Museum Marathon

My last full weekend in Munich.  I was determined to take full advantage of it - I'm not quite sure whether I succeeded or not, but at least I had fun!

I had grand visions of a museum marathon on Saturday, since that is my biggest attraction in any city, having grown up in a small town (and for that matter, in a small state) where such collections of knowledge on a specific subject are few and far between.  My background combined with my curious nature means that I love learning more about almost anything.  I put together a list of six museums that I would try to visit; and seeing that I had an entire day (one of the museums opened at 8:00) and giving me even two hours at each (which was quite generous, as these were smaller, more specialized and less well-known museums) would mean that I might even get through all of them before they started closing at 6.  Of course, nothing ever goes according to plan.  I should just start planning for things not to go according to plan, if I could figure out how that would work... :P

First of all, I had been waking up so early every day that I felt like I owed myself a day to sleep in. Now, my idea of "sleeping in" means that I don't get up until 8 or 9, which is still early for most people (especially for a Saturday), but that's beside the point :P  Anyway, that didn't end up happening, although instead of getting up at 5:30 I did wait until 7 or so.  However, since blogging was also on my list of chores, I ended up doing that until about 8:30 so right away I knew the day wasn't going to look like I had planned it to.  I finally arrived in the area of the first museum on my list, the Paleontological Museum, a little past nine, but then spent the next hour wandering the space of a couple of city blocks looking for the museum itself, which was definitely NOT marked. When I finally did locate it, I discovered to my dismay that since it was connected to the university, it was only open Monday through Friday (I had mistakenly written down that it was also open on Saturdays).  However, all was not lost - in my wanderings I came across a second-hand DVD/CD store with nothing other than Lord of the Rings in the window!!  It wasn't open at 9am on a Saturday, of course, but I came back later that week and bought The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring in German.  Unfortunately I wasn't thinking too clearly; of course, being in German, it is a European DVD that won't play on my computer or an American DVD player.  I *thought* I could get around this by downloading a media-player program that would also play Zone 2 DVD's, but couldn't get it to go past the title screen... oh well, even if it doesn't work, it was only 2,50€.  Not a great loss, and at least I have the case, which looks pretty cool :)

After the disappointment with the Paleontological Museum, I trekked off to the next stop on my list - the Firefighting Museum.  Fortunately this was both easier to find and open (in fact, it is only open on Saturdays).  It is actually housed in one of the fire stations of the city, and it was quite interesting.  It had lots of firefighting memorabilia all the way from the earliest history of organized firefighting in the 1700s to today.  The coolest part was an exhibit commemorating an event in 1982, when one of Munich's U-Bahn (subway) trains caught fire between stations.  (I couldn't understand all of the German, but I don't think anybody died - just a few people went to the hospital because of smoke inhalation.)  There were pictures of the event, like the smoke pouring from the U-Bahn station entrance, and they actually have the recovered burnt-out shell of the engine car in the museum.  The deadly power of fire is eerily evident in the burnt and melted seat cushions and twisted and mangled metal frame.

It was already nearly 11 by the time I left the Firefighting museum, and it had started to rain (most of the reason I had decided to make Saturday a museum day was because of the predicted rain which would have put a serious damper on any other activity).  Nonetheless, according at my map, it seemed that I would be able to walk to my next destination, the one I was most excited about - the Center for Unusual Museums.  I eagerly set off, only to encounter much the same problem as with the Paleontological Museum - I simply couldn't find it.  I criss-crossed the same three-block stretch three or four times (finding a Beer and Oktoberfest Museum in the process, but unfortunately that one didn't open until 1pm or I might have investigated...) before finally caving and asking a local.  The man behind the counter of the bakery told me that it was "easy... just go along this street, you'll see it."  Though I had already been up and down that street several times, I nonetheless set off hopefully, to no avail.  The next storekeeper I asked simply grunted and pointed me back in the direction that I had come, but at least now I had boundaries to my search.  Finally, exasperated, I walked into a Tracht store situated exactly where the museum should have been and inquired of the proprietor - who informed me cheerfully that I was in exactly the right spot.  She then went on to explain that since the curator of the museum died four years previous, his wife didn't feel like maintaining the museum anymore, and closed it down.  My face at the news looked exactly like this: -_- .  Well, at least I had my answer and didn't have to aimlessly wander the city anymore.

Next on my list was the Toy Museum - at least I knew exactly where that one was, since I had seen it on my first day in Munich and made a mental note to come back and investigate later.  Tired and a little despairing that I was so far 1 for 3, I walked back to Marienplatz - but was stopped just outside the door to the museum by a deafening crash.  A little bewildered, I looked around for the source of the noise, and finally located a detachment of military men on the balcony of the belltower of the nearby Peterskirche who were firing what I supposed to be blanks from rifles at regular intervals.  The reports from the rifles crashed and echoed around the tightly enclosed square with a deafening racket.  In fact, I noticed that there were all sorts of unusual goings-on in Marienplatz... I was later to be informed that this particular weekend was the celebration of the city of Munich's founding.  It was a terrible weekend weather-wise, but I suppose the city fathers couldn't have planned that... There was an entire biergarten, complete with dozens of umbrella'd tables, set up in the middle of the square, and a smallish stage on which a tracht-clad band was playing traditional Bavarian music while personages representing the different faces of Munich paraded across the stage.  There were also some strangely-clad fairy-type people on tall stilts that made me wonder what THEY were about, but I didn't seem to know any more or less than anyone else in the crowd, so I just gawked and wondered like all of the other tourists.  One of the more interesting figures was the pretzel-king? A man with an ample beer-belly dressed like the Burger King king strode across the square and mounted a white horse with a blue-and-white checkered blanket that covered its entire back (which is the pattern of the Bavarian flag) and a giant basket of pretzels hanging from each side of its saddle.  He stopped to pose for pictures before riding off in a stately manner, one hand on the reins and one busy stuffing a pretzel into his mouth.  Germans are strange folk, indeed.

Still puzzling about what I had seen, I returned to the Toy Museum - and then discovered what was certainly not my first hang-up of the day.  The only thing I had in my wallet was a 50-euro bill and a bit of spare change, and (perhaps owing to my time in Russia) I was reluctant to use excessively large bills to pay for things (in Russia, small store-owners rarely have lots of cash. If they don't have the proper change for your bill, they just won't give you change - it's your problem, not theirs).  The only other museum I had managed to reach, the Firefighting museum, was free, so this was the first time I ran into this difficulty.  I was barely able to scrape together the 4-Euro entrance price from the spare change I had, but it ran me completely out (at first I offered the woman the 50, but she looked at it with dismay and asked "Don't you have anything smaller?", a reasonable question since the museum had only been open for an hour, so I tried with my change).  The museum was quite interesting, especially the old toys from the beginning of the 20th century.  Most of the exhibit text was in both German and English, so I actually got to read about the history of these toys.  Some of my favorites were the mechanical toys from the turn of the century - it was amazing all the things they were able to do with purely mechanical parts!!  Of course, there were plenty of toy soldiers and baby dolls and wooden figures, as well as some of the first teddy bears and a quite extensive Barbie collection (most of them, from what I could see, were very early Barbies from the 60s).  The museum itself was housed in a series of several rooms off of a turret, so one had to climb a very narrow winding spiral staircase to get from one room to another.  That in itself was pretty fun, and the highest rooms were probably five floors up with a great view of Marienplatz from the small inset windows.  Nonetheless exploring the entire museum only took me about 40 minutes and I soon found myself back in the gift shop.  Nothing there really interested me as a souvenir for myself or someone else, but a couple of the postcards caught my eye.  They were old pictures of children playing with teddy bears and dolls, and I thought that my Great-Aunt Shirley, being fond of most things antique and classy, would just love to receive a postcard from me in general and this postcard in particular.  Here came the problem, however - the postcard cost 0.40€ and I only had a 50 note and about 15 cents in change.  With many apologies to the poor cashier, I handed her the only money I had - fortunately by this time the museum had gotten more visitors and she had enough change.

By this time it was a little past 12:30, I was very tired and wet from wandering in the rain, not to mention more than a little hungry.  Although I still had the Alpine Museum on my list, I decided to call it a day, and headed back to the Wohnheim to do some necessary chores, such as blogging, writing emails, and even a little studying ;)

I was not done for the day as I supposed, however.  I returned to find an email in my inbox - it was an invitation from Professor Rankin to "cake and coffee" (a very German tradition) with some friends of his from Swabia, a region of Germany in the south-west, of which Stuttgart is the capital.  One of the grad students, Hannes, is from this region, as well as the German mother of my best friend that I've known since birth (who was my original motivation for learning German).  I gladly accepted the invitation to interact with some native German speakers (as well as the opportunity to experience some genuine German culture and cuisine not at my own expense ;]).  So at 3 I once again headed into the city center (accompanied by Dan, whom Professor Rankin had also invited) and met Professor Rankin at a cafe near Marienplatz.  His friends were very pleasant people, also Christians, but the entire conversation felt a little awkward and stilted.  I'm not sure if it was because Professor Rankin's friends didn't know how much German we knew, though we are both fairly capable in normal conversation and I'm pretty sure all of them spoke English, or what, but it seemed that both parties tended to speak through Professor Rankin instead of to each other.  It didn't last too long, however, and we soon returned to the Wohnheim for the latter part of the afternoon.  I got to Skype my family, particularly my father and sister, which was very nice as it is something that happens quite rarely (when I'm away from home, which is most of the time, I usually end up talking to my mom).  In fact, this was the last time I spoke to my parents while I was in Munich, and it was an entire week in Clausthal before we could arrange a time to talk again, so it was very nice to check in, get the family news, and such (I'm remarkably independent, as a rule.  Contrary to some people I know who call or Skype their parents every day when they are away, I rarely speak to them more than once a week, and often FAR less - try about five times a semester.  It works just fine for me, and my parents say they're also happy with the arrangement - although I'm sure they wouldn't be miffed if I called home a LITTLE more often ;]).  Then it was back into the city for an ice-cream outing with Professor Rankin, which I thoroughly enjoyed.  I am quite thankful for the Monatskarte we were given as part of the program - I don't know what I would do if we had to buy a ticket every time we wanted to use public transportation to move around the city.

So, this Saturday turned out to be one of my less-eventful days in Munich, but it was still good and I got some valuable cultural exposure (as well as doing some much-needed communicating with my family).  Even when things don't go according to plan, there's usually some redeeming and useful experience, and sometimes a little unexpected adventure.  After all, the best parts of life are often spontaneous. :)