Picture Day #1

Hello everyone,

Today I will be posting quite a few pictures with corresponding comments.

I went out to Marienplatz Friday and spent quite a few hours there. Marienplatz is a pretty famous area of Munich, with a lot of beautiful architecture consisting of churches, city hall, arches, and stores/stands/tents. Unfortunately, I was unable to take more pictures because when I got there, it was already about 2:00pm or so, and then when I got out of an organic store (Reformhaus), it was blizzarding and I got a little lost. I survived though, and I will go back there to take even more pictures. I also went to a four-five story bookstore called Hugendubel. It was truly impressive and I was even able to get my German lesson book for my class plus a German-English dictionary.

Also included below are some local area pictures. Some of the picture's qualities are not so good due to the fact I had to take some pictures quickly. Click the pictures to make them larger, and I hope you enjoy them!

There are many of these candles around the house. My host mother said she purchased them in California (I believe) but said they originally came from a European church and are very, very old.

This is the back of the house. The door is the main door to the house, however. The house around the "front" doesn't have a specific entrance, but it does have an underground parking garage that can hold up to five cars. I was told that those kind of garages are common here because of the lack of street space.

This is the gate that leads out to Kurzbauerstraße, which is where I live. We also have three "garbage cans" seen to the left of the gate. Each door is for a different type of waste: the dark grey can is for regular household trash, the brown can (I think) is for compost, and the green can (I think, I may have gotten the last two colors mixed up), is for paper. Plastic and metal get taken out to other recycle bins in the area. The red box to the right of the gate is our mailbox and doorbell, but I believe there is a doorbell next to the actual door as well.

This is Kurzbauerstraße, just outside the gate to the right. About two houses down there is a small bakery called "Max Popp" and a garden shop.

This is a cigarette machine that is right in front of the bakery. These machines are actually fairly common and it is still legal to advertise cigarettes. Pictures to come on the advertisements.

This is the corner of Kurzbauerstraße and Herterichstraße. Most of the street signs I've seen look just like this. However, other street signs like, no parking, and children playing are very different than in the U.S. The sign directly below the Kurzbauerstraße sign (it's kind of hard to see) it a blue circular sign with a red circled X with two white arrows pointing direction. I have come to recognize that sign as meaning "no parking." The sign across the street that says "Kindergarten" actually would be equivalent to our "preschool" and would be a way of (obviously) letting vehicles know there is a school nearby (there are two actually, my children actually go to the other one).

Okay, so if you turn to the right from Kurzbauerstraße on to Hererichstraße and walk about three or four houses down, you come to my favorite little organic shop called "Natürkost in Solln." I have met two women that work there and they are very nice. They close on noon on Saturdays and most stores aren't open on Sundays. I actually walked the other direction on Hererichstraße and went to "bio-welt" yesterday, which is open until 8:00pm (that is late for stores here in Munich).

Across the street from the "Natürkost" market is a Catholic church, which I believe is the church my family attends, although I'm not quite sure.

So then walk towards the church, turn right and walk about a quarter mile or so and you reach the Solln S-Bahn station (essentially it is a train station). Take that to Marienplatz, walk out of the station and you will walk into the most people I have seen in one place since I got to Munich, and that includes the airport. This entire area was amazing, with lots of little food stands, and the book store, and all sorts of little shops. I will definitely be returning. I believe the above building is the Rathaus, or City Hall. As you can see above and below, shops were made into the buildings.

This is a church in the Marienplatz area. If you look at the sky, shortly after this picture it was very difficult to see anything with the amount of snow that fell.

This is a Spanish food storefront that I saw while walking and I thought it was kind of neat. I took this picture after the snow had died down a bit, but I was freezing and looking for the train station, so I didn't go inside.

One other thing I found interesting about Munich is that there are a lot of Blümen (flower) shops, stores, and tents. For 2€ I bought a really pretty yellowy-orange rose. I thought it was worth it. I have noticed that my host family likes potted plants, and I have been thinking it would be nice to get one while I'm here.

That is it for the pictures for now. As I said before, I will be going back and taking more pictures, hopefully there will be no snowstorm when that happens again.

By the way, for those people who have signed up to get automatic updates with my blog, but don't seem to be receiving regular e-mails, check your spam folder. I noticed that the e-mails could be getting sent to the wrong place.

I have included below a comic of Elephant & Piggie to give everyone a mini taste of the books.

Bis Bald,

Holly