The Best of the Wurst: Day 68 - Petrolheading in Munich
An absolutely glorious fall day today. Readers digest version 'cause it's late.
Slept in. Worked our way out to Olympic park and the BMW museum. Spent the afternoon around there. Fantastic! Loads of pics but slow intenet so I'll load them up later.
Back into the city centre for the 5 pm glockenspiel at the Rathaus (much much better than Slazburg, K was happy!) then we found a great little Thai restaurant in a residential area near the Olympic park.
We also made another slight change of plan, or a more correctly, chose an option that we had been kicking about. Rather than head north on the Romantic Road, we're going to continue on the Julia trail that leads to Stuttgart. It turns out that Stuttgart has a Porsche museum. And a Mercedes Benz museum.
At dinner the other night, our table mates said that both of these were must do's, and after today's BMW experience, which was great, well ... Stuttgart here we come!
One pic to sum up the day ... lots more to come when the internet is faster!
.... cause it was beautiful crisp fall day ... the dog days of summer are gone ... this song has nothing to do with the dog days of summer, except for part of the name, but I like it and the video almost looks like the Munich Glockenspiel (if you've had a couple and squint!)
That's not a toy ... It's Elvis's BMW 507 ... perfectly restored (it was apparently tough getting the peanut butter and bacon stains off the seats!)
Kirsten's favorite BMW (actually the only BMW she's ever liked!) These little bug cars are quite cute ... not sure how they'd stand up to a modern crash test though
Looking back over to the BMW reception center. This is beautiful and actually quite functional architecture.It's main function is to look so cool that it extracts very large sums of money from the pockets of (mostly) men from around the world. It was pretty busy here today so I think it's working
This was one of the most spellbinding exhibits in the entire museum .A plain white room with a glass floor. It's filled with apparently randomly moving metal spheres ....
... and every so often they would form the outline of a classic BMW car ... in this case the 1938 328 ... for a few fleeting seconds before the spheres would move on to the next pattern. You could spend hours watching this (and it looked like some people were doing just that). Very hypnotic
One of the first BMW motorcycle engines from the early 1920's. They started as an aircraft engine manufacturer but were barred from doing that after the first world war ... so they moved on to motorcycles
Jacquie GaudetI had to google "superleggera" and discovered it's the frame-and-panel construction used in this BMW and just a few other high-end cars. Very interesting! Reply to this comment 3 years ago
A Z8 from the early 2000's. This car was an homage to the legendary 507. It wasn't very successful commercially but I think it's one of the most beautiful BMW's ever. It was also a great car (one of my colleagues in Aberdeen had one in 2003)
... and the legendary 507 ... Elvis's car. Bathed in the rose hued glow of evening sun shining through red glass lips ... I'm not trying to be poetic ... that is actually what is happening!
We made it back to the Rathaus for the 5 pm glockenspiel show ... it was pretty good, and judging from the thousands of people filling the square on a perfect fall night, lots of other people thought so too
... just enough time for a cleansing drink before heading off to dinner. Every town has at least one local brewery ... Munich has many within a few blocks! Last night it was Hofbrauhaus, tonight it's Hacker-Pschorr. This beer is fermented in and poured from wooden casks. All from a few meters from the rathaus! Great beer too!
