Having bought my ticket for the evening train to Copenhagen, I check out of the hotel. There wouldn't be enough time for a day trip. I checked out the tourist map, looks like I should go beyond the MarienPlatz. There is a green patch right on the edge of the map. It looks like the central park of the city. There were features in it like Japanese Tea Garden and Chinese Tower that pique my interest.
The Marienplatz is the centre of all things, so even going to the park, I need to transverse the Platz.
Munich has at least one thing in common with Milan. Both has top-flight soccer teams sharing the same home ground. In Munich, they are FC Bayern Munich and TSV 1860 München sharing the Allianz Arena, which has a luminous exterior that changes color depending on which home team is playing. I bet the San Siro would like one of those.
Walking around Munich, you soon became aware of how much the Bavarians are obsess with time, or at least with clocks. A clock seems to adorn the face of every tower. At every corner, a clock, ornated or simple, hangs from its metallic support.
I wonder why this obsession. I guess it was partly because of the industrial revolution. The need to start work on time, to manufacture a certain number of goods on time, and to ship goods on time probably brought about this obsession with time. Bavaria is after all, the industrial powerhouse not just of Europe, but the world. Remember that Bavaria gave the B in BMW.
A Chinese CCTV documentary, 大国崛起， hypothecize that the rise of train travel brought about the need for the clock. When timetable are drawn up for a new mode of transport that could arrive and leave at precise time of the day, it necessitate the clock with the second hand. I would think this obsession with time has something to do with why the Deutsche Bahn is a railway powerhouse. The advent of the clock also meant the people no longer need to look up at the heaven to guess the time. I am not sure which came first, the Reformation or the prolifegation of the clocks, but it is no wonder it was Martin Luther, a German, who got things rolling.
I got my answer of sort when visiting the Museum of Science and Technology in Milan a month later. In the exhibits of clocks and watches was this:
The park is a expansive green in the city centre. It is green fields and woodland with streams running through it.
The days are getting warmer and the locals are out in the sun.
The Japanese tea garden is right at the entrance. It doesn't look much from the outside, just a tea hut on a small island on a pond. It is closed on the day anyway.
The Chinese tower is a bigger structure though. It's a all-wood structure, and probably under maintenance, as it was closed for the day. There is a beer garden by the tower though. It's not yet Octoberfest, but the food courts were open.
One of the surprise feature in the park is a artificial surfing stream. That's the last thing I could think for: surfboarding in a park right in the city of Munich. But there they are, the surfing dudes and dudettes in their wetsuits. All lining up on one bank of the stream, when it came their turn they on their board and rode the surf until they fell off. Then they would vacate the spot as they swim on to the bank to get back on the queue. It looks like the surfwaves are churned out from under the bridge.
I went back to the Margit Pension for my luggage. Tonight, northward. By day break, Scandanavia.
No comments:
Post a Comment