Christa's European Adventure: A rainy weekend in Munich

Rain and more rain...

It has rained for the last two weekends. My coworkers are convinced that I brought the rain with me because it was great weather before I came.

The kids in the city couldn't seem to get enough of the water. We had to cancel our rafting trip for the weekend, but we found plenty of other sights to see in the city.

Christopher Street Days (Gay Pride Celebration) was going on this weekend so we had to fight our way through the parade in order to find Maggie, our weekend tour guide. At least it was sunny for a few hours!

BMW World and BMW Museum

New BMW owners can come to BMW World to have lunch, get their picture taken, and pick up their car that is on display to everyone else there.

My 2nd favorite car. You would think this would be great for parallel parking, right? Nope. The door is the front of the car so you have to leave plenty of room to swing the entire thing open in order to get out.

Now this is my kind of car! Just a concept car at the moment though.

All of the different models and colors of BMW since 1970 were on display.

Clay model that they use to design the new cars.

A really old, fancy car? Sorry to all of you car lovers, you are going to have to come to the museum yourself rather than relying on my memory of what I saw there.

It was still raining on Sunday so Maggie arranged for one of her friends that is studying Art History to give us a tour of the Neue Pinakothek. The art museum had a good variety of paintings. Below are some of our favorites.

Van Gogh´s Sunflowers

I was impressed with this painting and how thick the paint was. (Mel, I even remembered this as a part of my art lessons from you in Chicago)

The German´s were not too impressed with mine and Michael´s pronunciation of his name. Apparently Van should not be said just like the vehicle van.

German pronunciation - Von Gogh (with the Gogh being a long O sound but said really quickly)
Dutch pronunciation - Von Gogchhhh (Gogh is way deep in the back of your throat)

This painting by Giovanni Segantini was one of my favorites. This doesn't do the picture justice, but in person the grass in the bottom is multi-colored with tons of detail through out.

What do you think is happening in this picture? Our group had a great debate over it.

1. The man is admitting he had an affair, but saying that it is over now. ~Maggie
2. The man has just come home from a long day of work is looking for his wife to console him. ~Michael
3. The man is telling his wife that he just lost his job. ~Maggie´s friend, the Art History Major
4. The woman does not believe what the man is telling her. The man is begging her to believe him. ~Christa

Turns out Michael and Maggie´s friend were both right. The painting is by Max Slevogt and called The Day´s Work Done.