Bavaria and Austria Rainout

Flew down to Munich to spend a week seeing parts of Bavaria and Austria with the parents. The plan was to see a lot of scenery before the weather started getting colder. This did not quite work out. What happened was the snowiest October in 35 years and eight consecutive days of rain or snow. Yuck. That meant we had to scramble as best as possible to find alternative indoor activities.

In Munich, it was finally going to the BMW Museum and later to the Deutsche Museum (no pictures). The museum is a very cool-looking modern building.

From BMW Museum

Once you are inside, the first thing you come to is a display made up of lots of balls connected to thin wires that move them up and down to make different shapes.

From BMW Museum

I stayed and watched that for quite a while. Then, of course, there were plenty of cars and motorcycles. If anyone is wondering what to get me for Christmas this year, may I suggest:

From BMW Museum

The Deutsche Museum was also very good, but a bit like 30 museums in one. It is a very large and comprehensive technology museum. The exhibits are are very detailed. When you leave, you almost believe that you could build your own steam engine or make your own steel, if you had to. The only criticisms I have are that some topics are covered very well and other topics are just rooms full of stuff, and only some of the exhibits have english text with them.

After Munich, it was off to snow Salzburg. The old center of Salzburg is very compact

From Salzburg

which is great, because it was raining so much. Visited the castle and walked the town as much as we could stand. The next days were almost entirely seeing a couple small museums and driving around trying to find dry weather.

The last stop (for me anyway) was Franconia. We stayed in the town we used to live in an undisclosed number of years ago in the ancient past. The town is still small, but it has changed quite a bit. Visited the open air museum in town, the pictures of which I think benefitted from the dreary weather.

From Frankisches Feilandmuseum

From Frankisches Feilandmuseum

From Frankisches Feilandmuseum

The last stop was Nurnburg, which again was too rainy to do much of aside from the castle.

From Nurnburg