Bavarian Staaples

This morning we went to BMW Welt which is near Olympia park in Munich. It is a huge complex, manufacturing plant, museum and show rooms all on one site. The architecture is impressive. The current exhibition is of their 3 series. As part of this, you can take a 4 hour drive of the 3 series of your choice. They programme a scenic drive into the navigation system and give you a voucher for lunch in the country, all for 50 euro. This seemed a great idea. Unfortunately, we had been given the wrong information and it didn't run on a Tuesday. We will go back on Friday and try again. They did give us free entry to the museum as an apology. The museum was good fun. BMW's first engine was for an aeroplane. Their first road vehicle was a motorbike. We spent quite a bit of time there and then went into town on the U-Bahn for a late lunch at one of the beer gardens. The one we went to was a sit down beer hall on the first floor and restaurant on the second floor. Damian had roast pork with sauerkraut and potato fritters. I had pork liver. We had a dark wheat beer known as bock beer (Aventinus Eisbock). It was very good, 12% alcohol, quite a different experience. Dessert was huge. A few peculiar things about the restaurants we have been to, you just sit down in an empty seat, even if there are other people sitting at the table, all the food is preprepared and arrives very quickly, you can have beer with everything, the waiters might seem as if they can speak English, but its usually doesn't extend beyond ordering.

We headed home for a postprandial snooze. Tonight we have been to the opera, La Traviata at Bayerische Staatsoper. The nationaltheatre was impressive. It was sold out months ago so we were lucky I booked in advance. The singing was of a high standard. Damian found it hard to follow the singing in Italian and the surtitles in German, but I think he got the gist of it.