We don't do mornings well. Sleeping in, lingering over breakfast, checking email, taking a shower (with three people and two bathrooms), and all kinds of other things mean we're still at the apartment at noon.
Or, in today's case, 12:45.
Munich has a great, though perhaps confusing, public transport system. There are buses, trams (streetcars), city trains (subway), suburban trains, and regional trains. They all use the same ticket system allowing one to use several in one trip. I saw a map in the main train station showing where around it are the stops for the various trains, trams, and buses. There was a lot on the map. One can also get maps of the tram system, the bus system, and the train network – they'd be too crowded to put all on one map. And then there is the phone app. One can say get me to there and the app, knowing where the phone is, figures out a route on the bus, tram, or train and shows how quickly the next conveyance will arrive. All pretty cool.
Brother used the app to get the route to our destination for the day. He looked at it and said this doesn't make sense. We could just walk up the street a few blocks and get the tram which would take us there directly. So we did. And found out why the app did what it did – because of construction there was no tram from that stop in the direction we wanted to go. So down the steps to the train station (also under construction but in use) to get a train to the main train station and pick up the tram from there.
There was also construction at the other end of our tram line, making us walk a couple extra blocks to our destination.
And that destination was the Nymphenburg Palace. This was the summer residence of the Elector of Bavaria (before 1806) and the King of Bavaria (1806 to 1913). Behind the palace is the back yard, now a huge park.
Brother and Niece decided they wanted to just enjoy the park. I wanted to tour the palace (though I had seen it 29 years ago). If we had gotten there before 2:30 I might have added entrance to the carriage museum and the little buildings scattered around the park. But the palace was enough.
The main room is in high Baroque style with a painted ceiling showing Roman gods and the pleasures of country living. Yes, this room was decorated to impress. The ruler's rooms were on one side of this hall, the wife's rooms on the other. There was also a gallery of beauties – the ruler had commissioned an artist to paint portraits of three dozen women. And, out of the ordinary for aristocrats, a couple of them were of common women (though they must have been loaned clothing because I couldn't tell which ones).
This is the front of the palace.
This is a part of the ceiling of the great hall showing the Roman gods. There's Apollo in the sun chariot, Juno with her peacock, Jupiter with thunderbolts under his feet, Neptune with his trident, Mercury with winged helmet and trumpet, and a few more. Brother says his favorite is the angel leaning against the rainbow looking bored.
One of the pleasures of the summer palace was music. Here's a couple musicians depicted in the wall of the great hall.
After my tour I joined up again with Niece and Brother and we walked through the park. We stopped at (though didn't go in) the grotto, the Pagoda (Chinese faces in the decoration, not Chinese architecture), and the bath house. We also stopped at the cascade to see the long view to the palace and enjoyed this kid on a fish with his feet in the air.
At 6:00 Niece had a previously scheduled business call that lasted 90 minutes. That allowed Brother and me to sit and talk and enjoy the surroundings.
As we were leaving through the palace front yard Brother pointed out a little door in the wall around that yard. Three years ago his wife spent her last few weeks in a care facility on the other side of that wall. When Brother needed a break he could step through that door. He said it was like the wardrobe door to Narnia with a completely different world on the other side, from care facility to royal park.
We ate supper at a Greek restaurant near the palace. I had heard during my tour that the Elector was promoted to King because he had sided with Napoleon when that general ended the Holy Roman Empire and the Elector didn't have a kaiser to elect anymore. So during supper Niece read history articles about the rise and fall of Napoleon.
We had earlier debated whether there could be such a thing as a benevolent dictator. Such a ruler could impose benefits to the people without the messiness of democracy. But would such a ruler be so caught up in enforcing the supremacy that gave him power that he would do anything for the common man? Or would all of his efforts be towards oppression?
It seems Napoleon came close to the benevolent dictator. He really did some good things for the common man, such as freedom of religion, universal education, votes by the people (though who knows if rigged), and saying professions should be chosen based on talent and not connection.
But he was also a tyrant, heavily censoring the press and making opponents disappear. And with a tyrant the people have to live with his mistakes – such as is disastrous campaign against Russia in 1812 (which Tchaikovsky wrote music about). It sounds like a half-million men died during that campaign.
After supper we worked our way back to the apartment through walking, tram, train, and more walking.
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