the church built by the devil

Chandlord and I had a lovely day in Munich, interrupted only by the rain and my stomach. We escaped my hated hostel by nine am and walked into the center of town, which (as with most old european towns) is roughly s circle bounded by what used to be the city walls. There were no walls to stop us today, and we ended up in Marienplatz, home of a world famous glockenspiel clock display that is not particularly enteraining.

However, what was entertaining (v. entertaining) was the free tour that we took of Munich, led by one of the more entertaining tour guides I've had in recent memory. I can't really replicate how entertaining he was, although he did call Vidya up to demonstrate something and mangled her name repeatedly in ways that were funny only to us. He also seemed quite knowledgeable, and since I learned my lesson at a v. young age about the dangers of attempting to correct tour guides (age 10, Laura Ingalls Wilder museum), I let the couple of minor errors that I noticed slide without comment. I know, I'm so magnanimous.

Munich is a pretty fascinating city. It was home to a series of Bavarian kings back when Germany was a bunch of loosely organized city states, and the guide said that there are signs of human habitation in the area stretching back for ten thousand years. What fascinates me most, though, is how a city of such culture and learning, etc., could have been the cradle of Nazism and Hitler's rise to power. This is not a judgment on Munich - rather, it's a sobering reminder of how quickly a cultured, reasonably smart populace can fall into chaos and end up losing everything. It's also amazing to me how they rebuilt the city after the war like modernity had passed it by; they used concrete instead of masonry in a lot of places, with painted-on columns rather than grand stone facades, but the intent to rebuild everything as though the world wars had never happened was clear.

Anyway, after the tour ended, we had some extremely delicious pizza at a nearby Italian place, then looked at expensive dirndls and bought a sim card for my phone so we can call the US. However, my stomach was in intense pain after lunch, so rather than touring, we picked up the car and checked into the new hotel. We sat around for an hour, and then I encouraged chandlord to abandon me so that she could go out for drinks with our hitchhiker and I could rest up and hopefully stop having stomach problems soon. And so now I'm going to go to bed - we are doing a day trip someplace tomorrow, but don't yet know where. Goodnight!