“Willkommen to München …” the tape began. On the screen was an etching of medieval monks watering sunflowers, turning a spitted boar, pouring beer. It didn’t look like such a bad life. The next image was of modern, rebuilt Munich. The narration managed to be boastful of this phoenixlike accomplishment without directly mentioning any world wars, suggesting that a “sad and tragic” plague had reduced the city to rubble. Munich had been liberated by Americans, and there was the plastic feel of an American mall to the images on the screen. From the figure of the belled jester turning in the Marienplatz clock tower to the checkerboard walls of the Old Court, every historical site was sterilized to quaintness. Virtually every other image was of a beer garden or a beer hall, as if the brew were an anointing oil of innocence—Hitler’s beer-hall putsch aside, of course. Yet Munich was undeniably attractive. People looked so wealthy and well dressed that they seemed to be shopping on a different planet. Cars looked inexplicably clean and sounded like the brass horns of a hunt. Swans and ducks flocked to the city’s lakes and river; when was a swan last seen on the Moscow?

“Munich is a city with the stamp of royal builders,” the narrator intoned. “Max-Joseph-Platz and the National Theater were built by King Max-Joseph, Ludwigstrasse by his son, King Ludwig I, the “Golden Mile” of Maximilianstrasse by Ludwig’s son, King Max II, and Prinzregentenstrasse by his brother, Prince Regent Luitpold.”

Ah, but do we get to see the the beer hall where Hitler and his Brownshirts started their first premature march to power? Will we see the square where Göring took the bullet meant for Hitler and in so doing captured der Führer’s heart forever? Will we tour Dachau? Well, Munich’s history is so packed with people and events that we can’t see everything on one tape. Arkady admitted his attitude was unfair, jaundiced and corroded with envy.

“At last year’s Oktoberfest, celebrants drank over five million liters of beer and consumed seven hundred thousand chickens, seventy thousand pork knuckles and seventy roasted oxen …”

Well, they could come to Moscow to diet. The nearly pornographic display of food glazed Arkady’s eyes. After opera in the National Theater—“built by a tax on beer”—refreshment in a romantic beer cellar. After a spin on the autobahn, a pit stop in the beer garden. After an Alpine hike up the Zugspitze, well-earned beer at a rustic inn.

Arkady stopped the tape and rewound to the hike. Vista of Alps leading to the stone-and-snow escarpment of the Zugspitze. Hikers in lederhosen. Tight shot of edelweiss. Silhouettes of mountaineers high above. Drifting clouds.

Beer garden of the inn. Honeysuckle climbing yellow plaster. The enervated stillness of Bavarians after lunch, except for one woman in short sleeves and sunglasses. Cut to a vapor trail leading from clouds to a Lufthansa jet.