4: To the Alpine Museum: A peak experience
Thursday October 26, 2017
This was probably the last nice day for a while, cold and wet has been predicted. All the more reason to get on our bikes. We rode to Munich's Alpine Museum, ten kilometers round trip. It is an excellent museum and I wonder why I have never been there before. It is certainly worth visiting. It is run by the German Alpine Association and was established in 1911. More about the museum here. The current exhibition is titled "Hoch Hinaus! Wege und Hütten in den Alpen" - freely translated as "To the Top! Trails and Huts in the Alps".
On our way to the museum we stopped off at the post office. It's sort of like a Trojan horse. From the outside you have no idea what is on the inside. Inside of the nice old pre-war building are the post office's modernized facilities. You can do banking there as well as the other things that post offices offer - although I don't think many people send letters by snail mail anymore. Lots of packages to and from Amazon though.
This was probably the last nice day for a while, cold and wet has been predicted. All the more reason to get on our bikes. We rode to Munich's Alpine Museum, ten kilometers round trip. It is an excellent museum and I wonder why I have never been there before. It is certainly worth visiting. It is run by the German Alpine Association and was established in 1911. More about the museum here. The current exhibition is titled "Hoch Hinaus! Wege und Hütten in den Alpen" - freely translated as "To the Top! Trails and Huts in the Alps".
On our way to the museum we stopped off at the post office. It's sort of like a Trojan horse. From the outside you have no idea what is on the inside. Inside of the nice old pre-war building are the post office's modernized facilities. You can do banking there as well as the other things that post offices offer - although I don't think many people send letters by snail mail anymore. Lots of packages to and from Amazon though.
After getting my package off at the post office we headed west. We crossed through the English Garden to reach the bike path along the Isar River, an enjoyable way to cycle through Munich with only short stretches on roads with traffic.
The Alpine Museum is situated on an island in the Isar. Before we went inside we looked at the outdoor part of the exhibition, a reconstructed Alpine hut as well as some interesting geological displays, a bronze sculpture and some big rocks for kids to practice bouldering on. It was all so very well done, I was already impressed.
After wandering around in the garden and taking pictures we went inside. Time for coffee and cake in its very nice little café. There weren't many tables, and there weren't many customers either, just one woman with a toddler. The variety of homemade cake was another highlight.
Now for the museum. I loved it. Here is a translation of a description of the Trails and Huts exhibition that I found in the Internet:
The exhibition asks what is special about Alpine trails and huts. It traces the emergence of the tourism infrastructure and shows the development from the accommodations in the early 1870s to the "mountain hotels" at the turn of the century. It shows the conscious reduction of comfort in the 1920s as well as the latest solutions for a contemporary approach to Alpine accommodation today. Amongst the exhibits are furnishings and utensils from the huts as well as documents, paintings, photographs and models of the sections of the Alpine clubs.
Here is a small sampling of the exhibits to give you an idea.
The exhibition asks what is special about Alpine trails and huts. It traces the emergence of the tourism infrastructure and shows the development from the accommodations in the early 1870s to the "mountain hotels" at the turn of the century. It shows the conscious reduction of comfort in the 1920s as well as the latest solutions for a contemporary approach to Alpine accommodation today. Amongst the exhibits are furnishings and utensils from the huts as well as documents, paintings, photographs and models of the sections of the Alpine clubs.
Here is a small sampling of the exhibits to give you an idea.
One last impression from our visit to Munich's Alpine Museum: