of my favourite things! The habit of collecting dead people in one place and topping their piles of bones off with grotesque stone sculptures still seems peculiar to me. I mean, most blatantly, it’s not SCALABLE. More people alive today than have ever been born, what on earth were they thinking? Where can we put them all? The Hindus have it right, burn them and send ‘em off down the river. Imagine the sight at the Thames estuary.
Anyway, the cemetery photography was rather good and I think some came out well, I’ll post later. The tombstones were varied and beautifully gloomy. There were red and black squirrels running around and the whole place was peaceful and relaxing. I took my time before wandering off into the old city, full of distinctive buildings from architectural styles I can’t begin to name. I shot some of them, but my heart wasn’t in it. The light was harsh and frankly, it was the tourist trail. Despite my efforts, I couldn’t find much of the gritty urban decay I love to photograph even after walking a fair way from the town centre. The Munich natives are just too clean: this is a far cry from from the ground-in dirt and dust of Berlin.
Continuing my amble through the old city, I spotted a nice looking angel-shaped door handle on a giant building that looked like it could have been the town hall. I was lining up my shot and for the second time in the day a door opened into my face and I had to leap back to avoid being hit. Out into the bright daylight stepped a nun and two other women. The nun kissed the head of the door handle and I stared, partly in shock at her blatant lack of hygeine. Here was someone who obviously believed in a higher power’s dominion over the poisonous microbial world she’d just sucked off of the door handle. She beckoned me inside and I tried to make out that I was photographing the door handle and I really didn’t want to go inside whatever this building was. The interior was gloomy and I suspected there’d be more nuns, which is never a good thing. They’re probably all mental from kissing door handles. “Photographieren OK,” she said when I pointed at my camera. Stuck at explaining my desires I figure, “All right then.” If anyone asks I’ll tell them a nun said it was fine.
Inside, I found myself in a giant, Renaissance church. A massive gold leaf organ at one end and a huge ornate altarpiece at the other book-ended hundreds of pews and a number of sideshows of equal opulence. I sat down in a pew and wrote most of this post in my pocket book. The view as I wrote it was quite nice.
The whole concept of me in a church is rather unprecedented since the last time I was forced into one resulted in the rapid onset of a vomiting sickness which I jokingly blamed at the time on a vengeful God. I spent the Midnight Mass of Christmas 1999 praising nothing but Armitage Shanks. For me now to be sitting in a church and admiring it for its beauty is indicative of how long it’s been since I actually went into one. The rigmarole of people crossing themselves, genuflecting, the depth and standard of the artwork and architecture is so long ago it all seems new to me now.
I took a long wander around the church taking lots of photos hoping that my loud shutter wasn’t annoying any nuns.
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