Wednesday 18 August - Oberschleissheim

Enough of Munich. Despite dodgy weather time to to do the environs. So head off on the train to Oberschleissheim, another palace complex of the Wittelsbachs. There are basically 3 palaces here, the old, the new and then at the end of great formal gardens, the Lustheim. None of the three has their full original contents and so have been used to house 3 different collections, which could almost have been designed so that they won’t all appeal to the same group of people. The new houses renaissance paintings, the Lustheim Meissen porcelain and the old palace religious folk art. The Meissen is fine, but I have a limited attention span for pots. The religious folk art is just the very most awful kitsch. Jeff Koons could come here for inspiration. Just can’t see the point of showing this stuff. For hundreds of years the greatest trained artists of their day have beeen producing wonderful quality religious images, so there is certainly no shortage of it, so why show the work of complete amateurs? Ghastly. I can see why people for their own enjoyment might get into crafts, and it keeps them off the streets, but lets face it, if we really wanted colourful little bits of tat made out of waste products, the Chinese would be making them and they would fill our supermarkets, rather than craft fairs where people feel obliged to buy them, usually because it’s for charity.


As always with Germany, the great joy is how easy it is to get trains, find one’s way to sights and then get tickets. So unlike most other countries, and of course virtually everyone speaks great English.