Munich(continued)

We then went to 12:00 mass at the 'Old Peter' church. It was a beautiful white church with murals of different scenes of Jesus in it. The mass was only 30 minutes long and felt really rushed.

After mass we climbed to the top of the tower on 'Old Peter'. It was very long, about 1500 stairs. We had a view of all of Munich from up there! I'll post a picture of the view later.

Then we ate lunch in the Marienplatz. We ate Weisswurst there, a delicious dish of cooked white sausage, a traditional bavarian breakfast. My mom told me that Weisswurst is a breakfast because, before refrigerators, they wouldn't keep fresh past the next morning.

After this we went to the German Museum. It was amazing! First, we went to this special electricity presentation. The employees put two metal apparati about 2 feet apart. Once turned on, a bright beam of electricity flowed from one to the other. Next, they put a glass plate between the apparati. The electricity flowed around the plate in a spiderweb-like pattern. After this, one of the employees got into the Pharysian Cage, a big round metal cage which was lifted about 20 feet off the ground. 5000 volts were run through the cage, but the man could touch the sides without being electrocuted! Lastly, the employees simulated lightning strikes. Static electricity was built up along a huge tower and then let out a narrow funnel. The result? A very fast and very loud lightning strike. After a few times hitting power lines and church steeples in a miniature town, a string was strung from the funnel to a piece of wood, simulating a tree. The lightning strike hit the tree, and splintered the wood but didn't fell the tree, just like in real life! This was the end of their presentation.

The other really cool thing in the German Museum was a mine exhibit. Instead of having informational signs all over the place, dummies of miners were shown doing all the things done in a real mine. One place even showed a flooded mine shaft with a miner drowning inside! In the beginning of the exhibit, miners were shown with pickaxes, like they used a longer time ago. But then mine carts came along, and dynamite. By the end of the exhibit, miners were inside a tunneling machine and wood covered the roof. The structure of the mine also changed, to more high-tech ways of holding up a wall to prevent collapse. Towards the beginning, nothing was holding up the walls, making a collapse more likely. All in all, a very cool experience.

That just about sums up my day in Munich. I did so much that I can't believe I only spent a day there. Munich is a great city, not to mention my birthplace. I'm going back there this weekend for a Bayern Munich game.