Our second day was a tram ride across the city and the river to the Deutsches Museum, which is the Science Centre with a more solemn historical mission. Being in Europe - and perhaps being in Cambridge - now more than when I was here, ten years ago now? and far too wrapped up in myself - is to feel the weight of history in every part of the ordinary day. What I remember of the Museum: glass sponges; iron balls vibrating and radiating heat to kill the tumour cells they were injected into; the technical toys exhibition (largely a generic version of lego, though not less cool for that); the glassblowing exhibition; short videos of the future (like the future of food, or of robots - but two videos each, a good future and a bad future (in the bad future, the robots turn overprotective and cage us up for our own good)); the ipod (well - mp3 technology, I think); the Jaegermeister factory model; the 19th-century clocks exhibition (an exhibition on timekeeping, more generally - there is something magical, both precise and beautiful, useless in its precision and beautiful in its functionality, about old clocks and watches and especially sundials); the laser light displays (optics, I think); and pictures of hot air balloons (aeronautics).
Lunch was bratwurst and gluhwein at the Tollwood Christmas market. (We loaded up on breakfast at the hotel - which had the best breakfast of all the hotels we had been to, though still a variation on a theme, of ham and cheese and bread and jam.) The Christkindlmarkt at the Marienplatz is touristy and schmaltzy and I love it - the stalls are wooden carts decorated with leaves and flowers and tinsel, and they sell soft toys you can warm in the microwave (to warm your bed and sweeten your sleep) and woolly hats and gloves and scarves and delicate wooden stars and bright red and gold globes to hang on your Christmas tree. Tollwood sells all that, plus bright throws with animal prints and totem heads from Africa and star-shaped lanterns from Morocco - it's food fair plus pasar malam. The grounds are huge, with one giant tent for stalls (called the bazaar) and another for food and of course stalls outside, selling bratwurst and gluhwein (fortified in all sorts of ways) and the german pizza that Magma sells (whose name escapes me now) and large slabs of preserved meat in all forms on crusty bread. I have had enough gluhwine and sausage to last me a lifetime.
A quick stop to Eilles and the other, slightly posher bakery for Christmas cookies, and then Ederer for dinner. I think it would be fair to call it an updated version of Bavarian food - not quite as heavy - and thoughtfully planned and well executed, except for dessert, which was disappointing. (Traditional Bavarian dessert, at least in winter, seems to be stewed fruit and cream, though I have a soft spot for strudel.) I have possibly also drunk enough Riesling to last quite a long time.