Ok - now for the question of the day on Tuesday, that got postponed to today: What is the Deutches Museum. Given our limited time, and general lack of knowledge about this museum, we had opted to go to BMW first for the parking and to contain the excitement of the kids. Munich is terribly difficult if you bring a car, and we wouldn't have, if we weren't going on to another place the next day. So after the thrill of the BMW museum, we had just about 2.5 hours left before this museum closed. We figured we would breeze through it, see the most interesting things and put it on our list of things to see again in the future if we liked anything. Well, all I can say is WOW!! This museum is the museum of science and technology in Munich. It has 50 exhibit halls spread over 47,000 square meters on 6 floors. (Ok - kids, do the math for the square meters - how many square feet is that?) Some of these exhibits were massive. They had everything from machine tools (like those machines that turn a block of aluminum into a valve) starting from the first ones in history up to present day to space technology (from the beginning to modern day) to mining technology (complete with entire intact mines you had to go through, starting from the beginnings of mining to modern mining practices - the mines alone took us 30 minutes to wander through at a break neck pace). Computer technology, photography technology, metallurgy, printing technology, marine technology, Physics, Math, technical toys (like Lego's Technic brand or those metal ones you had to screw all the bolts and screws into), aeronautics ... obviously the list goes on. And since we realized once we were in there that we had to run to try to see all that we wanted to (and we still didn't get to some things that the kids really wanted to see), we stopped taking pictures. Enjoy the one below of my oldest in the power generation section, but if you really want to learn about the museum, check out their web site at http://www.deutsches-museum.de/en/information/. This is the English text version.
So after a lovely evening, and VERY sore feet, we got up the next day and moved on to the Chiemsee (pronounced keem zay). This is a beautiful lake created during the last ice age. The land is almost flat on 3/4 of the sides of the lake, and on the last side, tall mountains loom over it in the near distance. In the lake, there are several islands, and on the largest, King Ludwig II of Bavaria decided to build his homage to King Louis the XIV of France (1638 - 1715), known as the Sun King, since he thought that everything should revolve around him like the planets revolve around the sun. Ludwig wanted to be as important as Louis the XIV. He wanted to be the supreme ruler without restrictions or limitations, an absolute monarch. He so loved everything Louis did in his reign, that he built the "new" Versailles, modelled after King Louis's famous castle in France. This was not a castle to actually live in, but to display his love of this king. There are no pictures of Ludwig in the castle, rather only those depicting the lineage of Louis's family, as there would have been in Versailles. His curtains and many of the intricate wall designs had the fleur-de-lis, a well known symbol of the French monarchy (as well as the Boy Scouts, my sons pointed out) fashioned into them. The castle at Chiemsee was never completed. The main section was the only section to be complete enough to keep. The two side wings that had been planned to completely replicate the original, were destroyed after Ludwig's untimely death. Ludwig, in his extravagance, bled his country dry of money. At the time of his drowning in a lake near Munich (1886) when he was only 40 years old, he had been ruled insane by his government and was in the process of being deposed. The country had no more money, as it had been spent building the three existing castles, two if which were not complete at the time of his death - this one and Neuschwanstein. A fourth, pictured in model form below, had also been planned, but never realized.
We started our day after arriving in Prien by boarding the ferry over to the island. After a short and pleasant ferry ride, there was a 20 minute walk to the castle grounds. The gardens, in summer, are filled with beautiful flowers, and the fountains toss water around playfully. But since it was November, all that remained were the bushes (whose leaves had fallen off), grass, and covered fountains for the winter. But inside, the opulence was breathtaking. The fake stone walls, a clever way of mixing paint, glue and cement, covered the brick structure. We learned that although it was not real stone, this method of covering walls was actually more expensive than if real stone had been used. Furniture and room dividers as well as many wall designed were covered in gold leaf. Many of the famous crystal lead chandeliers would today value over 2.5 million Euros! Artwork on the ceilings depicted many of the scenes of famous French paintings, and in some of them, the original face of the hero of the picture had been replaced with Louis's face. Blue velvet and red velvet were prominent fabrics, and golden suns were everywhere. There was even a dining table that could be lowered through the floor so that the servants could put the food directly on it from the kitchen without having to cart everything up to the next floor. One section, though, did give us an interesting look at what it looks like before completion. One room on the tour, a large entry way with two grand staircases, was left in its original state to show how the construction was done. The kitchen was also not completed, so that for the brief time Ludwig was in the castle, food had to be cooked at the nearby monastery and brought over to the castle.
Like Neuschwanstein, Ludwig's very private retreat, and Linderhof, Ludwig's completed palace, this castle was opened to the public within weeks of his death as a means to raise money for the bankrupt country. Today, visits to Ludwig's elaborate follies still bring in a tremendous amount of money for the state of Bavaria. And to think that he built them to hide and be untouched by the people. Pictures were not allowed in the castle, however, we were able to take some in the Ludwig Museum outside the castle rooms that showed some of the opulence inside. Some of the pictures, though, are unfortunately blurry due to the glass protecting each of the displays.
For a bit, we will be staying close to home. Trying to catch up on the laundry if I miss even one day is a daunting task. For those of you in the armed forces or who have served in prior conflicts, I wish you a peaceful Verteran's Day. You have made this country proud! (USA that is!)
The question for the day today is: Are Germans cat people or dog people?
The words for today are castle - das Schloss (shlose) and king - der König (keorn eeg).
Auf Wiedersehen,
Frau Spitzer
