„Guten“ Riding: Had to stay one more day....

Ended up pushing back my ride south to Fussen/Innsbruck after deciding there was still too much to see in Munich. . After a quick breakfast, I moseyed my way over to the much heralded and recently built/renovated BMW museum & main showroom...little did we all know that BMW was amking motorcycles before cars (and airplane engines before that!). Neither the space nor the exhibits, including BMW's "Art Car" collection, disappointed and I had to tear myself away (after patiently waiting behind a line of 8 year old kids to sit, just sit, on a few of the display motorcycles) and move on to the next...

Here are a few photos from that part of the day...

"Art Cars"...BMW's efforts to bridge "art" and racing. They asked 18 international artists, over the last 40 years, to cover individual BMW's in any way the artists wants...Andy Warhol did one, Jeff Koons has recently done one, and so has Olafur Eliasson. Heavyweights. Here are a few of the ones I liked.

Alexander Calder, 1975 Jenny Holzer, 1999

Jeff Koons, 2010 Olafur Eliasson, 2011

An awesome sculpture in the museum made up of hundreds of suspended silver droplets,

oscillating and falling into different forms...very cool. These 12 photos were taken over the course of about 3 seconds... (click on picture to enlarge)

The new part: BMW showroom and general "auto/moto-heaven"

The interior of "auto/moto-heaven"

Looking from new to old...the renovated museum (silver bowl) and BMW offices (tower)

In so far as it raised my spirits, I was hopeful that the BMW Museum might help prepare me to walk through the gates at Dachau, the first Nazi concentration camp and model for all subsequent ones. But, despite all the history classes, and all the WWII movies, and all the terror stories you might have heard, nothing can prepare you for the solemnity, grief, and horror you feel when you walk through the same gates and under the same trees as 200,000+ prisoners once did. You can't help but think of them standing inside that gate, in the exact same place as I then stood, and knowing that they might never walk back out through it. It was a heavy two hours, really deserving of at least 4 hours, and I was not quite ready to leave when the ushers started herding people out....

Here are a few pictures to help relate my time there, though they can't do justice to everything I (and am sure everyone else who visits there) was feeling...