Beers, Brats, and Beemers

Guten Tag! Well, we made it back in one piece from our big trip to Germany to see the IPSO show last week in Munich. We had a great trip, saw some cool things at the show, and soaked up a little European culture touring around Munich. We're putting together a trend report of all the new and exciting things we saw at the show, but first, some of the fun stuff!
We spend the day before the show seeing some sights, and took a trip out to the brand new BMW Welt building, part of the BMW factory. This place is pretty amazing, worth the trip for any design or architecture fan. We got to check some new car models, some concept cars and ideas, and shop in the cool design book shop.

Yeah, I'd trade my Subaru in for one of these please...


We even got to 'ride' some of the awesome BMW motorcycles on display. This one was a huge Mad Max type of road bike with lots of industrial looking boxes on it.

Off-roading, Beemer style...

Here is a view inside the BMW Welt building, pictures do not do it justice

A view of BMW headquarters across the street


Right next to the BMW factory is the Olympic park, home of the infamous 1972 Summer Olympics, where terrorists killed 11 Israeli athletes and coaches. (Check out the movie Munich about the incident.) The Olympic park was a very surreal place. It was like a ghost town, even on a nice sunny day. The glass spider-web like structures were interesting, but very dated looking. Kinda creepy!

The old ticket booths are still there!


Here is a sign telling visitors not to sled or ski down a hill right onto the Autobahn! How do you say 'Duh!' in German?

Apart from the sightseeing, we made sure to take in some of the local cuisine. Meghan tried to sample every German beer possible. In Munich, beer drinking is not just a leisure activity, it is a serious sport! We saw people drinking huge mugs of beer starting first thing in the morning, with their breakfast pastry. There was plenty of places to grab traditional Bavarian fare, we tried some of the sausages, but stayed far away from the the local favorite, boiled pigs knuckles...yikes!
Not on the South Beach diet...

Another fun sight was people getting ready for upcoming Carnival week. There were plenty of costume displays in the department stores. It seemed to be more like Mardi Gras than Halloween, with lots of wacky costumes, nothing scary. This one was pretty funny, kind of a Mexican Disco Hippie, maybe it's a German thing.