Munich

I am going to try to find more time to write about Munich soon. But today is my big teaching day. Some squibs:

1. The EYM pointed out that every city in the U.S. now has a Martin Luther King Blvd. He posed the question, "Does every city in Germany have a Martin Luther Strasse (Platz, Bahn, something). The answer appears to be "yes," since there certainly is one in Munich, the most Catholic city in the most Catholic region of Germany.

2. The train ride to Munich and back was uneventful and mostly on time. Boring, like it should be. I have had enough of exciting.

3. We did visit Haus Der Kunst museum, as suggest by recreational genius Angus. Gerhard Richter was in fact one of the exhibitions. I have not seen much modern art. But in terms of my own reaction, both emotionally and intellectually, this was clearly the best exhibit I have ever seen. One odd thing, however: the little speaker jobbie you get at exhibitions, to listen to some otherwise unemployed art historian tell you what it all means? Well, you go from number to number, press the button, and learn. And I have to say the CONTENT of these recordings, which were available in many languages, including English, was very good. But the pieces being exhibited were in RANDOM order, or nearly so. 1 was outside; fair enough. 2 was just inside the door. 3 was in another room, though 5 and 6 were in the same room as 2. 4 I didn't find until nearly the end; it was in another room. And so on: 8 was next to 14, then 15 (good), then you finally come to 9 and 10, in the next room. It is just possible, of course, that this was intentional. My own insistence that the numbers should develop in a logical, orderly also meant that time is linear, and patterns are revealed in a sequence required by physics. So, if the curators intentionally partly scrambled the order (only partly, not really random, but hard to tell what comes next, and the viewer has to CHOOSE what comes next, without knowing the consequences), then ....well played, Haus der Kunst.

4. Next post: Two much more lengthy descriptions of important questions. A. What is the best beer in Munich? B. What happens when fat Americans from Ohio go on a tour of Munich, following the development of the Third Reich in its home city, led by a French-Tunisian named Schadlich? Answers: A: Ha! You have to wait. B: Nothing good. They certainly embarrass the Americans from North Carolina, who are not easily embarrassed.