Weekend Adventures

The Deutsches Museum is a huge place that's built on an island in the Isar River. It's a museum of technology in the broadest sense, and has exhibits of everything from the history of coal mining to computers. Marcin and I had a good time, but my feet hurt after three hours of making our way through the place. We stopped at an outdoor cafe for a coffee before going our separate ways.

Yesterday, the Abbot of St. B's had a ceremony to go to at Plankstetten ... a Monastery about an hour and a half drive north of Munich ... so he asked Luigi (the other summer student) and me to go along. It turned out to be a big fest for St. Christopher's Day. The Abbot of Plankstetten was recently named a Bishop and the Community there chose to elect a Prior Administrator for three years to have time to do the discernment thing. But they wanted a miter and crozier to dress up the fest, so the Prior Administrator invited his friend, Abbot Johannes. After Mass the Abbot had to stand outside and bless all the vehicles that passed by ... everything from kids on bikes to motorcycles, cars, vans and trucks... I think he was at it for almost an hour. While he was doing that, we got a tour. When the Abbot finished his blessings, we sat down to a very nice dinner. Plankstetten is an old place that has a very large organic farming operation ... even their beer is "Bio" (I tried the dark, and it was very good). On the way home we stopped at Scheyern, another very old Monastery in the region. The monk who was giving us the tour made a point to say that they have been eating in the same room for 800 years. Both places were lovely.

It was raining in Munich when we left (about 8:30am) but cleared as we headed north into the hills. The weather was beautiful for the rest of the day, including when we got back into the city around 4:30.

For lunch today, I wandered up the street and around the corner to someplace where I could sit outside. I had the special ... a whole roasted Schwein hock with a big dumpling. It was good.

We have an exam tomorrow for the latter part of the morning ... part written, part oral. In one way it's kind of odd to have an exam for a course that isn't graded, but I suppose they do have to have some kind of assessment tool. Wednesday, we'll go over the exam and wrap things up.

The Monks at St. B's are all on a summer outing to Freising, so there aren't any meals served in the House today. I guess I'll just HAVE to go back to the Vietnamese place I found last week ...