Thursday, February 21, 2008

Munich - Day 3


Our third day in Munich, let's call it Sunday, was a busy one. It was the only day where my feet hurt when I tried standing after sitting down for a short while. Anyways, after lattes and ham and cheese pretzels for breakfast, we trained it over to the Marienplatz to hit a couple museums - the Munich Staadtsmuseum or something like that, and the Jewish Museum across the street. Along the way we got a little sidetracked and decided to climb up the tower of a church called Old Peter to check out the views of the city. It was only a euro, so might as well, no? Well I nearly died on the way up (306 steps is a lot!), but the views were amazing! Like, we were higher than anything, and it was such a sunny day it was really something. Gives you a totally different perspective.


Continuing on to the museums, well, I'm not sure what to say. My general impression that the German's aren't big on efficient signing or things being really clear was reinforced at the first museum, which was supposed to be a history of the city sort of situation. The guidebook listed it as a must see, what they didn't say was that all the signs and everything were exclusively in German. Luckily it was free on Sundays so we didn't bad staying for only about 15 minutes. The Jewish Museum was very new, kind of sparse, and we weren't allowed to walk around with our coats or bags. The museum focused on the lives of Jewish people before and after the war, but not at all during. Like it was going for a happy thing. I think.


It was by then nearly noon, one of the three times a day in which the Glockenspiel on the new town hall does it's little musical dance. So I made Mark stand outside in the cold for half an hour so we could wait for it/watch it. Basically, some music plays and some figures twirl around. It would have been cuter had it not been so cold. Mark as by then dying of cold so we ducked into a place for lunch. I got what is essentially macaroni and cheese. I was looking for something that didn't involve hearty meats and potatoes. Mark got hearty meat and potatoes.


After lunch we went to the Deutches Museum, or something like that. It was absolutely massive, and had all kinds of stuff, generally relating to science and technology. Like there was a large area about building bridges, where I talked to Mark about forces on tresses. Video of the Tacoma Narrows was of course present. We also looked at some boats, some planes, some optics stuff, musical instruments, some prehistoric cave drawings, stuff about textiles, and saw a guy glassblowing. Oh, and stuff about tunnels. The model railway was too crowded to even catch a glimpse.


We then hopped on a U-bahn train to head up to see the 1972 Olympics park thing. Now, the U-bahn system was opened in 1970, and one of the stops conveniently stops at the site of the 1972 games, convenient, no? Oh, the train we were on had clearly not been updated since 1970. It had wood paneling on the walls. The headquarters for BMW are located right outside the underground station in a really nice looking modern building (plus some other buildings, this is just the one you can go in to), where you can walk around and see all their cars and learn about BMW technology and pay €3 for a coke. The park itself is really just that, a park. It's very pretty, and was filled with people just walking around enjoying the sunny afternoon. The Olympic Stadium itself is sort of carved into the ground so you couldn't really see it, but the face that it's carved out like that sort of explained the Disney-looking hills (as seen in background of photo) on the other side of the little (frozen!!!) lake.


For dinner we went to another bierhalle, this one featuring Schneider Weisse beer, where we had some wheat beers. Mark had a salami plate think, and I got sausages with potato salad. Oh, and I have never in all my life been so clearly hated by a waitress. I'm still not sure what we did to make her mad, but I'm assuming it was our request for the English language menus. Alas, there's no way to win sometimes! That wraps up day 3, tune in tomorrow for the recap of the final day!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

yeah that woman was bizarre not helped by the fact that i tried to pay using a maestro card (which is about as euro as you can get)- i dont think they use cards too much over there, but then there seemed to be a lack of ATMs too! funny though

I enjoyed my lesson on bridges in the Deutches Museum, id never seen that footage of the bridge collapse before! learning about the euro tunnel and the u - bahn tunnel was also interesting!

the view from the church was amazing - a good time!

Buehler Recipes said...

Huh? Isn't there a David Hasslhoff museum? I thought he was all the rage in Germany.