Munich and Istanbul Trip

Sunday, November 24

The kids and I slept well, even after their four-hour naps the previous evening, but Robert didn’t. Still, though I was sympathetic, I wasn’t going to let him be a slugabed, so I got us all up and down to the free breakfast in the hotel by 9:00, which felt late to me and early to him.

Breakfast was marvelous: lots of different breads, rolls, pretzels, assorted cold cut meats and cheeses, muesli, fruit, and jams, etc. Marcus loved the European yogurts, which despite the different fruits pictured on the containers all seemed to be pink and taste vaguely berry-ish (probably his favorite flavor), and both kids loved the all-you-can-eat Bonne Bell cheeses. I loved the liverwurst, which I squeezed onto thin square slices of pumpernickel bread quite happily. Everyone had a soft-boiled egg in a nice egg cup, and some of the chocolate muesli with milk for breakfast “dessert.”

From the hotel we took tram number 16 from the Romanplatz straight downtown to the Deutsche Museum. We suddenly seemed to have found every other parent and child in the city—I’m pretty sure this is what German parents do on cold, rainy Sundays, as the place was crawling with kids.

We liked the exhibits of ships (real and model) and aircrafts (Marcus especially liked the gliders and the first-ever rocket launched...into London), torpedos (Robert appreciated the odes to German ingenuity that the accompanying materials offered, as they explained how cleverly the Germans managed to get around the letter of the law of the Treaty of Versailles, among other things), and robots (including some of the same robots we often watch playing soccer on YouTube).

Then there was also an entire children’s wing (the ominous-sounding “Kinder Reich”) in the basement, and Marcus and Samantha (literally, unfortunately) dove right into the water play area, where there were locks and pulleys and boats and generally wet chaos. There was also a fire truck, a giant guitar you could walk in, a big block area, and a sound-proofed room with a large wooden xylophone and a piano with the innards exposed.

Robert observed that German parents are hands-off in the extreme, and that he actually preferred the stereotypical American helicopter parent to this type, because at least he had faith that the average American parent standing near a water area in a children’s museum wouldn’t just gaze coolly on as a toddler stumbled into the water. The pool was only a few inches deep, and Samantha was just out of our arms’ reach, but the clutch of German mothers I had to push past to scoop her up out of the water just stared. I’m pretty sure they understood her loud, not unhappy, announcement: “I fall down!”

After a few hours of hard playing, we ate in the museum cafeteria. It was 3:00, not at all a busy time, and the man in the cafeteria was even more German, if that was possible, than our waiter of the night before. We ordered a currywurst with pommes frites and a schweine schnitzel, and the man put our food on the tray in a single-digit amount of seconds after we ordered. He then carefully watched to see how many ketchup packets we were taking, so he could charge us 10 cents per packet. Samantha devoured the currywurst and Marcus loved the pork cutlet, so, fortified, we went back out into the cold and hopped right on a tram.

We rode just a couple stops down to another Christmas market and ice rink, but when we arrived we found that we once again had two sleeping kids, so we went back underground to a small mall (entirely closed, since it was Sunday, with the exception of two coffee shops), and bought a thick, moist slice of chocolate bundt cake. “Enjoy it,” said Robert. “After all, we are in the land of the bundt.”

Marcus woke up as we went upstairs and outside for the second time, and we watched the Zambonis cleaning the ice and then the skaters starting to head out. If it hadn’t been quite so cold, Robert would have taken Marcus out, but we weren’t sure he would have been warm enough on the ice to not be miserable. The nice thing was that the rink provided large fiberglass or plastic bears, in assorted poses and sizes, to push around the ice if people were unsteady on their feet. Children and even adults, therefore, could be seen holding the hands of a bear or embracing it as they shuffled about. Frankly, the bears were pretty appealing, but we managed to stay strong.

From the rink we walked around the surrounding streets a bit, going into a few churches and windowshopping at a few different stores (dirndls, anyone?). Samantha loved the ceiling in St. Michael’s church, but we just stayed long enough to get warm and then dashed back outside. We took a tram back to the Romanplatz, then, and with Marcus asleep again, we walked to the Hirschgarten, which bills itself as the largest restaurant in the world.

While I might dispute that claim (it’s based in part on the number of picnickers who might lounge about the grounds, perhaps with a beer in hand), the restaurant was supposed to be good and authentic and was right near our hotel. Randomly, the hotel’s entire staff was having their Christmas party in a private room just on the other side of an interior windowed wall from our table (where once again we put Marcus down on the bench). Robert actually ordered a beer here, and also half a crispy duck with a beautiful potato dumpling and some red cabbage. I had lovely soft braised beef in some dark sauce with a liverwurst and bread dumpling and sautéed root vegetables. Service here was again efficient in the extreme, which oddly has the effect of making every restaurant kid-friendly (there’s never a wait for your food, after all).

Back at the hotel, both kids were awake and eating gingerbread with the last of the fruit I brought from home, and then we all fell asleep happily.

 

Monday, November 25

After another delicious breakfast at the hotel, we checked out and left our bags in the lobby for the day. We took the tram back to a stop near the Jewish Museum, figuring that the playground the woman on the train had told us about would be our first stop of the day. This plan did not work out so well in practice.

We almost missed the playground, which was barren in the extreme. Pictured is the entire extent of play structures.

The Jewish Museum was closed since it was a Monday, so we couldn’t ask inside where the playground was, but we asked some workers setting up a giant menorah just to the left of where this picture was taken if they knew where a playground was. No response. Playground? Play? Area for children? Kinder? Nothing. Dejected, we walked about twenty more feet before I realized we were in the playground. Marcus “played” for a bit here, if you could call it that, but it was too cold for Samantha to really want to go down, which was just as well.

From here we kept walking up to the Marianplatz again, stopping at some butcher shops and at another few churches along the way, and also at “Milka World,” a chocolate store whose logo seemed to be purple cows and purple snowmen, in the basement of an upscale food market, the Schrannenhalle.

With a sweet pretzel in hand, we watched the glockenspiel go off at 11:00 and listened to the carillon. Samantha loved it and narrated the entire thing. Marcus’s favorite part was the duel on horseback in the lower part.

After this, we went up the tower in the town hall to take in the view, but we kept it short up there because Marcus was freezing.

It was really quite a bit colder today than yesterday, and the wind was pretty cutting, so we went back downstairs and kept walking to the medieval-style Christmas market someone had told us about.

The trash cans were decorated, the stalls were decorated, and the vendors were in costume. Even the bathrooms were hidden behind a medieval-looking screen of wood and hay. I had a spinach and potato dumpling in cream sauce with cheese from a dumpling vendor (a knodel karte—dumpling cart, here I come!) and let Marcus sit on my lap so he’d stay warmer than on the ground while we ate.

Next we walked across town to the east to the English Gardens, Munich’s Cental Park. It was apparently too cold for the surfers who surf on this spot in the river, though we were told that some had been there just the day before, in wetsuits. We couldn’t really see how anyone could surf here at all, never mind the weather, but we had fun looking down and trying to figure it out.

From there we circled down and walked back toward Schrannenhalle, stopping for lunch at Der Pschorr, which had come recommended. Robert had a half a pig’s knuckle with crispy skin and caraway cabbage and another potato dumpling (this one noticeably superior to the one from last night, much lighter and fluffier). I had a cold smoked fish plate, and the kids shared a beef noodle soup, very rich and warming and delicious—they both demolished it. Robert declared that our meals in Munich had just gotten progressively better and better, and I agreed. It was late for lunch, and the place was nearly empty, except at one point we heard Samantha saying “There a dog. Dog!” and we turned and there indeed was a dog, a very large one, some sort of black hound with its head, while seated, higher than the table top, a red bandanna tied around its neck, sitting right there next to the table next to us as a man and woman paid their bill. It was very startling, but the dog just sat there and soon exited with the people, who were sighted and able-bodied—no guide dog here, nor any leash or lead or harness at all. While we were paying our bill, I asked the waiter (a slightly higher-class version of the by-now-familiar efficient and unchatty server) if it was common to have dogs in the restaurant.

“Of course,” he said. “Common.” He gave me a funny look.

I explained that I only asked because in the US dogs were actually not allowed in restaurants (especially nice, white-tablecloth ones downtown).

“Why not?” he seemed shocked.

In case the dog and his people were regulars, I explained hastily that while this dog was fine, lovely, well-behaved, didn’t cause any problems, in the US people were worried that some dogs might not behave right and might, also, be a health problem.

Again, he looked shocked. “No,” he said. “Very common here.” He peered at our children, and the implication was that dogs were more common in nice restaurants than children, and that though these children had been well-behaved, coloring and then eating their soup nicely, not causing any problems, in Germany people were worried that some children might not behave right and might also, who knows, be a health problem.

After all of this, the manager came over to give Samantha (and, belatedly, Marcus too) a funny orange stuffed dragon which was the logo of the restaurant, and we walked next door into the Schrannenhalle to admire the gingerbread houses (“They have gingerbread apartment houses!” Marcus gushed), order an orange crepe from a crepe stall for Robert, change a diaper in the nice bathrooms near the purple cow chocolate store, and buy some food gifts for friends in the little gourmet market.

We retraced our steps by foot and tram to the hotel, paid our bill (250 Euros for two nights including breakfast and taxes and actually friendly service at a place that seemed genuinely to welcome children), collected our luggage, chatted with the owner again, and then walked back to the S-bahn station, where the trains were running normally now, on a weekday, to take the train to the airport. Both kids liked this "penguin truck" parked near our hotel--they're in a penguin-obsessed phase, and Marcus declared it cold enough in Munich for penguins, too.

Our one transportation wrinkle in this direction was that the train was going to split near the end, part of it going to the airport and part somewhere else, and we didn’t realize that. We ended up having to move further and further down the platform and still eventually leap out and run into the next car while they were uncoupling the front cars and sending them on to the place we didn’t want to go. We made it to the airport nevertheless, and, with two sleeping kids, stuck our luggage on a cart and walked around the airport Christmas Market at night. Robert had a gluwein (mulled wine in a festive mug that you had to pay a 2 euro deposit for) and a grilled white sausage in a bun while an English-language country band played on an outdoor stage and people shivered and other people ice skated (again hugging those bears for stability).

In the airport we went through security in a very civilized way—you leave your shoes on, and keeping Samantha in the wrap brought a pat-down which was truly just a pat-down—two pats on my back and one on my belly, in contrast to the inexplicable US “security” system we currently have. Security may have been my favorite thing about Germany, actually. (Well, that and those delicious chewy potato dumplings. . .)

Robert’s United gold status got us all into the business class lounge, and the kids were quiet enough that we were able to sit in a corner and eat their free food—German-style potato salad, pretzels, rice and Bavarian-style meatballs in sauce, more “meatloaf” that I made into sandwiches, juices, unlimited gummi bears, and apricot-jam-stuffed dessert dumplings in a custard sauce. It was a lovely dinner before boarding the plane to Istanbul.

The flight was fast and though Samantha again bemoaned her seatbelt, she only had to wear it at take-off and landing, and otherwise it was a perfectly happy two-and-a-half-hour flight.

We got our bags and went to the bathroom and got some Turkish lira from an ATM, and then we were met by the Super Shuttle people I had reserved ahead of time. A cab may or may not have been cheaper than the 25 euros the shuttle cost, but it was night and we were tired, and this took us straight to our hotel with no hassling about the route and the price (as in virtually every other cab we took in Turkey), so I think it was definitely worth it.

We checked into our hotel, the Lares Park Hotel Taksim near Taksim Square, and went up to our room. I was getting out the kids’ pajamas from the suitcase and Robert was in the bathroom supposedly supervising tooth-brushing when suddenly there was a scream from Samantha and a giant whooshing sound. Eventually it became clear that the toilet lid was up, and Samantha had pushed the intriguingly large and shiny bidet button on the wall, and water shot all over the bathroom, with Samantha fleeing the bathroom as fast as her little legs could carry her. The hotel staff came with lots of towels to mop it up, and somehow we all managed to be in bed fifteen minutes later, on the road to sleep.

More. . .

Go back to web essays or over to links
robertandchristina.com was made with a Mac.
© 2013 C&R Enterprises
Email christina@robertandchristina.com or robert@robertandchristina.com
Created: 12/1/13. Last Modified: 12/4/13.