Sunday, January 24, 2010

White Roses in Bavaria

I think everyone on the trip was looking forward to Munich. The excitement on the bus was almost palpable.
I was pleased with the guide's information about the White Roses, the student uprising against the Nazi's. I feel it is one of the overlooked stories of history. Perhaps it is just because I was educated in Canada and for some reason we just didn't learn anything about these people who stood up against the Nazi's, we only learned about the Nazi party itself and the events surrounding their rise and demise. I really had no idea how many people were against the regime and who tried to fight it. I hope history does not forget them.
Our tour guide Jurgen was right about the glockenspiel in Marienplatz...it is horribly out of tune. But it is still pleasant to look at.
There were a few Museums to choose from and I ended up going to the Deutches museum. I think I would need a full week to be able to see everything. The museum was divided into different sections like Chemistry, Aeronautics, Math, Physics, etc. And each section had a demonstration at different times of the day. Some were experiments and some were special tours or lectures. We went to see the liquid nitrogen experiment in the physics section.
I had no idea how much fun liquid nitrogen could be.
Our robust museum guide with a very comical mustache was kind enough to enlighten us for 20 minutes on the wonders of this frigid liquid. There were a whole series of "tricks" he did. First he poured it into a very thick glass beaker where it then started to bubble like it was boiling but it was actually just heating up.

He then took a piece of chalk and showed us that it could not easily slide across the table. He put the chalk in some liquid nitrogen and then easily slide the chalk on the table, it looked like the table had turned into ice the chalk was moving so slowly. He also blew up a balloon and put it over the liquid nitrogen. The balloon shrank, but it did not burst and then in a matter of seconds it re-inflated to its original size. I don't entirely understand the science behind it but it was pretty nifty.


There were many others but my favorite was when he poured the liquid nitrogen onto a large shallow cardboard box and then blew soap bubbles over it. The bubbles bounced on the gas and some broke, not popped but almost shattered into little pieces.


And of course we went to the historic Haufbrau Haus. Most of those mugs pictured came home with us...


No comments: