I’m back from a few days in Munich, which I’d recommend as excellent value to visit. (I suspect there’s an oversupply of hotel rooms in advance of next summer’s world cup.) It rained nearly the whole time I was there, but that didn’t stop me from visiting some excellent art galleries: the wonderful “Alte Pinakothek”:http://www.pinakothek.de/alte-pinakothek/ , the goodish “Neue Pinakotek”:http://www.pinakothek.de/neue-pinakothek/ and the sinister and intruiging “Villa Stuck”:http://www.villastuck.de/ . Of course I also managed to consume a large number of excellent sausages and quantities of “Dunkles Weißbier”:http://www.xs4all.nl/~patto1ro/munibrew.htm ! All of which brings me on to a less flattering observation on Germany and the Germans, namely, that the Germans may well be the worst dressed of the major industrial nations. Admittedly, the competition is stiff from us British and from the Americans, but I think the Germans may win on grounds of sheer uniformity. It is possible to sit and watch a string of people of all ages and sizes walk past all dressed as follows: dark denim jeans, dark denim jacket, trainers (sneakers). The monotony is hardly broken by the occasional deviant who leaves the denim jacket behind for a regulation black leather one. Since “Jamie Oliver’s Naked Chef”:http://www.jamieoliver.com/ is now dubbed into German — so much for Chirac joking with Schroeder about British cuisine — I can’t help wondering whether the Germans aren’t in line for some British or American clothing-and-lifestlye fascism TV: “Trinny and Susannah”:http://www.bbc.co.uk/lifestyle/tv_and_radio/what_not_to_wear/index.shtml or “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0358332/ perhaps. But perhaps they already get those shows and are showing a laudable determination to resist.

[For Alex: here’s a link to a picture of Gabriel Cornelius von Max’s “Monkeys as Judges of Art”:http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:Gabriel_Cornelius_von_Max%2C_1840-1915%2C_Monkeys_as_Judges_of_Art%2C_1889.jpg from the Neue Pinakothek.]