Testing, Testing 123

I am just checking out the new version of blogger and because you cannot go back to the old version I don't want to transfer my new blog when the old version is just fine.

Busted?

Amsterdam

So ... Amsterdam. Where to begin. Well let's start with the bikes. They are everywhere. Once you get to the canals Amsterdam seems like a giant Vancouver Island. Anyhow after getting reasonably close to where one of the information booths is I went for a walk to find the office. Lisa stayed with the car as it was said in Lonely Planet that smash and grab theft is rampant and foreign cars are a fav target. So I wandered around for a little bit trying to find the tourist office. and walked and walked. Something is amiss here. Turns out I walked past it twice. So having secured a room in a hotel on the Keizergracht (emperors canal) I must say this: The tourist office is never ever wrong. So with accommodation out of the way our first stop was the Van Gogh museum.



This is a great gallery. Considering how popular it is it never feels too crowded. For the the first time in a while Lisa and I decided to not get suckered into buying the audio guide and just strolled around. Man did this guy pound out a lot of paintings in only 10 years. On top of the paintings there was a great deal of Vincent Van Gogh biography thrown in as well. In addition to Van Gogh the museum also displays works by many of his contemporaries most notably Paul Gaugin who was Van Gogh's roomie for a time. After spending a couple of hours with Vincent we headed down stairs to a display of Egon Schiele who I had never heard of. And now I know why. He did some wierd stuff. He was doing a great deal of erotic art around the turn of the century. He also felt that artist should not be subject to the same constraints re: laws as the rest of society. As such he felt he was persecuted quite a bit. I mean hey why are the fuzz hassling a guy who likes to keep naked young girls around his pad? What WERE they thinking? Anyway there was also some performance art kicking around. I think that they were supposed to be real life representations of his paintings. I can't possibly write a description that will do it justice other than to say it was odd. After that it was on to the interpretive dance. With all apologies to interpretive dancers and interpretive dance fans ... What a waste of time. It is not and never will be interesting.

So after that it was decision time. We could go to the Rijksmuseum which is one of the top 10 collections of Master paintings or look for dinner. Now we have seen a lot of old paintings on this trip thus far. They have been beautiful and I am thrilled at having seen them. However they all have a few common themes. 1) Jesus or Bible related imagery 2) Executions and battles (sometimes biblical) 3) Portraits of 15th and 16th century rich folks. I hate to classify these paintings as seen one seen'em all. But here we are.

I've tried to keep meal descriptions to a minimum but dinner deserves a shout out. We had the BEST indian meal we have ever had. SO good. Who knew butter chicken could taste that good? We booked tickets for an english language comedy show the next night that was supposed to be really good and headed back to the hotel.

With Lisa down for the day I went out to wander the canals. They really are beautiful. I walked first throught the Jordaan district. This sort of the Yaletown of Amsterdam. It was originally a working class district but is now the hippest place to live in Amsterdam. Supposedly there are many "hofjes" or hidden private gardens in the area. Sometimes if you are brave you can poke your head in if the gates are open to have a peek. I was not brave. I am sure they are very pretty though. After that I wandered over to encounter one of the most bizzare experiences of my life. Amsterdam's famous (or infamous?) Red Light District. You read about it. See it on TV. You are still unprepared for the weirdness. Girls!Girls!Girls!Girls! Frankfurt has nothing on this bad boy. The funny thing was that it snuck up on me. One minute your enjoying a nice stroll through the canals and then BAM! Hookers in a window. I pictured it being really contained with signs like "Warning Red Light District Ahead. May contain scenes of a graphic nature". No such chance. It does sort of ease into it though. So the best thing about the Red Light District was the tour groups. Nothing funnier than seeing a bunch of 60 something British tourists walking around mouths agape.

Day 2

Time for the obligatory bus tour. This one was really quite good. They covered the history of the canals. I didn't know that many of the canals had been filled in. They also showed us many of the houseboats that line the canal (more on these later). Some of the house boats are quite posh and go for up to 500,000 euro. The highlight was a trip to a diamond company. Gassan Diamonds. We got to see cutting and polishing in progress. Then we had an opportunity to learn about diamonds types and see some crazy rocks with the opportunity to buy them at bargain basement prices! 3 carat river colour brilliant cut very very slight inclusions can be yours for ...... 48,700 euro. You can't beat that!

Afterwards we took a 1 hour canal cruise. I had really been looking forward to this. However high expectations got the better of me again. It was really kinda boring. All the buildings we'd seen before and the views were not that spectacular. Just my two cents.

http://www.boomchicago.nl/

These guys are hilarious. If you are in Amsterdam I highly recommend checking them out. They are a group of Americans who do a show that is part scripted part improv and all funny. We had opted for the dinner and a show package and when we sat down at our table there was a very cool guy from Texas who we chatted with for the hour and a half before the show. He was pretty cool a young hip guy who voted for Bush. Made for some interesting conversation. It was here that I witnessed something I never thought I would see. Someone getting busted for smoking weed in Amsterdam. Wow ... what a mind blower. This old guy who was sitting right next to us during the intermission whipped out a HUGE joint and starts puffing away. Now I',m all "hey it's Amsterdam" but a couple minutes later this guy comes up and asks him to stop just before the waitress gets there to say the same thing. That was all but it was certainly unexpected.

Turns out incidentally that weed is NOT legal in Amsterdam or Holland. It is merely tolerated. So what that means is this: you can carry less than 5g worth. That's considered enough for personal consumption. Any more than that you are a trafficker and you are in trouble. Unless of course you are a coffeeshop operator then it's cool. Magic Mushrooms on the other hand are totally legal in any amount. Go figure.

Keukenhof

On the way out of Amsterdam we made a stop at Keukenhof which is a giant garden. It wasn't quite tulip season but it was still nice. Here we bought about 300 bulbs that will come to us in the fall. Our garden is going to rock next spring.

Ich bin ein Berliner redux

Berlin, Germany Day 2

Well given our plush a-one swank accommodations Lisa decided to sleep in while I went out for a stroll and some shopping. My one and only stop was the Hugo Boss store. I finally got to buy my suit!!! I walked in just as they were opening and was pointed in the direction of the suits. This was a lovely experience after Munich were I was more or less pointed to the Big and Tall section with nose in the air. Wanks. Although mental note ... dust off elliptical machine at home. After some wandering around the store for a bit someone finally came out and was suitably apathetic about helping but after a while he got into it and i ended up leaving with a suit two shirts and two ties. Excellent.

After that it was time to get Lisa and sample the Berlin public transit system. Crazy. The system map was so hard to read! after a while we had it sorted and were on our way. First stop the Berlin Natural History Museum. The higlight here is the full reconstruction of a brachiosaur. It should be noted that this place is alot like a zoo ... that doesn't move. They have hundreds of stuffed animals native to Germany and elsewhere including a Tasmanian Tiger that lived at the Berlin Zoo in 1938. They also have a huge geological collection. Who knew rocks could be so neat! (simmer down Dev). Some of them were so colourful that if you saw one you'd think some jack ass painted that rock.

http://www.berlinerfernsehturm.de

This is the giant TV tower built in East Germany. now we almost didn't make it up this thing. Not because of claustrophobia. Or fear of heights. No ... the line was an hour long. Understandable as it was a clear day as most of our trip has been ... touch wood. So we queued and waited ..... and waited .... and waited. After spending a good 30 minutes I had decided that having waited this long it would be a waste to NOT see the damn thing now. SO I went in search of water to wait it out. When I asked the "treasurer" for some money a fellow in front detected our most un-teutonic accent and was desperate for english conversation. And so we spent the rest of the wait chatting with forgotten name American guy. He was from Seattle. He had spent a week in Prague and made us jealous. The view from the top was indeed quite a sight to see. It was interesting to see the expanse of East Berlin compared with that of West Berlin. What awful awful architecture. Awful.

We have definately noticed that we are getting tired quicker now, During our first week we would be up and out, doing something at 8 am and then all day. Now we are getting more tired and will sleep in until 9 and start the day at 10am and only hit 3 things a day as opposed to 9.

Hameln

On our drive out of Berlin before we reached amsterdam, we thought we would spend the night in the town of Hameln, just south west of Hannover, it is the village where the story of the pied piper took place. We arrived at around 3:00pm and took forever to find the altstadt, once we did we walked in to the main square, saw the piper, saw the painted trail of rats and then decided we had seen enough of Hameln.

We pressed on until we reached the small Dutch town of Deventer, just a place to stop really. But now we are in Holland, isn't that veird?!?! Well not really. Lot's of people live work and visit Holland each year. What is noticably weird is Dutch drivers as opposed to their German counterparts. I have been spoiled. Germany is the greates place to drive. Being in Holland makes me feel too much at home. Speed limits? Bah!!! They also have photo radar!! They need some BC liberal political action here. Well that's it from Amsterdam. Will report more later.

Ich bin ein Berliner!

We arrived in Berlin at about 1 in the afternoon yesterday and parked in a kind of legal parking spot in the middle of the 17 der Juni Strasse. There were others doing the same but it is weird parking in the median of a six lane street.

Our Hotel is so nice. It is a Art Themed hotel and every floor is decorated with a contemporary german artist. Our floor is Helmut Mittedorf and he is interesting anyway. Our hotel is so nice infact that it is almost hard to leave the room, but we are right in the Mitte section of Berlin, on Freidrichstrasse one block from Unter den Linden Strasse and 750 metres from Brandenburg gate. (We are staying in the equivalent of the Sutton Place Hotel in Vancouver) Nice.

If Berlin was still divided we would be in East Berlin and this would be a very different trip. The wall ran right in front of Brandenburg Gate before it was torn down.

Brandenburg Gate

We hopped on an open top double decker bus and took a city tour of Berlin. There is so much here. We saw Potsdammer Platz were all the concert halls are, tonnes of international embassys including the new one that Canada is building. We saw the line made in the road where the wall used to be. It has mostly been torn down now. We saw the Reichstag, the German Parliment building and so much more.

CheckPoint Charlie

After our bus tour we walked back to the place where the international crossing of the Berlin Wall used to be, Checkpoint Charlie. There is a monument dedicated to the 191 people that were killed trying to escape East Germany, two fields of Crosses with the persons name and occupation on each. They have recreated some of the wall for effect. In the Checkpoint Charlie Museum, they showed all the creative ways people used to escape, or try to including a homemade hot air balloon, hiding in a hollowed out surf board, a lowering harness made out of seatbelts and a kayak that was used to paddle out to open ocean and then get picked up by a Danish Freighter. Incedently, the man who kayaked out was denied offical leaving Visa because his wife had escaped earlier and the government's official reason was, "we will not give your wife the privilage of having her husband back after she fled."

This picture was taken before the memorial went up, because you would be able to see it in the background of the above picture.

Some one else wants to use the business centre, he has been lurking behind me for a while, so I will sign off now and write more later.

-Lisa

Regensburg

So having fled Vienna for fear of becoming destitute in Central Europe we were again headed back towards Deutschland. This was pretty much a flat out driving day going about 400 km. We were on our way to Regensburg in the little explored area of eastern Bavaria. Some interesting facts. All BMW 3 series cars are built in Regensburg. It houses the oldest music academy in the world ... well that's all I can remember for interesting facts. Now let me tell you some more about Regensburg. It is a maze! Now this is not mentioned in any guidebooks. It is very small but it takes a half hour to get anywhere in your car. Also note they do not warn you when you are approaching a pedestrian only zone, you just find yourself there. Now getting back to guidebooks. Somewhere in Vienna is a lovely, well worn lonely planet Germany guidebook. We do not know how it was left there. It just was. This was discovered some whereafter crossing the border. Hmmm ..... (cuss warning for the young'uns) fuck. That book had been indispensable. We were now in some serious tourist trouble. The best part about the book has been the accommodation recommendations and we needed them now. It is now pouring rain in Regensburg and we have no idea where to find a place to stay. The GPS had some for near where we parked the car but the problem is this software is only current to 2003 tops so those ones were gone. We walked through the streets getting thoroughly soaked until stumbling upon the closed tourist centre. After that we headed for the first place that looked like a Hotel. We came across one that had a smaller double bed but came with a bathtub! For €80. Done! After Vienna this seemed like a steal! After walking back to the car it took me 30min as aforementioned the make the 1/2 km drive and find the right street to drive down. The hotel it would appear was on the pedestrian plaza and not easily accessible via automobile. Went and parked about a 5 minute walk away and trucked back with the rest of the baggage that Lisa didn't take when I stopped willy nilly next to the plaza. After this with three bags in tow I was ... lost. Bloody maze I tell you! Thank god for the GPS unit. I might still be wandering in circles if not for that thing. http://www.garmin.com/ they deserve the plug. After getting settled we went for an underwhelming mexican dinner and made a decision between going to sleep or strolling the now closed down town. We chose the latter and were very very very glad we did. We came across a travel book shop as we had to get a new guidebook. After looking for a moment Lisa said "there's our book" and there it was a lonely planet Germany book ..... Auf Englisch!! A choir appearing to sing "ode to joy" would not have been inappropriate. We made a note to return before leaving the next day. Back to the hotel for some much needed rest. Now one thing about this small little town. These people are noisy. About 2am there was some shouting in the street directly below our window. Then @ 7:30 it was time to vacuum right outside our room. Regensburg had officially lost all of it's charm. No wonder it's little explored. We bought our Germany book and also got one for the Netherlands and were on our way. Lonely Planet confirmed it's indispensability by alerting us that we probably spent €30 too much for our room. We shall keep this one under tight supervision.

Weather

Driving north towards Leipzig we encountered some heavy rain on the Autobahn and they don't slow down for it either. That's because it only seems to last for about a minute at a time. We stopped in a town called Hof and had a great asian lunch. This was the first place we had been where english was not spoken. That was great fun to bridge the communication barrier. During lunch we discovered that we were a 20 minute drive from the Czech border and decided to at least take a picture of the country. This lead to us retracing some of the highway we had driven in on. The weather had left quite a mark in an hours time. It looked like there had been a snowstorm. We later guessed that it was hail. We also got to see what happens when you make a mistake at 170 km/hr. In the middle of the hailstorm it looks like an Audi A3 had taken a turn for the worse and was on it's roof and totally wrecked. I have never seen an ICBC commercial up close. I also made note that I would indeed slow down in the rain.

Leipzig

Leipzig (where we are now) is part of the former East Germany and it shows. Right across the street from our hotel is a Karl Marx Diorama. It was also the home of Johannes Sebastian Bach for most of his career. First off Leipzig is small. We can walk the whole city guide map in about 30 minutes. We first went to visit the Ründer Ecke museum. This is a free museum dedicated to highlighting the Stasi or East German Security Service. It is housed in the former Leipzig headquarters of the Stasi and it was fascinating. They tell you how every single person in Leipzig was monitored how the Stasi amassed 6.5 km of files on all the residents f Leipzig. It also showed all the cool spy stuff they had along with pre-packaged disguise kits for every occasion. Very cool in an oppressive sort of way.

After that we made the short walk to the Bach Museum. It is housed in the home of one of his former friends and it is assumed that he spent many a night playing music there. It also had a bunch of old instruments from his time. It is also across from the church where he was the choir director for much of his life. It was very interesting but I think you have to see it. It sounds boring explained but it really isn't. Lisa found some old sheet music for the viola in a cool little shop next door. We wandered around some more until we found an internet cafe. So that's the story up till now. Will talk at y'all later.

Leave your money here. You won't be needing it any more.

All righty heading south out of munich we drove to berchtelsgaden. It is a fantastic little town nestled snuggly in the heart of the German Alps on the Austrian border. This is Also the site of obersalzburg or it's somewhat more nefarious name "The Eagles Nest". This was Hitler's mountain top retreat and eventually became a second command post after Berlin. TO get there you've got to drive up this CRAZY road. It's like driving up a cliff. That said though it is beautiful. I can see why anyone (even homicidal insane crazy evil people) would want to be there. But while driving up the road all I could think of was that the place would be perched on a cliff with a giant boardroom with one high backed chair at the head. You know, like those evil hideaways with the self destruct mechanism? that was not to be. Almost all of the buildings from the Nazi era have been destroyed and the site now houses the Dokumentaion Obersalzburg. This is a museum dedicated to WWII. It chronicles Nazi Germany and the war in great detail. We decided to spring for the English audio guide as everything was in German. It really is a great museum. But there is something to be said here. There is very little told about what happened AT The Eagles Nest. This kinda irked me. Not enough to not recommend it though. If you find yourself nearby make a point to see it if only for the view. In any case that museum does hold a small part of the vast underground bunker system. That was pretty cool. Again these guys did nothing with modesty. The Bunkers were HUGE! Just wish we could see more of them. After spending way more time than we thought we would we were back on the road and headed for Austria.

The hills are alive!!!!

We arrived on the highway outside Salzburg in an startlingly quick time. THis is Sound of Music country. Roll down the windows and I swear you can hear Julie Andrews and the Von Trapp family singers ... wait a minute. no you can't. All you can hear is the sound of wind rushing past the car. That's because once you are in Austria there are a whole lot less cars. The entire trip between Salzburg and Vienna was virtually deserted. Which meant it was time to put all 1.6 litres of engine to work!! I got the car up to about 180-190 km/hr. I think that is about as fast as I will get it to go. The GPS gave an top speed of 182.

Wien (Vienna)

ROughly translated Vienna means leave all of your money here. It is also as far east as we will make it this trip. It is even further east than Prague. So Take that Europcar!!! My first impression was not a great one. I had some Specific images from films like Before Sunrise and The Living Daylights and the two did not meet at first glimpse. I will say this: Vienna is Big. Vienna is kinda dirty. Vienna is ... (bad language ahead) FUCKING EXPENSIVE. To give you an idea. We are paying 100 some euro a night to stay in a place taht would loook at home on the Granville Mall. Now it's nice enough once you get in but there are some NUTS on the street. So this was the start of our time in Vienna. I also want to make another point here. Before coming all the guide books said that EUropeans really conserve energy because it's supposed to be outrageously expensive. Well I do not buy this. Why? you may ask. Because all of their building are heated to a very oddly high degree. Perhaps it would cost less if THEY didn't use so much. Just saying.

Vienna in the Morning.

After waking up late and having breakfast we went to the Spanish Riding SChool. This is a dream come true for Lisa. It was also a turning point in my relationship with Vienna. The riding school was okay. Lisa will tell you it was fantastic I#m sure but for me it took quite some time to get interesting. By the end though the horses were doingg some pretty crazy jumps that I won't try to describe. The only thing that I found odd was why they make the horses do some things. Like jog in place. That just seems mean. As for the change of heart for me it came from getting into old Vienna. Everywhere you turn you seem to run smack into history and beautiful buildings. And the Music! It's everywhere! We bought tickets to a Mozart/Strauss concert for 20:00 (they use the 24hr clock here). THat left us with about 7 hours to kill. We wandered the town for a bit ogling the buildings and went for lunch. What happened after lunch deserves mention. We met the craziest person. He was selling tickets for a bus tour that we wanted to take around Vienna. He was also selling them to about four other groups ... at the same time. I cannot explain any better as it's late and I am beat. We got a picture. You'll get the idea. The bus tour had some great facts. Vienna is the 5th most visited city in the world. Lisa and I tried to think of the top 4 and see if we could debunk that. NYC, London, Paris, Rome ... Tokyo but we are not sure. So could be! it#s offseason and the place is CRAWLING with tourists. ALso on this tour was Mozarts Figaro house. MEaning that was where he wrote it. Pretty cool.

TONIGHT WE'RE GONNA PARTY LIKE IT'S 1341!!!!

SO after crazy McGee's Vienna Extravaganza we sought some dinner. We again wandered for what seemed like forever while most places were closing down being Easter and all. We ewventually stumbled onto Berzel-Gwöld. It is a very funky place where we were seated in a basement of a building built in 1341. Original lighting too ... not joking. It was pitch Black with the exception of candlelight. Once you got used to it it was lovely. Also I should mention this. The portions on this continent are massive. It's like they use one animal per person per meal. They are that big!

Concert

We trudged to one of the many palaces around town for our concert. I refused to take a cab. This city has enough of our money already. We went to see a selection of Mozart and Strauss by the Vienna Residence Orchestra. They are a 7 - 35 piece orchestra that act as one of Vienna's top Orchestra's behind the Vienna Philharmonic. The Concert was pure magic. That's about all I got. I am tired. We did buy a CD which was then signed by the lead violinist. Sweet!

In any case we may or may not be leaving Vienna tomorrow. We may stick aroound to see what else we can find. In closing the past couple of days have been great. It's hard to believe that we have only been here a week and have twice as much time to go. In closing it's been great. Vienna has been great. Happy Easter!!! .... again.

Bavaria Sehr Gut!!!!!

Well what a fantastic couple of days. We headed out from Rothenberg and headed for Nürnberg. We had heard many good things about Nürnberg and we were somewhat disappointed. It is not what you might call a pretty city. It actually seems to have been beaten with an industrial sized ugly stick. Once in the walls of the Altstadt (old town) it was better but outside was .... ouch. We went to the German National Museum. This is a very important museum in Germany chronicling German culture from medieval times till the present. There was also a fantastic exhibit of German master painters with a little Rembrandt thrown in. Very cool. After that we headed to the Nürnberg courthouse. The site of the Nürnberg war crime trials. However we were not there at the right time. It is still a working courthouse today (no war criminals though) and we were unable to walk around. Ah well.

After that it was on to Füssen. Füssen is at the foot of the alps and it's big claim to fame is Neuschwanstein. The home of King Ludwig. It is quite a sight to see. However out of a planned 200 rooms only 17 are complete. Turns out that Bavarians didn't`t take to kindly to all their money being spent on fantastic castles as Ludwig was known to do. So around his 40th birthday he was declared mentally ill and went to the country with his psychiatrist. The next day he was found floating in a lake under suspicious circumstances (like there are any others to be found floating in a lake under). Sometimes it's not good to be King. However they should be glad he did build them. Neuschwanstein is the most visited place in all of Germany. It's a workout as well. As you can see it's on a mountain top. God bless the horse drawn carriage. Inside is most definitely the stuff of fairy tales. The carving on the kings bed took 14 master woodcarvers 2 years to complete.

München (Munich). Love at first sight! What an amazing city. Upon arriving in München we walked about 20 minutes to the Marienplatz. This is a huge pedestrian area that holds the city hall and a gazillion shops. It also happens to hold the tourist office. We headed there and they found us a hotel about 15 minutes from there. Excellent. After checking in Lisa recovered from hiking all over a mountain castle and I headed out to explore a little. This is all that I thought Europe would be. There are a whole ton of coffee houses (no starbucks I might add. They've yet to fully colonize this area yet.more in a minute) brauhauses and shopping. There is also a dearth of Girls! Girls! Girls! Girls! Which certainly adds an extra touch of class. Just one discreet SEX sign and a skeezy looking hallway. I went and scouted a place to buy a suit. I've been meaning to do this the whole trip. Only problem is there is never enough time. So after that I wandered around near the Marienplatz and went to get Lisa for dinner. We had a traditional Brauhaus recommended to us by the girl at the front desk of our hotel. So we headed there. What we had was very very good. But wow. Bavarians eat some strange stuff. I may have to give cow's heart a try before we go. Or maybe some Offells. "what zee leetle cows think viz" yum. Back to Starbucks for a minute. I saw something which kinda bugs me while strolling around the Munich streets last night. My first euro Starbucks. Well coming soon anyway. All I can say is I hope they do not become as ubiquitous here as they are in Vancouver. I really think that it would take away from the city and give people another reason to not experience something different when they are away from home. Just a thought. Anyway I forgot to mention the best part of my walk!!! I saw a Euro police chase!!!!! It was kinda OJish though. What I mean by that is that people weren't diving out of the way but here's what happened. Right at the Marienplatz I saw this VW Golf speeding along sort of dodging around pedestrians with another Golf behind it iwth the blue light on top. I thought that it may have been people playing around as they all looked really young. Anyway they jump up the curb and shot off down the Marienplatz.... the pedestrian mall. The police chase was confirmed a few seconds later when a real police car folooowed with lights on and went across the plaza as well. Very cool.

München day two.

Dachau.

We took the train out to Dachau. I don't really know what to say about the experience. I am very glad to have seen it though. Everyone should see something like this at least once. It's hard to imagine the scale of what took place until you see how huge a small camp was. Dachau was the first major concentration camp built in 1933 to hold political prisoners. It served as the model for all future concentration and extermination camps. Today it is only a fraction of the size that it was. It was not a camp used for mass murder. While a gas chamber and crematoriums were eventually built there only small numbers were executed there.
It's main function was slave labour and medical experiments. The gates hold the message "Arbiet Macht Frei" literally translated Work Power Free. Prisoners coming here were initially told that should they work hard they would go free. While many prisoners were periodically released many would never leave Dachau except on trains to Buchenwald or Auschwitz. It's hard to imagine the scale of those"bigger and better" camps. No witty commentary here. Just sober reflection. Never Again.

http://www.kz-gedenkstaette-dachau.de

After Dachau we were ready for something lighter. After lunch we went out to the BMW museum. Well a scaled down version. The current museum is closed for renovation while a much larger wing is built next door. It is situated right next to the BMW factory. Standing there was like being at the foot of the mothership. For those that don't know BMW's have been a passion of mine since I was about 11 years old and my Dad bought a Gold 1989 535i. Having said that, the much smaller museum was a little bit of a let down (that's what high expectations will do for you). I had been really wanting to see a 1957 BMW 507. It is the car that the current Z8 is based on. It was not there. :(. Bummer. Oh well. "We shall return!" .... possibly next week. Tomorrow it is off to Vienna. Much love and Happy Easter to all.

-Andrew and Lisa