After many hours journeying by car,
we were eager to stretch our legs and explore the city of Munich. We set off on
foot to the train station, where we purchased a ticket and boarded a train
headed to the Englischer Garten,
or, the English Gardens. These gardens are very famous
as they are one of the largest urban gardens in the world (larger than central
park in the states as well).
On
our journey there, we noted that the Germans are a very active people.
Everywhere we went there were people involved in recreation. Numerous people
rode bikes, and the city was well designed to accommodate them. Aside from
their own spacious biking lane, they had liberal parking spaces and even
special spaces in the cross walks designated solely for bikers.
Once
we reached the park, the open fields were covered in people enjoying the
outdoors and involved in every manner of recreational activity you could think
of.
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| Our LO crawled all over the fields and attempted to make friends with all the dogs. The pup seen at left was going crazy for the bubbles his owners were blowing for him. See the horse drawn carriage in the back meandering around the lake? It was so quaint there! |
After
leaving one of the fields, we strolled the dirt paths past the ducks and treat
shacks, and over wooden bridges past the musicians with their accordions. German
ladies pushed their babies in prams, and lovers embraced on park benches. I
promise you it was as idyllic as it sounds. We stayed there until dark and couldn’t
refrain from continually commenting on how thankful we were to have been able
to stop here.
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| The park as the sun began to set. Idyllic and gorgeous! Note the Monopteros at the top of the hill. |
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"A Monopteros is a circular colonnade supporting a roof but without any walls"- Wikipedia
The
park’s construction began in 1789 and has since been added to and rearranged to
make it the lovely oasis it provides the people of Munich currently.
My
inner photographer was thoroughly excited to have new locations to practice
capturing.
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| This was the view below us from the Monopteros atop the hill. |
Aside
from the spacious grassy expanses for recreation, the park also offers scores
of playgrounds for children, nearly 50 miles of paths and trails, a lake, beer
gardens, Chinese tea-houses, a multitude of fountains, flowers, and much much
more that we didn't get to explore! We agreed that this was just what we needed after our nearly six-hour drive to Munich, and
the relaxing adventure was the perfect start to our vacation.
Absolutely enchanting. Magnificent. And yet somewhat incongruous when one considers the German peoples recent past.
ReplyDeleteIsn't it?! And thank you :) that's precisely how we felt when we were there! And I felt similarly about the conflict between the serenity there and the historical knowledge of their actions not even a century ago. I hadn't expected it to be like that.
DeleteAh...I didn't know you had transformed yourself into SC Photography. Very nice...the 2nd & 5th pictures of Grassy Park Scenes are like softly hazed Impressionist, but the 1st pic of Adam with Dog on Grass is straight day-in-park pic, with no SC logo. Is there an app or program between the camera download and the blog upload? Inquiring minds want to know...esp. image #2 -- VERY artsy.
ReplyDeleteYes, I am currently "SC" as I felt the C and Photography sounded better together than my full name. It's still a work in progress though... still trying to think of a name I like better. I didn't put a logo on the first one because the picture didn't seem (to me at least) to be particularly unique or outstanding. I'm not terribly concerned someone is going to viral image a random picture of a random kid in a park. The other pictures I thought were better, so I put my name on it to claim them.
DeleteAnd yes, I don't have photoshop but I do perform some editing in between the camera and posting phase, although each photo was also taken with different camera settings that help give off the image I want to help portray. The first, third, and fourth image are more straightforward. The third and fourth images had little editing done. They were meant to be straight forward pictures to show you where we were, what we did, and what we saw. However with the second and final photos, I wanted to show you what we felt as well as saw. There is so much more available to the naked eye when you're there in person! Where I was standing while taking that photo my eyes can focus in close and out further, I can take in the newly developing leaf buds next to me as well as the kids on bikes in the distance. There's no way I can portray all that I want in my photo, so I decided to for an overall impression. I softened the image so you look at it as a whole and also turned the saturation up a bit since softening tends to blur and darken the colors. The saturation also helped because the tiny green leaf buds glowed against the setting sun rays hopefully giving off the impression of glowing life forming on the tree branches that you may not have noticed otherwise. Things like that. I wanted the pictures to look how we felt when we saw it. It was gorgeous, enchanting, relaxing, and felt like being magically transported to another place, so that's what I tried to convey. :)
Well...you have a good eye for the finished product. Like some others have commented: "it looks like a painting!". Good job.
DeleteAnd let's all hope the adventures keep coming.
As for the German thing - they're trying really HARD to atone for those sins, and to never repeat them. Most of the German tourists I've met while traveling seem very friendly and eager to help, even though that authoritarian streak sometimes shows through. In Panama once, Connie & I found ourselves on a charter German tourist bus, and they sounded just like Americans - except the words were strange. The inflections & rhythms were the same as ours. I suspect the similarities of speech indicate similarities of thought, maybe more than we'd like to admit.