Munich - Schloss Nymphenburg - Oktoberfest Journal & Photos

Schloss Nymphenburg Exterior Front 57 Photos		Oktoberfest Fischer-Vroni 5 Photos
Schloss Nymphenburg Interior 21 Photos	Magdelenenklause At Schloss Nymphenburg 4 Photos		Oktoberfest Lowenbrau Festhalle 35 Photos
Marstallmuseum At Schloss Nymphenburg 16 Photos	Oktoberfest Augustiner Festhalle 14 Photos		Oktoberfest Miscellaneous Beer Tents 11 Photos
Schloss Nymphenburg Rear Garden 36 Photos	Oktoberfest Ochsenbraterei 9 Photos		Oktoberfest Beer Wagons 36 Photos
Pagodenburg At Schloss Nymphenburg 8 Photos	Oktoberfest Braurosl 26 Photos		Oktoberfest Miscellaneous Rides & Food Stands 18 Photos

Well, like usual I have fallen behind in my journal. It is Thursday and I’m on the train to Fussen right now. I’ll try to recap the last couple of days. I woke up early finally on Tuesday had breakfast and headed out. It was the first real day of my vacation. I had to be a little responsible though to finish trip for Judge Gesner. I took the U-Bahn to Rokreutzplatz the tram to Schloss Nymphenburg. Really I took another bus but found out the bus took me a total of about 2 blocks after waiting 5-10 minutes. This step was skipped on the return.

I started my usual amounts of massive photo taking. You walk up to Schloss Nymphenburg by following a massive canal to an open lake in front of the Schloss. The Schloss is at the far end of a huge circular courtyard with the lake in the middle. The lake has a fountain that was not operating when I arrived, but turned on later for about an hour. I paid for the entrance to the Schloss, the Marstellmuseum and a bunch of out buildings in the gardens behind the Schloss. It was 10 Euros for the ticket.

This is my second visit to Schloss Nymphenburg. The first time was my first trip to Munich in the early 1990’s with Scott. It seemed much cleaner and impressive on the outside from what I remember on my last visit. It could be though that impression came from the scaffolding around a section of the exterior on this trip.

Upon entering Schloss Nymphenburg you enter the main hall which is about 4 stories high with ornate paintings on all walls and the ceiling. This is by far the room with the most sunlight therefore the brightest and most impressive. The rest of the rooms are kept dimly lit. I guess another reason I wasn’t as impressed this time was having been to the palaces in St. Petersburg last summer. Those were all just grandiose and amazing structures.

I made my way through the main building and was reprimanded once for bringing out my monopod. Of course my humor was lost on the German security guard who told me that I couldn’t use a tripod and I joked that it wasn’t a tripod but a monopod. I got nothing, hopefully because he didn’t speak English. In my defense there were no signs saying no tripod usage. Since the rooms were so dark, I was just trying to get a decent picture by opening the aperture for a longer period of time. I have learned a few things about my camera by reading some of my books lately. There is a way to take 3 consecutive pictures with 3 different settings. Who would have thought you could learn things from actually reading about them.

When I was trying to leave the main building a whole class of kids was coming in. I had one of those, thing’s aren’t that different on opposite sides of the world moments. The teacher who was herding his kids inside just gave this annoyed look at the kids who would walk inside the door and stop to admire the first Great Hall. None of them thought that there were more people trying to get in or out. They all would enter and just gawk and stop right in front of the door. I can just imagine Matt doing the same with his kids on a school outing.

When I finally got out of the main building I went right to the Marstellmuseum. This is a museum with all these incredibly ornate carriages, sleighs and sleds that were built for the Kings. This more reminded me of the Russian Palaces. Everything beautifully decorated with gold. Again, this was second visit inside this museum. It is in the former stables it seems like. The biggest problem though is they have put all these big carriages in between a lot of columns which I imagine were built for the horses stables. It made it difficult to take pictures.

From the Marstellmuseum I went to territory I hadn’t ventured before. First though they had turned on the outside fountains and I got a few pictures. I wanted to get more and figured I’d get them on the way out. I never thought they would turn off the fountains after about 2 hours. I headed behind the Schloss Nymphenburg to the gardens. Again, I’m going to compare it to what I saw in St. Petersburg. They were nice but not as nice.

Behind the palace were the gardens. They had 4 rows of statues with flower lining the rows between the statues. I’ve got to ask Scott about why they would cage the flowers. I’ve never seen anything like that before. At the end of the statuary columns was another small lake with fountain in it with more swans. Swans are everywhere. Behind the small lake are a bunch of canals leading to a huge lake that is surround by woods on each side. In the woods are some of the smaller out buildings. I chose to go to the right of the lake for my exploring.

I wandered to the left side of the lake and came upon the Magdelana House, one of the out buildings included on my entrance ticket. It was fairly small chapel with the inside resembling a grotto. It reminded me of the main room of the New Palace in Potsdam on a much smaller scale. I have noticed that all of the huge palaces have these small out buildings. I guess they are all built for the in-laws you don’t want staying in the main building.

From the Magdelena House I walked through the woods towards the Northern Vista and Pagodenburg Lake where there were a bunch of swans swimming around again and some giant fish swimming around under a bridge. It was a beautiful day just to be walking around the grounds.

The building I was heading to was the Pagodenburg, a small outbuilding used as a hunting lodge. It’s main characteristic were the beautiful Dutch blue and white tiling on the ground floor and the Chinese influenced rooms on the second floor. The guide was very nice even though he didn’t speak English. He noticed I didn’t realize there was a way to get to the upstairs rooms and pointed me in the right direction before I tried to leave.

I headed back to the main building bought a book on Schloss Nymphenburg and proceeded to leave to get some more photos of the front fountain. Imagine my surprise that from the time I entered the gift shop to the time I left they had shut off the fountain at noon.

It was finally time to go see and experience some of Oktoberfest. I headed back to the hotel for a second then went off to the Theresienwiese. That’s the name of the grounds the Oktoberfest is held on. It was just a beautiful day also. First, I spent an hour or so doing my photography thing. The day was so perfect I didn’t want to miss the perfect light on the one side of the beer tent row. I’ll have to go in the early morning to get pictures on the other side.

It is really packed. Way more so than last time I came with Francis. At least at 3:00 PM, it is about impossible to get a seat inside a tent. Again, I’ll have to get an early start one day to get an inside seat.

The first tent I was able to get a seat at one of the outside tables was the Hacker Pschorr Tent. Even finding the outside seats was fairly hard. Of course, I wasn’t being really aggressive about asking if I could sit. That’s where Francis came in handy two years ago at Oktoberfest. He’ll ask anyone anything, whether they understand him or not. My first table was with a set of grandparents with their monster 5 year grandson. He actually hit the grandmother once. In the grand German tradition of pacifying the kid, they started feeding him beer. I saw them give at least 3 big swigs of a mas, or liter, of beer. I received my first Oktoberfest beer from my beerfrau Christa. Let the festivities begin. Well at least preliminarily. I still needed to go back to talk to Judge Gesner so I had to still be responsible.

I had a couple of German guys come and sit across from me, Gunter, blond curly haired English speaking guy and Wallace, dark curly haired non English speaking one. They were from Hamburg and Hanover and were actually in Munich for business. Nice business trip if you’re a German. They asked me if I thought all German men wore lederhosen. I told him I didn’t really notice the lederhosen as much as the dirndls the girls wear. I swear every girl looks good in a dirndl. I’m sure they fought over that one when they were asked. They said they work for the German equivalent of Wal Mart

They had a beer and monster sized pretzel and headed of to the next beer tent. They were quickly replaced by Gordon and his wife. They were an older couple in probably late 50’s early 60’s. Gordon spoke English and his wife didn’t. They were from Munich and they said they have to make at least one visit during Oktoberfest. Gordon offered me some of the pretzel they bought. That was very nice of them. Of course the pretzels are so big that they probably couldn’t have finished it themselves.

I had 3 beers at the Hacker Pshorr tent so said goodbye to Gordon and his wife, before heading off to check out another tent. That led me to the Lowenbrau tent. I’ve never been a big Lowenbrau fan but I found a seat so I wasn’t going to be picky. I do like the Lowenbrau tent set up though. They have a giant mechanical Lion above the entrance that drinks a mas of Lowenbrau. He also roars and bellows LOOOOVENNBRAAUUU.

I had one quick beer, if you can drink a liter of beer quick before heading back to the hotel. I grabbed a couple of slices of pizza and a giant pretzel for dinner before heading back to the room.

I went down to the lobby and took care of Judge Gesner’s spring break fairly quickly and checked in with mom and dad. Back up to the room to pack for my hotel change tomorrow and load my pictures into the computer. Nothing is ever easy though. For some reason the computer doesn’t see the PC card adaptor. I’ve been able to load them through my Nixvue Mass Storage Device though, but it takes forever. At least that is until I figured out 2 nights later how to actually load them quick and correct way.