Munich day 2: the Deutsches Museum

Tuesday June 14

We arrived in Munich on Monday afternoon, and contented ourselves with a walk around the Old Town, aiming for nothing in particular. The New Rathaus is a huge and beautiful faux-Gothic building with towers and flying buttresses and a clock with figures that come out and rotate at noon. Mostly because of the large crowds in the square, many with selfie sticks (including a long one with a GoPro), I just didn't feel like taking pictures. There are better photos in many places online.

We did drop into the Hofbräuhaus, which was predictably boisterous. The gigantic Frauenkirche (the cathedral), in contrast, was appropriately quiet. The stores and cafés were full of people.

On Tuesday we had bigger ambitions. We spent the whole day at the Deutsches Museum (and managed to walk both there and back despite predictions of thunderstorms). Longtime readers may remember my gushing about the British Museum and the National Museum of Scotland, described in a few 2014 and 2015 posts. The Deutsches Museum is similarly wonderful and huge. Its central theme is technology, with a strong emphasis on history. I can't list all the areas one can visit. 

I'll just say that we saw everything from sailing

to flying

including early hang-gliding

to humongous steam engines 

to musical instruments

to clocks, large and small. This is the mechanism from a clock tower (~18th century, I think):

and this is a clever sundial . . .

that shoots off a tiny cannon at noon, when the sun reaches the right point above the magnifying glass. 

Can you spell ENIAC? It's there too, all million-dollars-worth of vacuum tubes. Of all the exhibits in the museum, we saw only a small fraction. Thanks to a major remodeling project, (a) many areas are closed -- though you'd hardly notice, and (b) most of the exhibits have English commentary. What a great place.