SFASU in GermanyMay 2014: Wie Gehts?!

Royal Court Garden

Bayrische Staatskanzlei

The Cabinet Room

Garden Room

Today has officially been a week since we began our journey here in Germany! Our morning in Munich started off early with a walk through the royal court garden and then a visit to the Bayrische Staatskanzlei, the office of the Bavarian First Minister. Here we had a special opportunity to arrive early and have an open question time with one of the staff members and view the equivalent of our Chief of Staff’s office. He made sure to do his homework and compared Bavaria to Texas, saying that each were key contributors to their countries politics and economy. Both are also southern and conservative states (We know Texas is still better!), which was a really cool comparison for all of us to hear. Afterwards we discus various Bavarian politics with him he had to leave us for another appointment with the Hungarian Consulate General. He led us into the cafeteria inside the Bayrische Staatskanzlei where we had lunch as a group before our tour. From lunch we moved on to our tour of the Bayrische Staatskanzlei. The new part of the building was modeled to look like an atrium while the older section was restored to its former glory (to look like the old Bavarian Military Museum). We then moved into the main grand room, which was salvaged from the bombings during WWII.

Fun day of sun bathing

Group Picture

Once our tour was over we went for a stroll through the city while we made our way to our next stop at the Deutsche Museum. While walking we came up to people surfing under a bridge, yes in the middle of Munich! After we all got to gawk in amazement at the surfers, we walked until we reached a large monument in town, which was really grand. We also had the pleasure of seeing how German’s sun bath on the warmer summer days.

Suffers in Munich

We finally made it to the Deutsche Museum, which is the largest science and technologies museum in the world! The museum consisted of different areas, ranging from shipping and navigation to DNA testing. Each section had artifacts detailing the history of each industry. It was amazing to explore the history behind what we view to be common technologies today!

The highlight of the day was getting to see Dr. Galatas do the “Bernie” for all of us when we got off the train! We got to have ice cream at a local place before we ended a group dinner with some amazing pizza!