The Last Day

Today was our last day in Munich; we went on our last field trip, made our last gelato stop, and had our last dinner together. Despite predictions for rain, today was beautiful; a perfect day to visit the spa town of Bad Tölz. Though we all opted out of spending time at the waterpark, Cindy, David and Jenn did get in the Isar River and float downstream. The Isar originates in the Alps, and was very cold, but it was fun to play in the water. Other members of our class simply sat with their feet in the water, while others walked around town exploring shops and enjoying the scenery.

The view down Marktstasse in Bad Tolz.

For dinner we returned to Spaten House, at the plaza in front of the Residenz, where we not only had the same waiter as on our previous visit, but were remembered by the waiter. Dinner was followed by a final group picture in the Max-Joseph Platz. All other free time today (and well into the night) was spent trying to fit everything we brought with us and everything we have acquired here back into our bags.

Finally, a group photo with everyone in it...

 

Final Presentations and Free Time!

It is hard to believe that today was our last day at the castle! After staying up late last night to finish our presentations, we drank a lot of coffee to wake up this morning. After a few minor and easily corrected setbacks, we began our presentations with a few words by Dr. Raabe, the Director of the International Youth Library and Dr. Weeks. The first two presentations were given by Carolina and Tahereh, research fellows currently working at the IYL.

Tahereh presenting her proposal.

• Carolina, a children’s book editor from Colombia, presented her plan for a university course that she hopes to teach: how create text that is integral to the illustrations of a children’s picture book.
• Tahereh, a university professor from Iran, presented her proposal for the comparison of Iranian and American children’s books. During the course of her study, Tahereh plans to identify differences and similarities in what themes and subject matter do not appear in each country’s children’s books . She hopes to write and publish an article in a journal of children’s literature.

Diana and Laura presenting their project.

• Emily S. and Jenn presented information about the class blog, statistics, the Picasa album and the study library brochures that they created.
• Diana and Laura presented their findings on ways to improve the English version of the IYL webpage, including translations of some of the press releases and the events calendar.
• Emily G. discussed the traveling exhibition catalogs that she translated, the bibliographies she created, and the brochure on the traveling exhibitions that she created.
• Ashley and Erin presented the two pamphlets that they created and the two pamphlets that they translated as well as describing the methods that they used to translate the materials.
• Cindy discussed the publicity packet that she created, including a list of organizations, universities and associations that could be interested, a cover letter and two promotional posters.
• David brought down the house with his video about the White Ravens, the annual list of outstanding titles from around the world create by the IYL.

We were a little shell-shocked and a little sad that our time at the castle was over. To recover from this great shock, we all wandered around Munich for about four hours. Everyone had time after lunch to do any shopping or sightseeing that they have not been able to do earlier in the trip. At 7:30, five of us met for dinner at a traditional Bavarian restaurant off of Marienplatz. The portions, as was the case for the entire trip, were huge, especially David’s dessert!

 

Schloss Nymphenburg

Schloss Nymphenburg was a gift from Elector Ferdinand Maria to his wife, Henerietta Adelaide of Savoy, to celebrate the birth of their son. Originally built in the mid-seventeenth century, the castle and its grounds have been added to and reshaped by many generations of Bavarian rulers. Though this “country home” is now within metropolitan Munich, it’s easy to forget that you are in the middle of a city when walking through its acres of beautiful gardens and parkland.

A folly on a lake at Schloss Nymphenburg.

We began our day with an audio tour of the main part of the castle, where the highlights included the Steinerner Saal (a ball room in Rococo style), the Lackkabinett (a private sitting room decorated with Chinese motifs in black lacquer), and King Ludwig I’s “Gallery of Beauties” (a collection of painting of beautiful women of all social classes, including the infamous Lola Montez). By the end of the castle tour our group had split up and we went several different directions in our exploration of the rest of the castle grounds.

The bedroom where King Ludwig II was born.

After meeting up for dinner at Marienplatz, we headed home for hours of last minute finishing touches and presentation preparations. We have created such a large volume of materials for the IYL that we could not print out everything, but we did print out at least a sampling of each project and Dr. Weeks is collecting all of our projects and presentations on a USB drive to present to the IYL.

 

Eric Carle Celebration

Grün luftballons (green balloons).

Today’s long awaited event, the IYL’s Eric Carle Celebration, finally arrived! Although we are sad that we will be leaving soon, all of us had a blast helping the IYL staff with the event. When we arrived, we were asked to blow up 300 balloons (luftballons) and place rubber bands on them. The majority of the group spent about an hour doing this while others started to face paint.

Erin painting Ashley's face.

Diana, Laura, Erin, David and Cindy face painted the whole time, giving many of the children (as well as group members) colorful caterpillars (raupen) and butterflies (schmetterlinge) on their cheeks and arms.

Carolina the caterpillar head and the organ grinder.

Emily G., Dr. Weeks and Ashley spent most of the afternoon working on the balloons for a balloon caterpillar, which our Colombian friend Carolina led: the children at the event were asked to get a green balloon from a member of the Maryland contingent, who helped them put a balloon on their head. The result was a cute and hilarious caterpillar with a giant red balloon for a head and many small balloons for its body.

When the celebration was finished, we were sad. After helping the IYL staff clean up the courtyard, we went to a restaurant in Pasing with Carolina and Junko Yokota, a returning IYL fellow from the United States, for dinner. As usual, we managed to squeeze in dessert- at the gelato store we stop at after getting off the bus! We returned to the hotel ready for sleep.

 

Printing, Parades and Pinakotheks

The end is near…, and consequently, today was spent finishing up projects and preparing for presentations on Friday. Dr. Weeks’ printer has been in fairly steady use as we have begun printing out final drafts of papers, and most of us are starting to feel a bit crunched for time. Tomorrow afternoon and evening we will be helping with the Eric Carle festival at the IYL; Thursday is our trip to Schloss Nymphenburg; and Friday we present our projects to the staff and other researchers at the IYL.

A poster of Eric Carle reading his famous book, The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

Some people worked from the hotel today, while others worked at the castle. Emily S. and Jenn went to the castle for the afternoon and encountered a small parade near the Viktualienmarkt on their way to Marienplatz.

One of the horses and carriages in the parade at the Viktualienmarkt.

We all met for dinner on the steps of the Alte Pinakothek (an art museum containing 14^th-18^th century art), then took the tram home where most of us continued working on our projects.

 

How Time Flies…

Breakfast at our hotel.

It is hard to believe that today is the start of our last work week,  leaving us only a day and a half to finish our projects. The weather today seemed to encourage us to stay inside and work; it was a cool and damp Monday.

Because of several new researchers arriving at the IYL today, those members of our class who didn’t need the library’s resources work on their projects at the hotel. Emily S. and Jenn worked at the castle in the morning then returned to the hotel for the afternoon. After finishing up her work for the day Laura visited the Deutsches Museum, where she spent the majority of her time in the museum’s aeronautics exhibit.

Those of us who went to the castle had lunch with Izumi Morisada, the Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the Children’s Paperback Department for Kodansha, Ltd., a major Japanese publishing house. During Mr. Morisada’s time at the IYL an exhibition of some of the most influential manga from the 1930s through today will be mounted.

Dinner tonight was a non-group event, though about half of the group went to a traditional Bavarian restaurant near the Viktualienmarkt together.

 

Decisions, decisions

There is so much to do here and so little time left that today we each had to make a difficult decision: visit the Dachau concentration camp memorial or visit the Deutsches Museum, the world’s largest museum of technology and engineering. For various reasons, most of the group chose to visit Dachau, while David and Emily S. visited the Deutsches Museum. None of us were disappointed.

The first sign at Dachau concentration camp.

Dachau was one of the first concentration camps to be built under Nazi rule, and was one of the few to remain open throughout the Nazi regime. Originally it held mainly German political prisoners, though as World War II progressed people from other countries and those being held for “racial and social hygiene” reasons were added to its numbers. Dachau also had an SS training facility, and many administrators of other concentration camps were trained at Dachau.

The gate stating "Work Makes You Free" through which prisoners (and now visitors) entered Dachau concentration camp.

The original concentration camp was held in an old munitions factory, the “new” camp was built in the late 1930s by prisoners, and was intended to hold 6,000 inmates. Towards the end of the war Dachau held tens of thousands of people, and the living conditions deteriorated significantly, sometimes resulting in thousands of people dying each month.

One of the barracks built and lived in by prisoners at Dachau, viewed across the grounds where prisoners stood twice a day (in all weather) for roll call and where punishments were conducted.

The memorial site covers the prisoner area and the crematorium area, and visitors enter through the gate the prisoners entered. There is a museum in the former administrative building, in which the main exhibit is organized on the theme of the prisoner’s path, beginning with the check in area and ending with the liberation of the camps and memorials. Most of the prisoner barracks are only foundations, but a couple have been rebuilt to allow visitors to better envision life at the camp.

A crematorium at Dachau.

While the rest of the group contemplated the horrors of Dachau, Emily S. and David explored some of the six floors of exhibits at the Deutsches Museum. The Deutsches Museum was founded in 1903, and since 1925 it has been located on an island in the Isar River only a couple of blocks from our hotel. Among the items they investigated were: the first German U-boat, the sailing ship Ewer Maria, a medieval pharmacy, Thomas Edison’s gramophone, early hang-gliders, and more.

The deck of a ship, in the Deutsches Musuem.

After returning from our excursions many people made one last trip through the Auer Dult (today was the last day), and we all went out for pizza at a Italian restaurant that Dr. Weeks had discovered on a previous trip. The pizza was great, but we were all sobered for a moment when Emily G. pointed out that we are officially the last week of our course, as this was our last Sunday evening together.

The whole gang, outside the pizzeria.

 

Chiemsee and Fraueninsel

Laura and Diana on the steam train to Chiemsee.

We all woke up at 6:30 AM this morning to catch a train at 8:47 AM. We needed lots of coffee to wake us up. In order of vehicles, we took the following modes of transportation to get to Chiemsee: bus, U-Bahn, 1 hour ride on a double-decker train packed with the European equivalent of boy and girl scouts, a steam train and a ferry boat. The entire journey took less than two hours and the hardest part was getting off the double-decker train because of all the scouts’ backpacks on the floor.

Chiemsee comes into view.

After receiving our tickets, we took a leisurely twenty minute stroll down a path to the castle. All of a sudden, the castle came into view from in between a pair of hedges! We marveled at the gardens and the fountain before heading inside to take our tour. This tour lasted a little longer than the Neuschwanstein tour even though this palace is only 1/3 completed.

Chiemsee was built by Ludwig II as a tribute to Versailles and his idol, Louis XIV, the Sun King. The Ambassador’s staircase, the Hall of Mirrors and the State Bedroom are among the many rooms Ludwig furnished and built as slightly larger replicas of famous rooms in Versailles.

Fraueninsel's convent.

Fraueninsel, a car-free island with an active convent, was our next stop. We ended up staying there for two hours- just long enough to explore the island’s stores and places of interest and go swimming.

The Fraueninsel Convent flower garden.

David, Diana, Laura and Jenn went for a short swim while Dr. Weeks,  Ashley, Erin and Emilys G. and S. wandered around at their own pace, enjoying the lovely day.

We all managed to make it safely back to Munich and were lucky that everyone got a seat this time. Our day ended at a local restaurant, where the Bavarian-style doughnuts were literally half a loaf of sweet bread in vanilla sauce. We had two for nine people and could not finish either!

 

Working from “home”

As we have all become more comfortable using Munich’s transit system and are getting closer to the end of our time here we have been splitting up more often, trying to get in all of “must see” sights and souvenir/gift shopping. Today we split up with part of our class staying “home” at the hotel, both allowing a mid-afternoon visit to the Auer Dult and freeing up some space in the study library for other researchers.

David's camera dolly.

We all met in the evening and went for dinner in the Englischer Garten at a restaurant by the Chinesischer Turn (Chinese Tower). Carolina, one of the researchers working at the IYL joined us for dinner. She is an editor from Colombia here researching children books with the intention of creating writers workshops for people in Colombia who are interested in writing children’s books.

The Chinesischer Turm in the Englischer Garten. The second level had a band playing in it when we arrived.

 

Back to the Castle

Diana and Erin, the morning after Neuschwanstein.

Many of us had a hard time getting up this morning as a result of our long and eventful day yesterday. With the help of a lot of coffee, we made it out the door in time to catch our bus to the Marienplatz S-Bahn station. Once at the castle, we all settled down for a day’s work. Cindy stayed late to observe Stefanie’s art activity in the lending library while the rest of us headed towards Munich.

The entrance to the Munich City Museum.

Emily S., Diana, Dr. Weeks, Jenn and David went to the Munich City Museum, which has four floors of interesting, but difficult to navigate, collections relating to the city of Munich. Finding the museum’s English language guidebook allowed for a better understanding of the collections, and some exploration allowed for a better understanding of the museum’s layout. Unfortunately the hour or so available before closing time was only enough time to explore a fraction of this museum. After the museum closed at 6 PM, Diana left to visit the Auer Dult and the other four visited a nice restaurant next to the Viktualienmarkt for large portions of traditional Bavarian fare.

Ashley and Erin decided to go to the Pinakothek der Moderne and the Neue Pinakothek museums where they spent hours gazing at nineteenth and twentieth century art.