Today I went to the German Technical Museum directly, without first visiting Leia for lunch. It is a very large museum with many areas on various technology disciplines. There are sections on textiles with weaving and sewing machines, computers, cameras, pharmaceuticals, and large halls with boats, trains, and planes. One could easily spend most of a day in that museum if one was intent on seeing every item, but I stopped when my legs got tired about three hours in. It saved me a lot of time that nearly all the informational placards are only in German: where they do have anything in English, it's only a sentence or two from the larger German text, so I didn't have much to read at each exhibit. I "skimmed" past the largest area on trains, which don't really interest me. I spent most of my time in the floors on aircraft and wind power, and also hung around the sections on computers, cameras, and a few others. A few of the exhibits have fun interactive elements.
As the name implies, most of the German Technical Museum focuses on German technology in a sort of nationalistic way. For example they say a German (in fact a German-American and the claim is disputed) launched the first motor-powered flying machine, and then the Wright brothers made a controlled flight two years later. Germany also issued the first pilot's license, and I do believe that they were the first to regulate it. They have placards about "20 German-Jewish Inventors" who started companies and had to flee the country, and an exhibit in the upper aircraft floor discusses forced labor camps during WWII. The museum has a large outdoor area with windmills, a forge, and brewery, but all of those things were closed so it was only a pleasant stroll outside.
I finished up at the museum early enough to come back to Gendarmenmarkt for some wurst (sausage), and then to surprise Leia at work right at the end of her workday. We went shopping at the "fancy" grocery store for more things needed to make Pad-Thai (that I cooked tonight), berry cupcakes (that Leia baked at the same time), and tacos. It ended up costing over 40 euros, an amendment to the earlier rule: sometimes I shop and spend 200 shekels, but it's always nearly exact hundreds.
Leia's friend K came over right on time at 1900, when we were still in the midst of cooking and baking. She and Leia had tea and cupcakes and played Magic (a geeky card game) with decks I brought for this, while I finished preparing dinner and ate some. It was no surprise when Leia dominated her red deck. Then K and I had pad-thai and we started a three-player game. Both girls played sneaky blue decks and I played my sliver deck that everybody is afraid of. They both used their counterspells to make sure I couldn't get powerful while K beat me down with her unblockable damage. When Leia cleverly countered the master-plan I tried to get back into the game, I saw it was hopeless and surrendered. By then K already had a lot on the board to snipe at Leia, and Leia surrendered after a good fight too. I noticed that K (who is Chinese) arranged her cards top-to-bottom, whereas Leia arranged hers right-to-left. It was a lot of fun to see them both play so smart and I wasn't surprised or bothered to lose quickly to such worthy opponents.
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