BOC: HW: OFF: Sights in Munich

[Henderson Keith]

Hi Folks...

Just returned from a short holiday to Munich that was scheduled by my new
research group family, and had an enjoyable time (much hefeweissen was
consumed).  Today, while most others went out to the shopping places, I went
to the Deutsches Museum and looked at interesting things in science and
technology, which luckily included occasional desciptions in English.
Anyway, the coolest things were (seemingly) the entire family of
Messerschmidt aircraft beginning with wooden models from the '20s.*  (Oh,
yeah, they had an original Wright biplane there too, though they said it had
been necessarily reconstructed following damage in 1944.)  And prominently
displayed on the ground floor of the aeronautical 'wing' of the museum was
the ME 262, which I understand now was the very first production-scale jet
airplane.  And then of course, just a few steps away was the Lockheed
F-104G!  "Uh, G?  Yeah, G!  You know, Herr Minister, G...uh, G for Germany!"
If that wasn't a BOC-L moment, I dunno what is!  The F-104G was very cool to
see up close and personal.  The F-104A I'd seen in the Smithsonian was
hanging from the ceiling way far away from any intimate contact.  Here, you
could climb the little stepladder to peer right into the cockpit and almost
reach in and pull on the two ropes overhead for Ejection!  Which obviously
occurred frequently, as (from what I could translate from the mostly-German
text) there were 269 crashes and 110 pilot fatalities.  "Anybody want to buy
a starfighter?  Just buy a plot of ground...and wait."  I thought about
buying one for myself (the 12-inch plastic version), but it was a ridiculous
140 Euros (that was the most inflated museum shop I'd ever seen!), so that
will have to wait.  :(

Here you see a little peek at what's there...
http://www.deutsches-museum.de/ausstell/dauer/luft/e_luftf2.htm

*Sadly, I didn't see the infamous Messerschmidt car that was featured
prominently in my favorite movie "Brazil" with the bubble top canopy thing.
They had nice old Mercedes race cars though.

I didn't have very much time to explore as we had an early departure time
back to Schweiz, but I did walk along Prinzregentenstrasse (which runs just
north of the aforementioned museum) which was the early home of Amon Duul
II, before they moved out into the countryside to Kronwinkl 12.  By the way,
does anybody know exactly where that place is?  Even just a town name or
something?  So I didn't have any real ADII moments there in Munich.  The
closest thing to a krautrock moment I've had so far was (last week)
strolling past the studios of WDR Koln (at least their current location,
which seems rather new actually) who broadcast lots of great concerts in the
early 70s by krautrock bands, including those by Agitation Free and Eiliff
that have now been put on CD by Garden of Delights, the label that I have
had some involvement with over the past few years.

Another "brush" with spacerock was my noticing a person here at 'my'
institute wearing a Gong 'flying teapot' style t-shirt in the cafeteria,
which surprised me no end.  Unfortunately he was walking quickly in the
opposite direction and I was mid-conversation with a coworker and didn't
have the opportunity to query further...but I will keep my eyes open in the
near future as I may have a kindred spirit or two here in my corner of
Heidiland.

Grakkl (FAA)