Munich Travel Quotes

EVER SINCE 29 SEPTEMBER, 1938, discussions about war and peace in Europe have revolved around the same, fearful question: will this be a Sarajevo or a Munich? In other words: can a great deal of diplomacy achieve a shaky balance, or must evil be crushed by force? We know that, in both cases, a war was the result, we know that everything went wrong afterwards, but each time we come back to those two cities, those contrapuntal reference points for the twentieth

This preternatural love of rules almost for their own sake punctuates German finance as it does German life. As it happens, a story had just broken that a German reinsurance company called Munich Re, back in June 2007, or just before the crash, had sponsored a party for its best producers that offered not just chicken dinners and nearest-to-the-pin golf competitions but a blowout with prostitutes in a public bath. In finance, high or low, this sort of thing is of course not unusual. What was striking was how organized the German event was. The company tied white and yellow and red ribbons to the prostitutes to indicate which ones were available to which men. After each sexual encounter the prostitute received a stamp on her arm to indicate how often she had been used. The Germans didn’t just want hookers: they wanted hookers with rules.

Slightly further afield, you will find Baroque palaces such as Nymphenberg and Schlossheim, with wonderful parks and art galleries. On a slightly darker note, Dachau Concentration Camp is around 10 miles from town. Trains go there from Munich’s main train station every ten minutes and the journey takes less than 15 minutes. Transport in Munich is well organised with a network of trains – S‐Bahn is the suburban rail; U‐Bahn is underground and there are trams and buses. The S‐Bahn connects Munich Airport with the city at frequent intervals depending on the time of day or night. Munich is especially busy during Oktoberfest, a beer festival that began in the 19th century to celebrate a royal wedding, and also in the Christmas market season, which runs from late November to Christmas Eve. Expect wooden toys and ornaments, cakes and Gluwien. The hot mulled wine stands require a deposit for each mug. This means that locals stand chatting at the stalls while drinking. As a result, the solo traveller is never alone. The downside of Munich is that it is a commercial city, one that works hard and sometimes has little patience for tourists. Natives of Munich also have a reputation for being a little snobbish and very brand conscious. To read: The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. Narrated by death himself, this novel tells of a little girl sent to a foster family in 1939. She reads The Grave Diggers Handbook each evening with her foster father and, as her love of reading grows, she steals a book from a Nazi book burning. From this, her renegade life begins.

Munich is the capital of Bavaria. It was founded in the 11th century after a bridge was built across the River Isar, next to a Benedictine monastery, an important crossing place that soon saw the growth of a fortress. Munich’s city centre sits now within these old fortifications. It offers rich shopping and plenty of good cafes, bakeries and restaurants. In addition, these old city walls encircle the Residenz, the former palace of Bavarian kings, which was once moated and has been expanded hugely over the last 700 years. Also in the city centre is the Glockenspiel, a wonderfully theatrical clock that enacts stories from the 16th century at set times during the day.

It is difficult to find outstanding men who are selfless enough to work without knowing what can be gained by it, what can be accomplished in the future; men willing to meditate, to discover and invent, without expecting that their achievement will ultimately find recognition and application in their former profession; men willing to give up their assured high income in order to live in penury in Munich and to travel all through Germany like hunted animals, without any reward other than the inner satisfaction of an altruistic martyr.

The play was performed often in Fürth, then at a film festival in Munich, and in 2002 in Zurich. And then in Czernowitz. On the anniversary of the world premiere the cast travelled to Selma's hometown, where it was put on in a theater very similar to the one in Fürth. As Jutta Czurda reported in a letter to me, both performances were almost sold out and the audiences were very enthusiastic: "Almost 1,000 people saw Selma …After the play we all signed countless programs and answered questions. And so for us, you, too, returned symbolically to Czernowitz with your voice, and built a direct bridge to Selma for the audience." She is right. Although German is not spoken in Czernowitz today, Selma and I came home somehow.

struggle. The problem was, most of the French loathed him. He had opposed Munich – which had cost him the support of the moderate conservatives. He was in favour of the war – which had cost him the support of the right. He was a centrist democrat, but he survived only by grace of the socialist opposition’s support. By means of all kinds of manoeuvres – one of which was to appoint Pétain to the post of vice-premier – he tried to broaden support for his cabinet. But he was inept enough to draw in more and more tired defeatists. ‘You have no army,’ Pétain sneered at the British minister of war, Anthony Eden. ‘What could you achieve where the French army has failed?’ During those weeks Churchill flew back and forth to France at least four times, desperately trying to convince the French to keep fighting. He