Scientific Wonders of Europe

Today we rode the tram to the Schloss Nymphenburg. It has huge gardens on the ground which used to be the deer park for then royal family. We walked the grounds to see all the statues, fountains, and wildlife. It was very beautiful. It is a very huge place. We spent the rest of the day preparing to come home. Next week when I am back and settled I will post all the pictures we have taken to a website for everyone to see. Tomorrow we will be home.

Today we rode the train out to Dachau and went to the former concentration camp. The town of Dachau itself seems like a nice little town. The former concentration camp has several original buildings as well as several churches that have been built on the site. While there we were able to watch a historical movie about the camp. German schools are required to teach about the holocaust and there were many school students there while we were there. It was very interesting to see the reactions of these students while watching the movie since the subject is so relevant here. Dachau wasn’t the first concentration camp but it was the first permanent one and it was also the one where priests were brought. I didn’t know that they had done so many medical experiments on prisoners there. There was so much history to learn there and many facts that I won’t put here because they are not happy facts.

Observations:
1. Police and ambulance only have blue lights.
2. Dogs seem very widely accepted I have seen them in restaurants, on trains and buses, in hotels.
3. Table water is not really table water I do not recommend that you buy bottle it is very strange tasting.

This morning we got up and road the train to the museum. Buying and using the train in Munich went pretty well and wasn’t too difficult. The museum truly is the largest science museum. We were there all day and still at the end had to start picking what we wanted to see because we could not get through it all. I was able to see and learn from exhibits on astronomy, physics, flight, electricity, optics, pharmaceuticals, energy, environment, mining, oil and gas production, metals, machine tools, power machinery, atomic physics, electron microscopes just to name a few. It was a very overwhelming day with so much to see. My feet are killing me even more than walking up the mountains in the Alps. I will certainly be getting a good nights sleep tonight. Tomorrow we will be visiting the Dachau concentration camp where I am sure I will learn a lot of history. I am going to end for now because I am really tired tonight. What a day!

Some observations that I forgot to post yesterday:

1. Everything runs on a 24 hour clock. The alarm clocks etc do not even have an am and pm. Time is always represented everywhere using 24 hours.
2. Dates are stated using the day,month,year format.
3. German spoken and written in Germany is much different than in Switzerland.
4. Money is written using a comma rather than period. It is €2,50.
5. the lines in the road are all dotted you not have a solid line to divide the road in half for different directions.
6. The windows tilt in at the top to open. This was the case also in Switzerland.

Today we are going to visit the Deutches Museun the largest science museum. It should be fun.

Today we took a tour from Munich to the south through the Bavarian Alps. We saw two of King Ludwigshafen castle the one which Disney’s castle and also Linderhoff. They were both so beautiful and amazing to see. King Ludwig was a lover of music, romance, fairytales, but also kept to himself. He became king when he was only 18 and died when he was 40. The only castle he actually finished was Linderhoff. It has amazing fountains and the inside is almost all covered in gold leaf. It is a small castle with pictures of man French kings. He did not have any pictures of himself or his family in either castle. The castles really do bring together art, music, history, engineering, and architecture. Neuschwanstein actually had running water in the palace from a nearby spring which was an accomplishment for something built in 1869. It also had a telephone which could only call the post office which would relay the message by telegram. King Ludwig is called the fairy tale king and was good friends with composer Wagner. He had always hoped that he would come to Linderhoff and play for him but he was never able too. Most of Linderhoff is fashioned after French palaces and there are paintings of Louis xiv and Louis xv in the castle. His dining table had only one chair at him for himself and it was on a kind of elevator so it would go down to be set by the servants and then sent up to him prepared.

Well we have finally made it to Munchen but it was not without difficulty. The train information that we had was not correct so we took a few different trains and saw a little more of Germany than we should have but it was ok and fun. We left Luzern this morning and took the train to Basel however we were then suppose to take a train to Goeppingen but there is not a train that goes there. So we got on a train to Mannheim and when we got off across from us happened to be a train going to Munich so we jumped on that one. So we traveled most of the day today and finally arrived around 5 pm. I am very excited about tomorrow as we will be going to see the castles and the architecture which has withstood the test of time.

Observations:
1. It is much easier to get around in Switzerland speaking English than it is in Germany. In Switzerland all the trains and buses and signs have German,English, and French on them. In Germany it is just all German.
2. Several parts of Germany that we went through look a lot like the US with corn fields and similar buildings etc.
3. We now had to switch money again so we are using the euro now.
4. Streets here so far are very confusing. Our hotel is only 2 blocks from the train station but we still walked in a circle and then went to the tourist center before we could find it.
5. Still no screens on windows but we don’t have any bugs in our room yet either.
6. So far we have seen several trams so far and again lots of buses and bikes.
7. Where we are there is a separate section on the side walk for bikes. (We were walking it for a long time until someone pointed that out to us…lol)

Today we toured Mt.Titlis and rode in the first ever revolving gondola up the mountain.it was not as I expected because the floor actually turns. We were able to see some of the crevasses in the glacier however not well enough to get a picture because it was very foggy up there at 10,000 ft. I learned that the Swiss do not have a professional army and that the men when they turn 19 go to 21 weeks of training and then they go for training for 3-4 weeks per year until they are 32. We were also able to see the pilots put on an ais show this evening. It was very cool they are very good pilots. Tomorrow is the city party in Luzern so there are lots of people evrywhere downtown. We will be leaving tomorrow and traveling to our final stop of Munich. To add to yesterdays blog since I was quick this morning also at the Transpotation Museum we learned about the ESA. I was able to see on a map the large amount of space junk that is floating over the earth and how much uranium and other hazardous materials are floating in our orbit. The Swiss truly are masters of the railways with being able to build the train system they have through the Alps.

Observations:
1. Street light got from red to yellow to green as well as from green to yellow to red.
2. Most bathrooms have to flush options a whole flush or a half flush with separate buttons.
3. Most of the buses are electric. I took pictures of the rows and rows of bikes in bike racks on the street.
4. There are 1,200,000 cows in Switzerland. When I come back we will compare that to the number we have in Wisconsin. (we should put bells on our cows to it really is a pleasant sound)

The Internet wasn’t working last night so I am writing this quick this morning. Yesterday we went to the Glacier Gardens which were really cool. There were several potholes formed by water under the glacier and lots of information on how the glaciers have formed this area. Before we went to the gardens we walked across the famous wooden bridge and saw the Jesuit church and castle which are both very beautiful. We took pictures with the lion carved into the side of a mountain. The transportation museum was bitter sweet because it is exactly the type of place my dad would have loved and would have liked hearing about. It had a separate building for trains,planes, and automobiles each with lots of information. Did you know that the Swiss had a navy? I had no idea. So we learned many things there and thought of my dad many times while we were there. Afterwards we took a boat ride back to Luzern on the lake which was very fun and beautiful. Well I will write more later but for now we are off to Mt Tiltis and a ride on the rotair over the glaciers.