We decided to spend our last full day in Germany wandering around the Deutsches Museum Munich – which was so huge (with a total exhibition space of 66,000 square meters!) and comprehensive as to nearly be overwhelming. It was established in 1903 and is among the world’s oldest and largest museums of science and technology. It would probably have taken multiple days to see everything without being totally exhausted, but we did our best.
The computers and technology exhibit was up on the second floor of the museum. There were many devices from the whole history of computing – this is the inside of a UNIVAC I Factronic computer. It was the nearly the size of a city bus and had a maintenance door on the side!
It had been an incredible whirlwind trip, but it was time to pack up and prepare for our early (very early) departure for the train back to the Munich airport in the morning. Adding even more fun to the equation was the end of daylight savings time in Germany (it happens a week early over there), meaning we gained an hour in the middle of the night while we were making sure everything was ready to go.
Auf wiedersehen, Deutschland! We made our morning trains with no problem, and despite a little international flight check-in hiccup for Brandon, we arrived at our departure gate in Düsseldorf with plenty of time to spare. The return flight to L.A. was longer than the trip over (earth’s curvature and rotation are funny things) but it all went smoothly and we made it back to Burbank in time to pick up Albert from the kennel. Our trip was amazing but we missed the little dude! Unfortunately we didn’t have much time to relax since Halloween was the next day – but at least Brandon had a cool new costume to wear.
