The Deutsches Museum and the BMW Museum

Like San Francisco, Munich is also a city of science. The Deutsches Museum is a cross between the Smithsonian and San Francisco's Exploratorium. Much of it is not in English but it's still fascinating. It is Amy's favorite museum in Munich and is near her apartment. The BMW museum features cars and motorcycles from through out the company's history.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Deutsches Museum has some great old boats in it.

The museum put a cutaway of an older sailing vessel for people to inspect.

The museum also had a cut away of an actual U Boat. It was much smaller than I would have thought. And it was horribly cramped. This is the back end of the submarine.

This is the middle of the U Boat.

This is a torpedo ready to be fired.

They cut away the front part of the submarine to show where the torpedo exited.

This was a German V-1 rocket. I couldn't find a V-2 rocket anywhere in the museum. These were weapons of terror in that they were not especially accurate but frightened civilian populations.

After the Wright Brothers got their aircraft to fly -- using a German-manufactured engine and information from a German glider pilot, the museum proudly notes -- they built some prototypes and took them around the world trying to get funding for their project. This one left in Germany is apparently one of the few surviving.

The Deutsches Museum had a room full of lathes to show the progression. This is the oldest I could find. It's from 1840. I've got a machinist friend Randy who could trade one of his lathes for this lathe and consider it modernizing.

Germany is among the world's finest optic makers. I hoped there would be something about optics in the museum's glass section, but instead it was about mirrors and fine crystal. But I got this self portrait.

As a journalist, I had to visit the printing press portion of the museum. Gutenberg was, after all, a German.

This is a rocket car.

A Formula 1 car. I forgot who drove it.

The lone picture from the BMW museum to make the cut. The front of the car is also the door.