Erynn came along to my European Sales Meeting for Keithley Instruments in Munich. We spent a couple days before the meeting seeing the sights, then she went of with a couple friends from school that were living in Germany. My meeting was in Freising, which is a small town just outside of Munich by the airport. The meeting lasted two days, but since it is apparently against company policy to have any fun we were booked from 8am to 10pm both days. Erynn was lucky to get out of there and see some sights in Rothenburg.
Munich is famous for a few things. One of them being the Glockespeil in the Marienplatz. Above are a couple pictures of the Glockenspeil, which is just an old clock tower on top of the new Ratshaus. The figure in the clock move around and ding bells. Probably was pretty impressive before humans invented things like the car, the wheel, or the Internet.
And here is the old Ratshaus.
From the train station, you head toward all the tourist attractions and shopping. The main square you cross before you hit the pedestrian zone is the Karlsplatz. The main gate to the street is just visible on the left side of this picture.
The main pedestrian street is Neuhauserstrasse, and this is the gate you pass through after the Karlsplatz. You can just see the Karlsplatz through the arch.
And as we walked down the main pedestrian street I took a couple pictures of some cool buildings. Don't exactly know what they are, but pretty neat nonetheless.
A bit further down the street is the Frauenkirche, which I think roughly translates to Our Ladies Church. And then a few more blocks down the road is where the Mareinsplatz and the Glockenspeil can be found.
And at the very end of the pedestrian zone is the gate at the Isatarplatz.
But before you hit the Isartarplatz, one has to hit the place that Munich is really famous for: the Hofbrauhaus.
As I said, Munich is in the heart of Bavaria and is the home of Oktoberfest. The Hofbrauhaus is a gigantic beer hall for tourists to experience a little Bavarian flavor.
We actually met up with some of Erynn's friends, Hope and Erik, while we were in Munich. They live farther north closer to Frankfurt, but the made the drive down to see us. Then later while I was attending my meeting, Erynn took the train to stay with them for a couple days. Hope and Erik actually had visitors of their own over from the States and all of were actually here at the Hofbrauhaus. The third couple had a really funny little boy named Jacob. On the left you can see Hope and Jacob. On the right is Erynn with Erik. As you might guess this place had the absolutely best pretzels we've ever tasted.
And I think this is one of the cutest pictures I've ever taken. If the people from the Hofbrauhaus would like to buy the rights to this photo off me, please contact me at the address at the bottom of this page. Nothing better than starting them young.
One of the things I enjoy about Munich is the Deutsches Museum, which is like America's Smithsonian. The place is huge and you can spend an entire day just walking around. Almost the entire museum is dedicated to Germany's technical innovations and dominance.
Here are a couple pictures from inside the museum itself. Above me on the wall is an Empacher single with the infamous sliding riggers that were banned shortly after they were introduced. The sliding rigger provided much more mechanical advantage and were deemed unfair by FISA, the sports governing body. And there's a picture of Erynn in front of a nice BMW.
At our previous sales meeting in Rome 2000, people went a little crazy. There was enough time for the personnel to mingle and get to know each other. A lot of this mingling happened in bars, and some took advantage. As a reaction, our European Sales Manager made it impossible for anyone to actually enjoy themselves or meet anyone during this meeting. Germanic people management skills!
Anyway, I was able to walk around the town during one of the "group" lunches, and the town of Freising was quite beautiful. Below are some of the pictures I took.
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As I was being bored to tears in my meeting, Erynn was off with Hope and Erik seeing some other sights. Since I wasn't actually along for the ride, I don't know much about all these pictures. I don't think Erynn does either, other than this was just a pretty, little town where she took a bunch of pictures. Below is a nice selection of the photos.
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© 2002 Doug Rathburn