München

München, or Munich as the English call it (which is actually the original name) is the main city of Bavaria in Southern Germany. Random fact - it is actually second to the Vatican in terms of Catholic importance and is allowed to fly the Vatican colours. Oh, yeah, and the current Pope comes from München. It has a lot of church-type buildings in the central area and this is because the area used to be covered in monasteries. In fact, the city name means something like "by the monks".

We did a free walking tour around the city, run by New Munich tours. Free? Yeah. Rubbish? No. Payment is by tip only, and the guide gets no other income. So they have to do well, and ours did a brilliant job of highlighting important parts of the city and Nazi connections, and relating amusing little stories.

This is the Neue Rathaus, or the New Town Hall. It was built because the Old Town Hall had a problem.


This is the Old Town Hall. It is actually newer than the New Town Hall because it burned down in 1945 and was rebuilt after the War.


In St. Mary's church there is this footprint. The story tells that it is the footprint of the Devil. Actually it is the footprint of the architect, but they still cover it up during services just-in-case...


The view from the top of St. Peters church. That's St. Mary's church and the New Town Hall.


The Old Town Hall and another tower.


A column dedicated to Mary because of an amusing story. Ask me sometime and I'll see if I can remember it. One of the cherubs at the base is killing a chicken-snake creature that represents The Plague. At the time, these creatures were said to be invisible, so the townsfolk blamed the cats instead and killed them all. Of course this was great for the rats and even better for the fleas...

As a result, most cats in München today are of Italian descent.


The May Pole. Towns actually conspire to steal and ransom this for beer during construction. It's all part of the tradition.


Those bollards mark the approximate place where Hitler's bodyguard took eleven bullets from the Germany army during his failed revolution.


Here hung a memorial that Nazi SS soldiers forced people to salute on passing. Many people avoided this street because of that, but many of those were tallied and caught.


The new Jewish Synagogue in the Jewish Quarter. The design of the building is fascinating - the lower part is meant to look like the wailing wall in Jerusalem, and the upper part is glass with a Star-of-David pattern beneath it.


Later that evening, P had the absolutely brilliant idea to go on a Beer Tour!

The "eisbock" (ice beer) on the left is 12% alcohol. Without any food since lunchtime, one bottle of this made me pretty happy pretty quickly.


Here we are before we got comfortable and stuck into even more beer...


Uh oh...


Yay...


We made a few new friends that evening. Beer makes everyone so happy.


Oh, yeah, and between beers we took a look around a micro-brewery.


The beer here is so good I will really miss it when I get back to NZ.

The next day, after our headaches subsided enough to go outside, we visited the Deutches Museum. This is Germany's largest Science and Technology museum and it ranks as one of the World's best. It has 47,000 square metres of exhibition space in 50 'departments' including things such as astronomy, petroleum, geodesy, and mining. Truly an amazing museum.


They have another museum just out of town dedicated to Flight, but there were plenty of old and new aircraft on display here too.


They have one of the largest model railways I have ever seen. Many of the trains have little remote cameras attached so you can see what they "see" as they zip around the track and through the tunnels. The explanation was all in German but it was fun to watch.




So delightfully simple. The jet engine I mean, not my wife.


Here's the high voltage test cage. They fired this up later in the day.


An entire floor of rocket engines! I think I died and went to heaven (in a rocket).


This woman has yet to learn the priceless lesson - "never turn your back on a helicopter"


Under the museum they have constructed a 700 metre long exhibit dedicated to mining. From the early days right up to the 21st century. Great stuff.


An Enigma cryptographic machine from WW2.


A Cray-1 supercomputer from the 1960's. Note the leather-covered seats and panelling!


The Deutches Museum was so good I went back myself the next day and tried to see more stuff. They have everything. The bridge building and hydro engineering sections were probably my favourite, along with the rockets of course.

The only downside is that many of the older exhibits have no English explanations. However, it appears that as they add new exhibits and update old ones, they are slowly adding sufficient English to make it worthwhile.

Tonight, more beer I suspect. Then tomorrow we head to somewhere that is a surprise. It's a surprise because I don't know where it will be. P is deciding and I'll find out in a few minutes...

Essen Spiel!

Guten Tag!

We have just completed our two days at the world-famous boardgame exhibition "Spiel 2008" in Essen, Germany. We had a fantastic time. Those of you that know me and my wife will know that we enjoy playing certain types of boardgames with our friends. These games are sometimes known as "Euro" or "German Style" games. In fact, many are still designed in Germany although more and more they may be designed elsewhere in the world. The games often have little or no luck and require strategy and planning to succeed. Some are rather intellectual, some are just plain fun.

Anyway, "Spiel" is a massive 4-day boardgame trade and demonstration exhibition that is held every year in Essen. It's held at the Essen Messe which is a massive convention centre. I don't know the actual dimensions but imagine multiple football fields of space filled with stalls and exhibitions. It's really incredible. I read somewhere that over 140,000 people visit the exhibition over the four days! You can talk to the designers, artists and publishers, play many new and famous games, meet new people with similar interests, and of course buy some brand new or second-hand games!



We were really looking forward to being here...


We arrived a bit early but we already had tickets so we went into the waiting area... it was crowded so we waited over by the side. Suddenly, a security screen rose up and we found ourselves almost directly in front of the main doors! This is how it looked to me as the doorman held people back and the press inside looked on...


And this is how it looked to P ;)


At 10am the doors were opened and we were propelled by the happy and expectant crowd into the exhibition halls. We were actually amongst the first people inside, which was actually really exciting. Everything was bright and shiny!


Some larger publishers have areas for playing their games with anyone else around who is interested. I took this photo within minutes of entering and I´ve just noticed that we ended up meeting those people you see seated and playing some games with them over the two days. Quite a coincidence.


Here's a view of hall '4' - this is a smaller hall of which there were about six or seven in total.


P enjoying a game of Strozzi, a new game by Dr. Reiner Knizia. Interestingly, we visited all four cities shown on that game board in the last two weeks...


The publisher of "Leader 1" built this demo gameboard for Spiel - impressive stuff!


Here P pretends to have won a game of Wasabi... actually, she lost to me convincingly.


Here are the games we picked up... note carefully the cover of "Battle Line" in the bottom left... yes, some will know we already own Battle Line but it never hurts to have another copy, especially when it's personally signed by the Good Doctor himself, right? :)


Oh, here he is in person :)

If you don't know, that's Dr. Reiner Knizia, designer of over 200 eurogames, including the masterpiece Tigris & Euphrates. He quit his job in high finance to spend his time designing eurogames full time. He's almost a saint in these parts...

And some of you will recognise this guy (or his hair at least). Friedemann Friese is the designer of our favourite boardgame "Power Grid". He graciously agreed to a photograph with P. She was really chuffed!


And that's all from us in Essen. Tomorrow we head to Trier, via Cologne, for some wine tasting, maybe a boat trip, and perhaps a bit of mountain biking.

Photos!

After a reboot and some messing around, I managed to get access to my photos. So here are some new ones...

The Milano Duomo in 11,000 wooden pieces... I discovered this in an old abandoned school building outside of Asti. We weren't supposed to be there actually, but while trying to climb over the wall a friendly local walked past and directed us to the actual gate, which was open...

And here's the real thing:

This is the building that contains Leonardo Da Vinci's famous Last Supper fresco. Unfortunately no photos were allowed inside, but I can assure you it was breathtaking.

Then on to Lago di Como (Lake Como), the second largest of the northern lakes of Italy. Here's a group of us on a ferry. From left to right: Chantelle (Auckland), Judy (Perth), P, random, Sarah (Canberra), Mike (Perth), Clinton (Melbourne). Lots of Aussies on our trips :)

Cool huh? This was my favourite day in Italy.

Looking down on Bellagio:

You can just make out a little church halfway up that mountainous rock. Unfortunately time did not permit a climb up there.

Many ferries service numerous towns around the lake.

This is the town of Varenna. There's a small castle on the nearest hill, which we walked up to.

The view from the castle grounds. That boat is right in my cannon sights...

A bit random to find a lawn with tethered birds of prey sitting around.

This one is called Linda.

And this one is called... uh oh... where'd she go?

I really liked this view.

Approaching the castle tower.

Surveying the lands from the castle tower.

Good lake views too.

Prepare to repel marauding invaders!

To arms!

The castle is in very good condition.

A view down the lakeside to another town.


And here we have a happy traveler on her way to Venezia.

Some typical Venice sights.

One of our traveling companions, Chantelle, just moments before she got into serious trouble from the angry shop owner behind her...

P, Clinton and Sarah on one of the 409 bridges around Venezia.

The main canal during rush hour.

Guess how much this coat costs... a clue - it's made from chinchilla fur.

No, sorry, you're wrong.

Look closely at the top item for the answer. These prices are in euros.

Yeah. That's right. Twenty eight thousand euros. Internet access around Venezia wasn't much cheaper.

We took a ferry to the island of Murano, famous for it's glass production. This guy on the left is playing a strange Venezian musical instrument made from molten glass.

Looking out to the south of Venezia.

San Marco - the heart of Venezia.

The local fire brigade on their way to the local pub, I suspect.


A friendly Venetian near the laundromat.

Then we left our tour group in Venezia and spent P's birthday in Ravenna.

Here's the ceiling of our hotel room! Best hotel room ever! :)

Not so many tourists in Ravenna...

One of the many piazzi (squares) around the town.

This is a mosaic. It's not a fresco. Each element is a tiny coloured piece of stone. Amazing eh?

Ravenna is full of mosaics. They date from the Byzatine era, about 5th Century AD.

More mosaics inside a mausoleum:

Outside that mausoleum:

Aaaaaaah!!! Extreme Closeup!!!

This garment is part of a priest's outfit. This particular item is over 600 years old. It's falling apart but the detail that remains is astonishing. In it's time, it would have been a beautiful cloak.

That's all for now. Hope you enjoyed the snaps.