A Science Nerd's Heaven

The Deutsches Museum is the world's largest science and technology museum.  Sara and I decided that going without a plan was easiest, since the list of areas we wanted to visit would have been ridiculous.  We spent more than five hours there, seeing tons, reading less (most of the in-depth plaques were in German), and taking fun pictures.  While it may be the largest science museum, many of it's interactive elements were not working, which was a bummer, and definitely would not have passed the mustard in the US!  Even still, we easily could have spent 5 weeks there!

Here's an abbreviated list of some of the things we saw: boats, airplanes, engines, cars, nanotechnology, bones, glass, printing, clocks, agriculture, mining, submarines, toys, the environment, musical instruments, ceramics, and energy.  I'm going to let my pictures do the talking for this one so you can see some of the fun we had exploring this museum.

A slice of an Airbus A300... very cool

A tiny German car

Vertebrae of a Whale - this was giant!

A Gutenberg Letter Press!

Foucault's pendulum - proof the earth rotates!

And the best for last...

A "foot massage" that really just shakes your body and doesn't make you feel refreshed as advertised in the poster!

Meeting for Beers in Munich

Moving on to Munich meant that I had a friend to travel with for a week!  All I had to do was get to Munich Airport to meet Sara, which shouldn't have been difficult since I was a two-hour direct train ride from the airport.

However nothing is ever as smooth going as expected, evidenced by my train stopping short of the city with announcements in German that they were diverting people by bus to another station.  The bus ride was much longer than I thought it was going to be, which pushed me back even later from when I was supposed to meet Sara.  Luckily she was able to call me and we changed plans to meet at the hostel.

An hour or two later, we were together, checked in, and on our way!  We took it easy, wandering down the main drag doing some shopping and just taking in the city.  Sara bought a dirndl, a traditional dress worn in southern Germany, which looked amazing!  (She's all set for Halloween 2010!)Dinner was traditional Bavarian food, which we ate at a table we shared with this couple who spoke limited English, making our attempts at conversation quite entertaining.

Ready to really explore Munich, the next morning we went on a walking tour around the city.  The highlights include a well-told story about the events leading up to and through World War II, a subtle reminder of German passive resistance, and small memorials to those who lost their lives.  We also heard a fun story about how the devil helped to build a church (ask me if you're interested, it's too long to type out).

Our afternoon consisted of climbing a church tower for awesome views of the city, visiting the Royal Palace (Residenz), and watching the Rathaus-Glockenspiel, which entails bells chiming and figures "dancing" and "jousting" (moving on a rotating circle) as a way of reenacting stories from
the 16th century.


After all that fun, our search of food brought us to the Viktualienmarkt, a beer garden surrounded by a farmers market for bread, cheese and Radlers, beer mixed with lemon soda -- much better than regular beer!  On a roll, we headed over to Hofbrauhaus, another brewery and beer garden, for more beer (a dark, 1L Radler this time - to split) and pretzels.  Yum!

We chanced upon some amazingly talented street musicians, who took well-known classical songs and put a funky, jazzy spin on them.  It definitely was a great ending to the day!