Coal Face to Outer Space: Tired Feet at the Deutsches Museum, Munich

Dave the motorhome is parked in an official stellplatz (N48.22112 E11.62497) at the Allianz Arena, the incredibly opulent home of Bayern Munich Football Club, a 15 min walk and 20 min U train ride from Munich centre. You can walk freely into the outer area of the arena, and catch a glimpse of the pitch, without paying a penny. The stellplatz costs €15 for 24 hours and is popular, maybe 40 other motorhomes here. It’s still light, so we’ve not seen what colour it will glow tonight.

The charms of the Volksfest failed to tempt us out last night. We opted for a film on the laptop instead ‘The Eagle’. Charlie slunk off as it began, good move pooch, it was a good film to sleep to. Maybe the fact today’s a holiday in Bavaria, but beer must have flowed as the shouting went on well into the wee hours. We woke at 10am, and promptly drove here. Mission: Deutsches Museum.

The reviews on Trip Advisor said it all: the Deutsches Museum is absolutely fabulous, darlings, if a bit nerdy. Four days is about the right amount of time to see it all, not bad for the €8.50 entry price. We had five hours by the time we got there. Ju pulled out the list of exhibitions, starting at Oil and Gas, through over 60 departments (each the size of a museum in its own right) up to the Sundial Garden. We prioritised, starting at the mining exhibition and ending in telecommunications. By the time we were done, we were bushed, trying to make the exit we were constantly distracted by new stuff, the final one being a demonstration of lightening hitting a model church (german commentary but we understood the points when we had to stick our fingers in our ears). Ju even needed a 10 minute chair massage thing (€2 which goes to a children’s charity).

The museum is wonderful. My favourite parts were, in no particular order:

1. The mining museum. My Dad (hi Dad!) was a miner for 20-odd years, a real one, the sort that heaves about huge bits of metal, pulls out blackened fingernails without wincing and eating sandwiches full of coal dust. I loved it in there, seeing the equipment and conditions my hero worked in to enable me to do things like roam around Europe.
2. The Enigma machines. There was a huge exhibition on en-ciphering, which I failed to read much about, but it all looked good stuff!
3. The V2. Those things were huge, incredibly destructive beasts. The plaque next to the one we saw told of how many were fired at Antwerp (over 1600). About 1500 were fired at London.
4. The technical toys – lego and mecano abounded, I fancy getting hold of some. The robots were great too!

A few photos to give a flavour of the place. It’s all we’ve managed to do today, so that’s all for now folks!

Cheers, Jay