Blauen Reiters

Had breakfast at McDonald’s (yeah yeah, I know) so we could get on the road earlyish to head to München. McD’s food is actually much better here: the eggs have those yummy orangey yolks, the croissants are like real, actual croissants, not some canned crescent roll… they don’t have serve-yourself ketchup, but there was Nutella out for the croissants. And they’ve added some new Indian selctions to their menu. I’ll have to try one sometime, just to see (not that we eat there often).

Rather than driving the whole way to München and then trying to find the museum and figure out parking, we went to Allach train station, then took the train in. Took quite a while to figure out the tickets. Guitarman tried to leave it to me since I sort of know more German than he does, but I didn’t remember how the zone maps (they’re color-coded to show which zone the stops are in) or the ticket machines (you can push the button for the ticket you think you want & that’ll give you fare info & sometimes a tiny bit more detail or different wording of something to help you figure it out) work. And they don’t have English on them at all. And, for those of you who haven’t travelled in Europe before, the fines for riding a train without the proper ticket can be a bit steep. Finally got it figured out, as far as we know.

We went to the Lenbachhaus Museum, which has a collection of art from the Blue Rider group, with works by Paul Klee, Franz Marc, August Macke, Wasiliy Kandinsky and Gabriele Münter, among others. I’m a fan of Kandinsky (was impressed by his work when we went to the Bauhaus Museum—maybe my favorite museum ever—in Berlin), so it was fun for me, too, though we mostly went ‘cause it was the one touristy thing my mom wanted to do. Great museum, but terribly unfriendly staff. For some reason, they were obsessed with getting me to keep my purse (which is kind of backpackish) in front of me… not to the back and not to the side. Even if I was holding Wee Laddie. I don’t know why, but it was apparently a very big deal. Seriously, they were more concerned about my stupid purse than the two-year-old running around the priceless paintings. (Oh no, I don’t mean our two-year-old. ) ;)

There is supposedly a 2nd exhibit space, Kunstbau, that is connected with the Lenbachhaus and was having a display of what gardens might have looked like if conceived of by the Blue Rider artists. Kunstbau was listed on our tickets, but neither they nor the brochure my mom found had an actual address for this place. (Marketing genius, I’ll tell you.) According to the München web site, it’s right over the Königsplatz U-bahn stop. According to the signage at Königsplatz, it was across the street. According to our eyes (we traipsed around several other large buildings trying to find it), the place is downright invisible. I suppose we could have gone back to the friendly team at the Lenbachhaus and asked, but none of us volunteered to do it.