In Munich
July 23, 2007
I headed over to Munich for a couple of days and the weather was very, very hot.
Munich is known for its high-quality of living and low crime-rate. Because of this, and I suppose the architecture, it is often referred to as "Toytown".
There are a lot of beautiful old buildings and public sculpture. At first I was surprised to see just how much remains after World War II, but I read that much was completely rebuilt post-war to the original street plans.
The Frauenkirche.
Asamkirche with incredible interior created by the Asam brothers.
15 years ago, or a little longer, I spent a couple of weeks in a German town near the Swiss border with a school exchange trip.
It was only when I arrived in Munich that I realised that I'd been there once before on a day trip. Of course it seemed that the city had changed a lot since then. This time I wasn't really looking for things like unusual colourways of skate shoes, but I found a few interesting stores.
Run by Burkhard Pflug, Gasoline Alley is billed as a "shop for adventurers". A select goods shop featuring outdoor, workwear, biker and classic American clothes and accessories, Pflug embodies the "Free and Easy" spirit. The store is decorated with bikes, Americana, and various parts of boats or planes. The selection is purist and really great.
Old shoe shop with a big array of old and new Birkenstock.
An edited version of the catalogue business of Manufactum has been available in the UK for years, but I didn't realise the scale of their business and selection.
Manufactum source, or even, produce the "best" products in each field across a number of categories. Whether it is a pencil sharpener (Dux), jeans (Levi's 501xx), padlocks (Squire) or enamel buckets (from Romania), everything is carefully selected.
Just before I went, Paul mentioned that Munich had been voted number one in Monocle magazine for quality of life.
One of Monocle's criterion for assessing a city was the ease of getting a drink past 1am.
I didn't need to try that, but one of the strangest things I found was the lack of availability of bottled water in the city centre. I'm not really sure why that is (perhaps the tap water is fine to drink?), but with the weather so hot this could really be improved on.
