Sunday, November 28, 2010

Munich Part 2 (a month late)

So back to Munich. Wednesday was filled with the Olympics and BMWs. I was able to head up the olympicturm (olympic tower) where a rock and roll museum is also located. There I I took the elevator up the 805 meters and got some great views of the city including places I hadn't yet been to that I was looking forward to seeing.
I was really excited to be there!!!

After that I headed to take a look at their Rock and Roll museum also at the top of the olympic tower (why? I have absolutely no clue) to see what interesting facts on singers they were able to dig up. Sadly, nothing of note was really there. EXCEPT THIS:
Is that a Britney Spears plane ticket?

Can you see it? A Britney Spears plane ticket. A really hot item, I think. I then took the elevator back down and headed to the BMW museum. Now, normally I am not one who is into cars. Sure there are nice cars but I'm not one that is really into them at all. I decided to check it out anyways and actually saw some pretty cool stuff. They talked a lot about the history of the car and what they produce.  I saw the different models over the years, including the 007 car used in one of the James Bond movies. My favorite part by far in the museum was the art cars, which were designed by various artists including  Andy Warhol, Matazo Kayama, Frank Stella, and the most recent one Jeff Koons.  These started in 1975 and use both racing cars and regular cars. Full list here
The car done by Andy Warhol

After the museum I pretended I was rich enough and headed to the show room to check out the current models ( and a few older ones).
Car I want to have

Car I will actually have


Thursday I headed to the Nymphenburg Palace on the outskirts of Munich. A beautiful palace that used to be the summer home of the Bavarian rulers. 
Pretty grand. This is only part of the building. I wraps all the way around a garden

Today it is the home of a Duke of Bavaria as well as a chancery (Wikipedia: a type of building that houses a diplomatic mission or embassy.)  I went inside the house but a lot of the paintings were blacked out from being destroyed in WWII. The furniture was just so-so and I got out of there pretty fast to take a walk on the grounds which were pretty stunning. There were a few different buildings on the walk I took that had been built by later Bavarian rulers which was interesting to see in the contrast between the architecture. 
This building was actually built to look like Ruins which I thought an interesting take for architecture.


I then headed to the carriage house to see the old carriages that had been used for the rulers. There were quite a few that reminded me of Cinderella's carriage (Thank goodness got those right!) as well as some small sleds for children and an old fashioned merry-go-round (it was unclear how that worked...).
See? I told you. CINDERELLA!



After a morning at the Palace I was ready for my last tour. The Olympic soccer stadium! I was strangely excited to be taking this tour. And although I contemplated taking a walk on the Plexiglas roof of the stadium my fear of heights and expensive tours kept me on the ground.
the tour I thought about taking but didn't.

Olympic stadium!
We walked through the VIP rooms,  the locker rooms and onto the field during our tour. My accomplishment of the tour was that I had taken the entire tour in German. A major feat for me, when I had only taken one month long class! The tour guide was Canadian however, and after bonding over the fact that we were both from North America decided to over-share on her life and the fact that the reason she was there was because of an unplanned pregnancy....I did NOT see that one coming! Overall a very successful tour!
see? I was glad I took it!

Friday was spent mostly wandering the city as I had completed most of the items on the top ten check list and at this point was museum'd and artifacted out. I managed to do a little more walking around the city before heading home to Zurich on Friday afternoon.

 

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