The Best of the Wurst: Day 68 - Petrolheading in Munich - Get It While It Lasts... A Big Loop Through Europe 2017 - CycleBlaze

October 14, 2017

The Best of the Wurst: Day 68 - Petrolheading in Munich

An absolutely glorious fall day today. Readers digest version 'cause it's late.

Slept in. Worked our way out to Olympic park and the BMW museum. Spent the afternoon around there. Fantastic! Loads of pics but slow intenet so I'll load them up later.

Back into the city centre for the 5 pm glockenspiel at the Rathaus (much much better than Slazburg, K was happy!) then we found a great little Thai restaurant in a residential area near the Olympic park.

We also made another slight change of plan, or a more correctly, chose an option that we had been kicking about. Rather than head north on the Romantic Road, we're going to continue on the Julia trail that leads to Stuttgart. It turns out that Stuttgart has a Porsche museum. And a Mercedes Benz museum.

At dinner the other night, our table mates said that both of these were must do's, and after today's BMW experience, which was great, well ... Stuttgart here we come!

One pic to sum up the day ... lots more to come when the internet is faster!

A perfect Fall day in Munich
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Song of the Day

Dog Days are Over by Florence + Machine

.... cause it was beautiful crisp fall day ... the dog days of summer are gone ... this song has nothing to do with the dog days of summer, except for part of the name, but I like it and the video almost looks like the Munich Glockenspiel (if you've had a couple and squint!)

That's not a toy ... It's Elvis's BMW 507 ... perfectly restored (it was apparently tough getting the peanut butter and bacon stains off the seats!)
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Kirsten's favorite BMW (actually the only BMW she's ever liked!) These little bug cars are quite cute ... not sure how they'd stand up to a modern crash test though
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K's new ride for our next European tour??
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very retro touches on a very new bike!
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A glimpse of the 1972 Olympic stadium from the BMW complex
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Looking back over to the BMW reception center. This is beautiful and actually quite functional architecture.It's main function is to look so cool that it extracts very large sums of money from the pockets of (mostly) men from around the world. It was pretty busy here today so I think it's working
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This was one of the most spellbinding exhibits in the entire museum .A plain white room with a glass floor. It's filled with apparently randomly moving metal spheres ....
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...until gradually the spheres evolve into recognizable shapes and patterns .. all while continually moving and changing ...
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... and every so often they would form the outline of a classic BMW car ... in this case the 1938 328 ... for a few fleeting seconds before the spheres would move on to the next pattern. You could spend hours watching this (and it looked like some people were doing just that). Very hypnotic
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One of the first BMW motorcycle engines from the early 1920's. They started as an aircraft engine manufacturer but were barred from doing that after the first world war ... so they moved on to motorcycles
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And they did a very good job at that ... one of their first classics ... timeless!
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This magnesium space frame for the 1938 328 car weighs only 32 kg's! That's about double what a touring bike weighs!!
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... and here's the full car ... beautifully restored / preserved. This car put BMW on the endurance racing map
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... looks like Brooks did some design consulting work for them!
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Jacquie GaudetI had to google "superleggera" and discovered it's the frame-and-panel construction used in this BMW and just a few other high-end cars. Very interesting!
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4 years ago
Fast forward to the 2000's. Ever wonder what the underside of a F1 car looks like? Now you know
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Art? Or just an exhaust manifold?
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This is the real thing, not a dinky toy! Lovely 310 from the early 30's
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Half way through and K's still smiling!
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a little mechanical detail from a K1000 motorcycle engine cutaway
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A Z8 from the early 2000's. This car was an homage to the legendary 507. It wasn't very successful commercially but I think it's one of the most beautiful BMW's ever. It was also a great car (one of my colleagues in Aberdeen had one in 2003)
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... and the legendary 507 ... Elvis's car. Bathed in the rose hued glow of evening sun shining through red glass lips ... I'm not trying to be poetic ... that is actually what is happening!
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It wasn't all metal ... there were some period advertising / art posters as well ... I liked this one from the 50's
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... and this one from the 70's ... the original Fleetwood Mac, long before Stevie Nicks showed up!
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and one artsy shot of what started it all ... one cylinder of a radial aircraft engine
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say no more
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We made it back to the Rathaus for the 5 pm glockenspiel show ... it was pretty good, and judging from the thousands of people filling the square on a perfect fall night, lots of other people thought so too
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Pic's don't show the live action of this knight being knocked down!

All this going on 30 meters above us while the bells are chiming away!

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More fun the cylinder heads!
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The last of the evening light ...
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... just enough time for a cleansing drink before heading off to dinner. Every town has at least one local brewery ... Munich has many within a few blocks! Last night it was Hofbrauhaus, tonight it's Hacker-Pschorr. This beer is fermented in and poured from wooden casks. All from a few meters from the rathaus! Great beer too!
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Thank god for English menu's. Our menu German is OK, but I would not want to play menu roulette with this lurking in there!
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