Munich Day Seven: Deutsches Museum

The Deutsches Museum in Munich, Germany, is the world's largest museum of science and technology, with approximately 1.5 million visitors per year and about 28,000 exhibited objects from 50 fields of science and technology.

The museum was founded on June 28, 1903, at a meeting of the Association of German Engineers as an initiative of Oskar von Miller. Its official name is Deutsches Museum von Meisterwerken der Naturwissenschaft und Technik. The main site of the Deutsches Museum is a small island in the Isar river, which had been used for rafting wood since the Middle Ages. The island did not have any buildings before 1772 because it was regularly flooded prior to the building of the Sylvensteinspeicher. In 1772 the Isar barracks were built on the island and, after the flooding of 1899, the buildings were rebuilt with flood protection. In 1903 the city council announced that they would donate the island for the newly built Deutsches Museum. The island formerly known as Kohleninsel (coal island) was then renamed Museumsinsel (museum island).

So Laura had a lot of work to do today, so it was decided that Tobias, Paolo, Thom and I would head to the museum for the day, and we powered through as much of it as we could. Being one of the biggest museums in the world we couldn’t see it all in one day, but we did see:-
- Aviation
- Aeronautics
- Aerospace engineering
- Musical Instruments
- Photography
- Submarines and Boats

All in one day is not bad I would say!

We then headed for a quick drink at the last bit of the Christmas market open, the größten Feuerzangenbowle der Welt (literally biggest "fire-tongs-punch" in the world…which was actually a massive cauldron of pretty much mulled wine, on top of which there was the biggest sugar cone in the world…this had rum poured on it and set on fire). Thom and I decided to keep the glasses it came in as they are really pretty! Once we had finished our drink, Paolo, Thom and I headed back to the flat to start preparations for the party in the evening.

Altogether around 15 people, Paolo made loads of pasta, we had lots of bread, snacks and alcohol…and the company was wonderful! Somehow the penis drawing and words from last night got passed around the already tipsy table. Now, with the greatest of respect, hearing a drunk German say “tallywhacker” in a neutral accent is one of the funniest things I’ve heard! The party went on into the early hours of the morning, and Tobias was more than a little drunk I would say! Bless him.