Best and Wurst

Ever been to a foreign city and find yourself surprised or disappointed that it didn't match the (probably quite crudely stereotyped) preconceptions you'd arrived with? Well, you need have no such worries about Munich. If you imagine German cities to generally involve an architectural melange of beamed and pitched-roofed medieval whimsy alongside spare postwar brutalism and Nazi relics, that the wide, litter-free roads hum with the restrained melody of a thousand shiny Audis, Mercs and Porches driven by clear-skinned, prosperous blonds and blondes respectively toting steel-rimmed specs or sunglasses worn on head, all en route to their executive boxes at Bayern or a spot of naked sunbathing anywhere there's a patch of grass, after which they will quaff a few steins of top-class beer while eating their bodyweight in pig-based products, regularly shouting 'PROST!' and listening appreciatively to an oompah band, before they go home to their tastefully modernist apartments to watch startlingly unattractive but vigorous pornography before having sex involving no fewer than ten different mutually-gratifying positions...yes, if that's been how you always imagined Munich, you're spot-on because that's exactly what it's like. I'm surmising a little about the last bit, but I know I'm right.

No wonder the Germans are fed up with the Greeks. Anything that threatens such a discreetly opulent standard of living is not going to be happily received, and if you're a comfortably-off Municher (there don't seem to be any other kind), you have a hell of a lot to lose. For a start, if the German economy really does falter, you might not have as much money to spend on food, and boy do they like to eat. I always thought the Spanish were good eaters, rambling from one tapas bar to the next on a paperchase of delicious morsels, and the Italians do a fine job of sitting extending a meal over several hours of course after mouthwatering course. But tapas are tiny - that's the whole point - and even the most decadent Italian banquet is basically healthy, and will at some point involve a salad.

Not in Bavaria. They want mainly flesh, in roasted or sausage form, supplemented with a blob of carbohydrate (dumpling or potato, or best of all, potato dumpling), and vegetables heavily disguised in a searing vinegar pickle. And they want lots of it - no meagre portions here, not even for children. In the Augustiner Keller - a vast cavernous beerhall where waiters with hands like shovels dance between benches carrying six or eight steins and balancing steaming plates - I had the 'Poultry Platter' which comprised a half-chicken, most of a duck, and a quarter goose, and I ate it feeling like Henry the Eighth at a banquet, helped on by the unbelievable roaring of a hundred Bayern Munich fans, celebrating a 4-0 win that afternoon like they were trying to enter Valhalla and raise the old gods (yes I know that's Norway but you know what I mean.).

If you should start to flag while wandering the city streets - which it's very good to do - you're never far from the amazing Viktualienmarkt, which has been stuffing the natives of the city since 1807. I have never been anywhere quite like it. It's like an adventure playground devoted completely without pretention to eating and drinking. At the Munchner Suppenkuche, a tiny bustling stall that sells nothing but knockout soup, you can splash 4 Euros on huge warming bowls of goulashsuppe, 'red meat soup', or my favourite Leberkaese, which translates attractively as 'Livercheese' and contains a huge floating lump of soft liver sausage. Don't knock it till you've tried it; it I didn't need to eat again for hours. Nearby there are stalls selling thick crusty rolls packed with brown shrimps or herring, prune cake soaked in brandy if you have a sweet tooth, and in the middle a seated area where the sausage selection of your dreams can be yours. Everyone is drinking beer, and it's good beer, clean-tasting and crisp.

The friendly, chatty atmosphere was only spoiled briefly by a woman in her sixties who climbed off her bicycle and began a spirited angry rant in which the word 'Islam' featured heavily. What could have been dismissed as a random nutter of the kind you can find anywhere, took on a different and more uncomfortable air when we walked back to the central square to find a very creepy anti-Islamic protest underway, with two burka clad figures (one astride a white horse) silently brandishing placards which (I later worked out) said, under a picture of a mosque and another burka-ed form, "I'm a Municher, get me out of here". The watching crowd were mainly passive, though there were a few cries of 'bravo', but the next morning there was a full-on right-wing demo in full swing, with an angry ranting man yelling from a stage over the counter cries of the anti-fascist counter-demonstators. The police presence was heavy and seemed highly organised, and once again the watching crowd seemed passively curious rather than being whipped into a nationalistic (or, regionalistic - Munich is Bavarian first, German second), but given the city's history as the nursery of National Socialism, it was troubling to see the active Right so evidently alive and well, with a new target group to hate.

All that apart,we found the people we met to be amazingly friendly and anxious for us to have the best experience of their city. A couple of blokes who'd just come from the Bayern game guided us through the selections of beers in the Augustiner, and were very concerned that I should not restrict myself to the wheat beers I'd been (really really) enjoying, but should try a litre stein of what they were having. As they left, the younger expressed his regret that we were only there for a few days. "I would show you real Bavaria", he said regretfully, having already taken a great deal of assuring that we knew our way back to the hotel and didn't need him to drive us. Another young medical student I got talking to in the enormous Hoffbrauhaus was more concerned about our narrow perception of Munich. Looking round at the oompah band parping away on the podium, and of the tables of old men in lederhosen and hats with badger parts waving from the brim, he shook his head. "Please do not think that this is all there is," he said. "People think Germany...sausages, beer, oompah, prost, Bayern Munich. BMW, Porche, Mercedes. Nothing more. There is more. Maybe you see it in Berlin. Maybe not so much Munich. But there is more."

And so I've come home and written a piece about sausages, beer, oompah, prost, Bayern Munich, BMW, Porche, Mercedes. Oops.

Of course there's more. The Kraftwerk Exhibition, for a start, which runs until November 13 and is unmissable if you've ever more than liked them - you can lose a couple of mesmerising hours there. And the Residentz Museum and Gallery, packed with more antiquities than any European plunderer had a right to make off with. There are a clutch of other, huge, important galleries that we didn't even get to, which may be reason enough to go back some time. But my veins need a bit of time to de-fur themselves after the kilos of protein and fat I gorged on while I was there. I'm on lemon juice and lettuce for the rest of the week, but it was worth it. And a good swan-song, as that's going to be it for a while with me and travelling now. I'm just going to have to amuse myself here.

©ishouldbeworking 2011