Crawling through the last day

Apparently I ate breakfast Sunday morning, but had to take someone else's word for it.

I wasn't in the midst of a hangover (I avoided them the entire trip, a record owed entirely to the quality of beer imbibed), but I heard Mitzy and Hannah say they were going, and followed them down.

Just don't ask me what I ate, or why I didn't sit with them; all I remember is being hindered by exhaustion; I could have been walking through water – that I might have remembered.

Back in the room, I alternately watched TV and read Raymond Carver's Cathedral, then slept a little more.

Our final day in Munich was looking abridged compared to the rest of the week, though none of us minded. The breakneck pace finally paralyzed us, though not enough for us to squander the entire day at Hotel Alfa # 244.

We chose the Alte Pinothek, the art museum with the oldest works, and set out in the blustery afternoon, the first time we crossed weather close to what we left behind in Columbus. The FunSavers were used up, so the beautiful Konigplatsz (King's Place) which we passed is resigned to hazy memory.

The museum only cost 1 Euro on Sunday, so we found our first bargain on my last day – if it took more, I was ready. And with what I spent in the museum gift shop, they did well enough.

I saw my first Da Vinci (“Maria und Kinder,” of course) as well as three Raphaels. Nothing rivaled “The School of Athens” or “The Last Supper,” but knowing the great works helps to appreciate the style and technique in the smaller ones.
Among the oldest paintings were the gilded New Testament trilogy from Medieval master Giotto: a Last Supper, Crucifixion and Christ in Hell. They're not the viscerally detailed paintings of the Renaissance and after, but they hold up well for their time of creation.

As I glanced at the Albrecht Durer pieces, the goofy Monty Python ditty about him stuck in my head. Luckily, the haunting qualities of Durer's “Self Portrait” dislodged its nonsensical verse. Looking almost Christ-like and posed simply, the image does not fade from the mind rapidly. His panels of the Four Apostles are also striking.

The biggest stars were Reubens and Rembrandt, for wholly different reasons. Rembrandt builds power in his painting with the clash between illumination and darkness; a Crucifixion scene jumps away from its frame because of the blackness encroaching on the highlighted image. He only shows the focus and everything else is insignificant.

Reubens is almost gruesome by comparison – from his scenes of crodiles and lions ambushing humans to his massive Last Judgment and an over-the-top Massacre of the Children of Bethlehem, the bloody and sinew stood out in the gallery devoted to him.

Though it was a great excursion for a low-key afternoon, there were way too many “Die Beweinung Christi” and “Madonna und Kinder.”

We took our last march down the main avenue of Munich's altstadt and found the Augustiner Bräustüberl and its attached beer hall, where I sampled its Maximator Doublebock from one of the few major Munich brewers owned by Germans (and impossible to find outside of Bavaria, let alone in the States). I couldn't skip out at one more shot at the freshest doublebock I'd ever sample. It went down smoothly with the skillet dish I ordered, a mound of lentils and ravioli broken up by sausage.

I bought a ceramic half-liter mug from the manager to commemorate my only visit to a bier hall in Munich – even if we stayed on the restaurant side of things.


With that last gut-buster on the books, it was back to the hotel to gather my vacation wares for the morning commute back to the airport, and then home.

(Last look: The random, The reflections)