Munich, 22 Oct 2019
/Melody and I did different things in the morning (Deutsches Museum for me, Alte Pinakothek for Melody). We met up for lunch at the Viktualienmarkt, then picked up some things that we skipped or were closed on our walking tour.
When we first booked the hostel, we prepaid for only one morning of the buffet breakfast, because we wanted to check it out without committing to the whole stay. (In Cologne, we did prepay for the whole stay's worth of breakfasts since there was a pretty good discount for doing so). Since the breakfast seemed to be a good value, we purchased them for the rest of the stay and went on in. More people milling around than the previous morning, but there were still plenty of tables available.
Since the Deutsches Museum opened an hour earlier than the Alte Pinakothek, I headed out earlier than Melody. I had the option of the U-Bahn (subway that covers the city center), the S-Bahn (subway in the city center, above ground in the suburbs), or the Tram (above ground). There were probably other options, but those seemed the most reasonable. Since we had ridden the U-Bahn quite a bit the day before, I tried the S-Bahn. Newer trains and nicer interiors, in addition to being not as noisy.
Deutsches Museum
The route I chose gave me a bit of a walk to the museum, which let me orient myself in the area. I had last been to the Deutsches Museum in the '70s, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. A friend and I only had an hour or two, so we picked one floor and rushed through, seeing as much as we could. I remember the musical instruments and some physics demos. I would still be going pretty quickly but had time to explore most if not all of the building this time.
The museum is on an island in the Iser river. It's in the middle of a ten-year renovation, so a lot of it was closed off. There's still quite a bit to cover, requiring a lot of walking.
I started on the ground floor. As you walk in, you see some ships and models, with the fishing boat Maria dominating center stage. Stairs go down next to it where you can look into a section where they've cut the hull away so you can see the inside, so I took a peek. Not wanting to go downstairs yet, however, I started looking at the other items around the ships.
Then I noticed archways on both sides. I picked one and got thrown into the world of power machinery, old and new. At the end of one of the long aisles, I found a room set up as a belt-powered machine shop. I spent quite a bit of time there, as in the other power machinery sections. Then I went to the other side of the ships, which was dedicated to electric power. As in industrial-grade. Spent quite a bit of time there, too.
I went back to the ships, then started going downstairs where there were exhibits about marine navigation and other oceanography (diving bells, diving suits, and a U-1 submarine that had sections of the hull cut away so you could see in it).
I had passed stairs going down to a mining exhibit, so I doubled back and went down there. I thought that it was a pretty good exhibit, then I turned the corner and there was more. Then more steps down. It kept going, and I was wondering how far under the ground it was. Eventually, though, I went up an improbably short staircase and was back up on the ground floor.
Taking stock of things, I had spent 45 minutes on the basement and ground floors. While the second and third floors (above ground level) didn't look huge, and the fourth through sixth looked tiny, the first floor looked pretty extensive. Fortunately, it took less than a couple more hours to go through the rest.
The center of the first floor was a mezzanine around the ship Maria on the ground level. It contained aircraft, including one of the ones you see in the movies where the wings flap. There was also an area with a bunch of physics demos; a group of kids was in there, and they seemed pretty engaged with the exhibits.
Up to the second level. Musical instruments are in a large room that had an inordinate number of player pianos. And not just the kind you think of with the roll of paper. Sure, there were some like that, but there was one with a roll of paper to play the keys and a set of violins in the upper case which rotated so the strings would rub against bows. Other player pianos seemed like retrofits, with mechanisms that would actually play the keys like a person. As I was leaving the room, there was someone in the hallway playing the didgeridoo, which I heard a few other times.
The third level begins the astronomy exhibits, which continue up through the sixth floor. There were also some really interesting chronometry exhibits, including export workings of a clock tower clock. The weights and measures exhibit was also interesting. There was a long hall about computers and microelectronics. I spent some time in the section about analog computers since those have always intrigued me. Early digital computers with relays were also interesting, and they had several old computers on display, including a Univac that you can get really good looks at. I also always like looking at old-time telephone switching systems, which amaze me that they ever worked to scale.
That left astronomy, which I actually went through pretty quickly. They had things pretty well divided into sections, with a good selection of telescopes. I finally made it to the top, where there was a sundial garden (variety of small sundials) and good views.
It seemed as if Melody and I would be done at about the same time, so we agreed to meet at the Viktualienmarkt for lunch since the stalls were closed when we were there on Sunday. I worked my way downstairs and was pleased that there was only one wing I hadn't gotten to, so I wandered down the metals and foundry hall.
After I was done, I caught the Tram for a couple of stops, then walked the few blocks to the market.
Lunch
Melody went to the Alte Pinakothek and spent a couple hours wandering among the permanent collection. They have works from the Italian Renaissance, as well as the German Renaissance. One Rubens piece, Great Last Judgement, is 300 square feet large. The Dutch are also represented, and they had quite a few Rembrandts.
It took Melody a bit longer than she thought to get to the Viktualienmarkt since she ran across a bunch of farmers demonstrating, tractors parked all up and down along the Residenz. But she made it, and we met up at the maypole.
I had scouted out options, and we settled on a Persian restaurant. True, we had Turkish the night before, but we figured there was a wide variety. For dinner, we had kofta. For lunch, it was a falafel and shawarma combo plate. Again, very tasty.
I had seen an ice cream stand, so we went to try to find it, but alas, it wasn't meant to be. But we found a different ice cream vendor, so we couldn't pass it up. The first time I had gelato was in Rome in high school, and I couldn't get beyond lemon since it was so good. The lemon I had at that stand in Munich was about as good.
Miscellaneous sights
After lunch, we went to the Marienplatz to go by a ticket center to pick up concert tickets for the next night. After that, we went to the New Town Hall to go up the tower. You first go up an elevator to the fourth floor. The elevator opened on the third floor, but nobody was there to get on. The elevator goes up, but the number on the display goes from 3 to 5; we and the other people were a bit alarmed, but when the doors opened, it changed to 4.
We bought tickets, then took another elevator to the ninth floor. From there, the view is pretty commanding. It seems the view from St. Peter's is slightly higher, but we opted for elevators over climbing a narrow circular staircase. There was a bit of haze, so while we could see all of the things that we had done so far, we couldn't see much further than that.
The elevator to the viewing platform has a limit of six passengers or 450kg, and we went in following a couple women. A group of three came up behind us, so they sighed and waited for the elevator to go back up. We stopped early again, and this time a man was carrying a toolbox was waiting. He looked dubious, stepped onto the elevator, heard a beep, then meekly waited for the next time it went down. The two women (English-speaking) were joking they didn't think they were that heavy, and I said that it must have been his box. They chuckled and agreed.
Our next stop was Frauenkirche since there was a service when we were there on Sunday. The church's nave is extremely tall and long, giving the feeling of a box on end. The stained glass windows still have their 15th-century glass, since they were removed and stashed safely away before the building was bombed in WWII.
Next on the list was St. Michael's Church. We found a passage through construction we hadn't seen on Sunday and were able to enter the church. It is ornately decorated and the barrel vault over the nave was the largest of its day (it was built in the late 16th century). We also went down to the crypt, where there are several tombs of note, the largest being of Ludwig II, the person who built Neuschwanstein.
Having checked off everything we were hoping to do, we went back to the room to relax for a bit. We made a foray to the Hauptbahnhof to get dinner and dessert, then back to the room to close out the day.
