Germany Trip

I had an audit in Munich Germany in November and didn't get around to posting pictures until now because I was too busy with work, Thanksgiving, and birthdays. It was a short week, but I did get to at least walk around the city and get a feel for old Europe.  As an architecture and history buff, I was in heaven (except for not having my wifey there).

First, Munich is very compact, not sprawling, so you can walk all over the downtown. In fact most of the old downtown is only for walking. There are 3 layers of subways under the thousand year old city (not sure how they did that without destroying everything), so no cars are needed. Just take a subway and then walk. Second, much of the city was destroyed in WWII, so they've been rebuilding it for the last 60 years.

The downtown is dominated by churches and old monuments to the royalty who reigned in the 18th and 19th century. The same family ruled from the 1300s until 1918. Munich has been largely Catholic since the 1000s, when it was founded by some monks (hence the name Munchen in German). Unlike northern Germany which became protestant in the 1500s, Munich has remained Catholic. There is a large spire near the city center dedicated to Pope John Paul II (who was Polish but had links to Munich and to Pope Benedict, who is from Munich). Now only about 35% of the population claims Catholicism.

View of Downtown from my hotel. St. Peter's church, Frauenkirche, Rathaus, and other churches are prominent. Most buildings are 5-7 stories tall.

St. Peterkirche, built in 1100s on the ruins of a 9th century church that was the start of Munich. This church has been modified many times in the last 900 years.

Not sure why I'm sideways, but that's a 18 story church behind me. It was first built in the 1400s.

Inside the Frauenkirche (the really tall one)

The church belonging to Maximilian University

Theatinerkirche is a grand Italian Baroque style cathedral built in the mid 1600s. Over 18 members of the royal Wittelsbach family are buried inside.

Dome of Theatinerkirche

Nave of Theatinerkirche

Paintings and plaster details

Tomb of a young princes in Theatinerkirche

St Paul's church near the Oktoberfest grounds (taken at night from about half mile away)

St. Lukas Lutheran Church built in late 1800s (Romanesque style). Picture is also from my hotel window.



St. Johann Baptist Church on the east side of the river, built in the 1850s. I heard it was Gothic revival style. 



Marianilf Church, a neo-Gothic church built in the 1830s. 



Don't know the name of this one, but it was an awesome view with the Alps in the background.

This old church in the center of Munich, called Heilig-Geist-Kirche or Church of the Holy Ghost, is from the 1300s. It has been remodeled several time, most notably after being nearly demolished in World War II.

The next group of pictures were a few cool non-church buildings, of course headlined by the amazing Rathaus (town hall).

This is the Rathaus, or town hall. It was begun in 1867 and has more than 400 rooms.

The tower of Rathaus has a glockenspiel which performs at noon. It was pretty ingenious for its day. This is one thing Grandpa G remembers from his trip to Munich in 1962. It's been there a long time.

Rathaus is covered with hundreds of details like statues. Some of the gargoyles look quite grotesque. I wonder what message the royal family was sending with the design of the building.

Notable kings from the Wittlesbach dynasty are shown on the grand porch of Rathaus.

I loved the subtle wrought iron frog on this entryway.

There's a copper dragon climbing up the corner of Rathaus.



In the Residenz district, the State Chancellery or similar to legislature building is very cool.



Simply called Residenz, the Wittelsbach family built it in the 1300's and expanded it to 110 rooms.

One of the medieval gates of the city, still intact after 750 years.

 

I like this wind chime, which is certainly unique.

Fall on the Isar River, which bisects Munich.

Strangely, there is a place in the city where a river comes out of a bridge at such an angle that it creates waves very much like a surf.  So of course, in November in Munich, there are always lines of surfers waiting their turn. They were pretty good.

Without body suits, this wouldn't be so fun.



There is a huge park in town called English Garden which is larger than Central Park. It was very pastoral, with rolling hills, colored autumn leaves, and streams. There were also numerous street musicians playing. We even saw a jazz quartet in an ancient square playing on a white baby grand piano, a bass, a saxophone, and drums. They had a box where people were dropping donations.



A bridge in the English Garden

A "Chinese" pavilion in the park. Here temporary restaurants (biergarten) are set up to serve traditional Bavarian food. In a week in Munich, I concluded (perhaps unfairly?) that they eat great quantities of meat, especially pork, that they drink prodigious amounts of beer, and that they smoke much more than here in the US. The food is good, but is quite heavy and rich. Probably not such a healthy diet!



I loved the alpine paintings on the ceiling of this restaurant, a reminder that the Alps are just 40 kilometers away.





Not that you care, but these are some of the people I was auditing. The work environment in Germany is much more formal than where I work in the US. They are quite disciplined. The reason for the picture, however is so you can see the radish and lard appetizer tray on the table. Yum!



The Opera house is part of the Residenz Palace complex. The building on the left is part of the palace that is still being rebuilt from WWII. I thought it remarkable that while under construction, a giant screen is placed in front of the wall that looks like a finished wall.

 

At the Oktoberfest grounds, there is a hill with this gigantic monument to the heroes of Bavaria. The lady in the statue (Bavaria) is standing next to a lion (the Wittelsbach family).



If any of you actually read all of that, my condolences. This is a way for me to journal, and if you like it too, that's fantastic.  I hope you enjoyed it. If any of these pictures brought back memories or spurred thoughts of other cities, I'd love to hear about them.

Schnepf Farms Trip

A few weeks ago, little D was scheduled to go to a farm with his kindie class to see some animals. Unfortunately, he had a doctor's appointment that day, so didn't get to go. Partly to help alleviate his hurt feelings, and partly because Intel was generous, we had a chance just after Halloween to visit a farm in Queen Creek (~15 miles from Chandler) that is half carnival and half working farm.  I'd never been there, so I was surprised by all that we could do there.
Here are a few pictures of the train we rode around the farm. The kids were so excited that it was a "real" train.

Look, it's a real train!!

Not much beats a family train ride.

At dinner, we ran into some old friends from another ward. D and their little boy loved the live music and started dancing to it, which was so funny!

 

 

There were some carnival rides, like airplanes, flying swings, little rollercoaster, huge trampoline (like a giant whoopie cushion) and carouselle. We had lots of fun. E still says a week after that "D and I are going flying in the airplane."

The Red Baron and navigator

I wonder what that says.

She's catching serious air - a 10 inch vertical!

 The kids also got to go to a petting zoo to touch the sheep, chickens, and goats. The cows, pigs, and donkey were look, but don't touch. Later we went into the giant corn maze and got lost for a while. At least we pretended we were lost. C and N thought we found ourselves too quickly. They would have stayed in there much longer. 

 

Our livestock

Finally, we got to enjoy the piggy races. A was picked as one of five sponsors for a piggy.  He cheered on his piggy with all his might, but to no avail as his piggy cried wee wee all the way home. This was hilarious.

We hope you enjoyed the short farm report. It was a great family outing and all the kids were well behaved throughout which was a treat for us parents.

USU/BYU Predictions

We are all very excited about the Utah State / BYU game which is tomorrow because we can cheer for both teams. We hope the game is fun and that no one gets hurt.

And here is our bold prediction of who will win.  If not, we'll be happy anyway. If you need an explanation, it's probably not your team.  : D

Yes, the kids and I built this in anticipation of the game. The kids were excited when I showed them where Emily used to work.

Trip Pictures

As would seem obvious to most, the last post filled me with empathy and considerably more anxiety to return home, even though I had already been made aware of it when I read it.  I felt relieved when I came home a couple days after it was written to begin fixing thing like the door.

When  I returned, nothing was sweeter than the hugs I got and seeing the kids smiles when they got the Malaysian dried mango, crab flavored crackers, and souvenir shirts. It's not that the token gifts made up for the trip, just that they represented the joy of reuniting after a necessary parting. Emily even forgave me (like she has done each time work calls me away) and not just because I brought some cheap clothing.  :)  Another joy was sharing with the kids the pictures I brought back. Even though 90% of the time there was spent auditing suppliers (which isn't really very exciting to talk about), the kids loved seeing the pictures I took on the weekends. And although I couldn't help but feel like a cad posting these after that last post (what kind of Dad goes to a tropical island while his wife struggles with 5 kids), they wanted to share with cousins and friends as if they had been there too.  So with that guilty preamble, here are some pics of my work trip.

 

Penang is a small island in Malaysia that used to be the center of the British Asian colonies. Because of this, it has always been very multicultural, with large European, Chinese, Malay, Indian, and Armenian influences.

The town has lots of art projects in unexpected places, like this bicycle.

 

Malaysia is a mostly Muslim country. This beautiful mosque was built in the early 1800s. 

 

This sign on Armenian Street documents where the Armenian community used to live. The Eastern & Oriental Hotel is a beautiful old hotel begun by Armenian brothers.

 

There is a small community of about 75 houses belonging to the Chew clan who moved to Penang in the mid-1800s but didn't have land. They built their village on stilts over the harbor. It is now a UNESCO Heritage site and still lived in by the family.



Penang has a large Buddhist community.The top temple is a Chinese style temple with a Lao style pagoda. The middle one is a huge statue dedicated to Goddess of Mercy (kind of like a huge sea maiden). There are lots of plaques throughout the building with names of generous donors. The last one is a Thai style temple.

 

 

About 15% of the population is ethnic Indian (mostly Tamil from southern India). I walked through part of "Little India" in this clip.



I went up to an overlook area to see the city from above. It is a little smoky because of massive intentional burning in Sumatra by Indonesian farmers clearing jungle for farming.  

 

I was a bit surprised to see Mater in Penang. He is apparently leading a spy training school or something.

It is common in Penang to see scenes like this with a mixture of architectures and ages.

One of the major legacies of the British era is a lot of tremendous architecture in downtown Georgetown (the state capital). The Mormon chapel is an old British mansion, one of many throughout the town.

I hope all of you have learned a bit about this cool spot in southeast Asia. I was grateful to have the chance to go, but sad that I couldn't take the whole family. Next time maybe it won't be 90% work.