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| Cemetery |
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| Art in an underground passage in the park |
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| The Angel of Peace statue |
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| German-Ukrainian solidarity |
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| Bridge over the Isar |
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| Surfer |
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| Art Noveau ceiling decoration at Villa Stuck |
After avoiding overseas travel for 2 years due to Covid, and then having to cancel two European trips with friends due to cancer treatment, we finally decided to go to Germany and Austria during the Christmas market season. This may seem an odd choice if you know us because Jake is very averse to cold and I'm not a huge fan either, and neither of us are big shoppers. But the festiveness appealed to us and neither of us have been to this part of Germany before. I have never been to Germany at all and Jake only to Berlin and Tubingen for conferences.
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| Approaching Munich |
We flew from Santa Fe to Denver, then Denver direct to Munich, and miraculously for this day and age, both flights were on time. Stepping out of the Munich airport, there is a small Christmas market set up right there, but we forged ahead with our luggage to the train station on the other side of the plaza. It's a 45 minute train ride right into the heart of the city. Emerging from the underground station is always disorienting and we emerged right into the middle of the Marienplatz and its big Christmas market. Fortunately there are many map kiosks around and after a couple tries we got headed in the right direction to get to our hotel, just a few blocks away.Glühwein
Our room was ready even though we were there before noon, so we showered and napped before heading back out to check out the Marienplatz and Residentzplats markets! So many snack options... I started with a cherry strudel and cappuccino, ah, refreshed and warmed. We learned that the food booths charge a refundable 1 to 5 euro fee for tableware, saves a lot of disposable cups, plates, and silveware! Later in the evening I got a Glühwein, a hot mulled wine, and Jake got a non-alcoholic mulled cider drink. The hot drinks come in cute holiday themed mugs. Other booths sell crafts like everything you could possible imagine to set up a creche, glass ornaments, candle's, soaps, scarves and hats, etc.
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| Marienplatz |
Given the cold temperatures, we opted to dine at a traditional beer hall. We sat at the end of a long table in a wooden beamed room and feasted on roast pork and spinach dumplings downed with a dark beer.
After a solid night's sleep and breakfast at our hotel, we ventured out to the Victualmarkt as the snow started falling. I thought it would be open early for food shoppers, but it was only just starting to open up. There are lots of stalls selling everything from meats to cheeses to spices and holiday greens. Also lots of places sellling prepared foods with protected, but unheated, seating areas.
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| Christmas greens at the Victualenmarkt |
It happened to be very close to the Munich city museum which we were interested in visiting. The museum has a very interesting series of exhibits about the history of the city and how it has influenced present day life. An audiotour in English was informative and amusing. We learned that the Protestant Swedes had at one point invaded Germany. A punishment in the 1600s was to be placed on a tall wooden donkey, a ible humiliation. Many concentration camps were located in and around Munich during WWII and after the war it was a center for resettlement of displaced people. Greek workers were welcomed in Munich for a very long time and at one point there was a king who was half Greek, hence some of the Greek architecture around the city.
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| Sculptures of Morris dancers at the museum |
There was so much information that we had to take a break for a cup of tea at the Museum cafe before returning for WWII and the displaced persons exhibit.
We found a restaurant near the Victualenmarkt for lunch. A dish of braised duck with potato dumplings and red cabbage with apple would easily have been enough for both of us. In the evening, we ventured back out to the Christmas markets for a light dinner sharing a sausage on a roll and an apple strudel covered in a starchy vanilla sauce. The falling snow made for a lovely scene over the lights of the market.
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| Christmas market mugs |
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| Snow falling over the Residentzplatz market |
This morning we met Coco for a guided tour of the
markets. We have had some exceptional
food in Oaxaca, but felt we could learn a lot more in a tour. We walked down to the largest market, Abastos,
first. This is the less touristy market
where locals tend to shop. You can get
pretty much anything there from socks to meat and vegetables, to furniture. We admired the flower stalls, learned about
the different cuts of meat and sausages and ate at breakfast at two food
stalls. At the first we had a bowl of delicious
hot chocolate made with water, a sweet bread, and Jake and I split a memela, a
large tortilla with black beans and fried eggs on which you can put a spicy
tomato salsa. At the second place we
split two tacos, one with grilled, shredded lamb and the other with grilled,
shredded goat. One the table are many
toppings you can add including 3 types of salsas, grated cabbage, and sliced
radishes. I washed my tacos down with a
juice made from hibiscus flowers.
According to our guide, the market stalls are all pretty safe to eat at
as purified water is now used for everything from washing dishes to making
ice. The tables were regularly wiped
down with disinfectant. Dried peppers at the Abastos market Lots of mole ingredients
Many stalls had huge burlap bags full of dried peppers. We tried a pasilla pepper paste at one stall
with a very rich, salty flavor. Fresh chiles
de agua, the pepper most local to the Oaxaca central valley, were also available. Our guide also recommended the small criollo
avocados, much sought after by high end restauranteurs.
Back towards the center of town we went to the Benito Jaurez
market. Just outside the market a vendor
gave us a free sample of chapulines, roasted crickets. We got the garlic flavored ones, and they
were remarkably good. Not at all leggy
as I had feared. I asked about the gusanos, worms that are used for flavoring
things, and learned that most are collected either from agaves or from a
cecropia tree. We tried two types of cookies from a sweets
vendor. Little round ones that come in a
stack tasted a bit like baked donuts.
The other was a toasted coconut cookie a little like a crispy macaroon. And finally a sample of string cheese that had
a much more interesting, slightly sour, flavor, compared to the kind you feed little
kids. I had tried tejate yesterday, a
beverage made from roasted corn, chocolate beans, rosita de cacao flowers, and
roasted seeds of mamey (sapote), a fruit.
It is made in a big ceramic tub and a soft layer of what looks like
curds floats to the top. It has a faint
chocolate flavor with roasted and floral notes.
Served cold. Roast chapulines
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| Grasshoppers |
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| Meat stall at the Benito Juarez market |
I also learned that the student encampment are students from
the public teaching college. Our guide
felt that the teacher’s union was using them to gain concessions from the
government with elections coming up in early April. The worms on the hooks, bait, without having
to make the teachers go out on strike.
So far we haven’t talked to anyone who likes the government or any
particular political party, and everyone has mentioned significant corruption
as being the major problem.
RESTAURANTS
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| Black IPA |
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| Chocolate cake with red fruits |
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| Pork with mole and grilled fruits |
Tierra del Sol – Beautiful rooftop terrace and excellent
service. Complimentary cocktail of
coconut milk, pineapple juice and mescal as well as salsa made to your liking
at the table (with the option of adding in chapulines (grasshoppers), which we
did. Jake’s chile relleno duo was
particularly good.
El Olivo tapas restaurant – Rooftop with very hip vibe. Lots of choices and they make their own small
batch beer and non-alcoholic ginger beer.
The black IPA and ginger beer were excellent! They also make their own
sausages and mustards. We had a lamb
sausage, oyster pate, and tempura vegetables.
La Olla – Excellent mole negro over chicken. The coloradito mole on an enchilada was also
very flavorful. The house cocktail is
made with mezcal and lime juice with a mole salt flavored rim.
La Rambla and other places in a food hall - Excellent ceviche, tuna burger, also sushi, frappucinos, strawberry water drink.
La Brujula - coffee, cookies, muffinsOaxaca en Una Taza - coffee, hot chocolate, pastries
Los Pacos - We didn't eat there, but we did buy mole on the recommendation of 2 guides.
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| Looking across the main plaza |
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| One of several stelae recording important events |
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| Perhaps showing male captives who were castrated |
Francisco arrived to pick us up at noon, right on time. We had asked him to take us to Arrazola, a
little town that specializes in carved animal figurines and the famous
fantastical alebrijes. He had a long
conversation with someone on the phone about road conditions and directions and
we set off down the hill and onto dirt roads.
After asking directions multiple times, he successfully found the back
route to the town and we were quite entertained with traveling through the
little villages on the short trip.
Francisco knew people at a few workshops and took us to two, very high quality
ones that were quite pleased with. I got
a hummingbird at the first one and Jake got a turtle/eagle alebrije at the second. By then it was about 2pm and we were ready to
head back to our hotel. The cost for the
whole trip was 900 pesos, about $45.
I found Francisco’s observation that Americans are often
more solitary than Mexicans quite interesting.
Most of the weaving and wood carving workshops are family operations
where everyone in the family helps out and lives together. And in general Mexican families tend to have
multiple generations living together or in close proximity. My family in contrast live in many different
states and we see each other relatively infrequently. At least two of Francisco’s children now live
in the US and I didn’t think to ask if he had children living in Oaxaca still,
but he has siblings and parents in the area. One of his brothers and his father died of
Covid unfortunately, his brother before a vaccine was available and his father
because he refused to be vaccinated.
Wednesday morning I reserved for the all important visit to Oaxaca’s ethnobotanical garden, right in the heart of the historic downtown area. Originally a Dominican monastery and then a military base after President Benito Juarez separated the powers of church and state, it became the ethnobotanical garden in 1998, narrowly escaping becoming a convention center and parking lot. Currently the garden is only open for guided tours. I got there before 10:30 for the 11am tour in English. The tour in English is for some reason twice as long (2 hours) as the tour in Spanish and only once a day, and it often reaches capacity.
Oaxaca has some of the highest plant diversity in Mexico and
the garden hopes to eventually represent 10% of that diversity, or about 1300
species. It is divided into geographical
sections including the Central Valley where the city is located, the dry
forest, and the tropical moist forest.
There is also a section for plants with an affinity for alkaline soils,
an agricultural section, and an Arts section with amazing displays of cacti. Our guide quite capably kept the 30 of us in
line and had a strong voice. She was
trained as an architect but had a good knowledge of the plants. None of the plants have signs and she only
referred to them by their common names for the most part. The garden does eventually plan to have a
self-guided tour.
I was very excited to see teosinte, the ancient ancestor of
modern corn, growing in the agricultural area.
It even had little ears! We were
also introduced to a relative of cacao, rosita de cacao, whose flower is used
to make a beverage called tejate. Also
of interest were the quelites, wild herbs used in cooking like hierba de conejo,
Tridax coronopifolia, in the Aster family.
This herb happened to reappear as a garnish on Jake’s lunch today and it
has a refreshing flavor with a hint of anise.
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| Rosita de cacao flower |
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| Teosinte |
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| an ear of teosinte |
The tropical forest area has a new greenhouse specially designed
with geothermal energy to keep it cool on hot days. The garden uses only water collected from
roof runoff for the tropical section of the garden. The other areas have plants that should be
able to survive with the city’s natural rainfall.
The tropical dry forest had several species of trees in the pea family and the cotton family, including the shaving brush tree, Pseudobombax ellipticum.
The Dominicans had built a lime kiln to make cement, so the garden features a few palms, agaves and other plants particularly well adapted to alkaline soils in this area. Another large section of the garden has huge organ and Opuntia cactuses as well as several rare barrel cactuses rescued from the biosphere reserve when the Panamerican Highway was widened.
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| Plants adapted to alkaline soils |
Our guide ended with describing how we probably wouldn’t be visiting
Oaxaca if it weren’t for the cochineal industry. The Spanish were unsuccessful at getting
slaves to produce high quality cochineal in great demand for the red dye the
scale insects produce, so they gave land back to the indigenous people in
return for having them produce cochineal.
Some people I’ve talked to have said that the strong indigenous land rights
in this part of Mexico are partly responsible for the low crime rates. The importance of tourism and distance from
any international borders have also been listed as reasons why the drug cartels
have been kept out.
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| Locally known as the mad woman plant because of its spinyness |
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| A type of Plumeria |
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| Coyote agave |
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| Copal tree, the fragrant resin is used as incense and the wood is used to make alebrijes (wood carvings) |
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| Accompanied by a local dog |
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| Our guide pointing out a metate |
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| Maybe a sun or a calendar? |
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| Nelson at his huge loom! |
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| Items used to make dyes |
