Today Keeley and I decided to go in separate directions. I took the 45min walk to Olympia Park to see the BMW museum and showrooms. The buildings are impressive, particularly the brand new BMW Welt (World), a huge indoor showroom of every BMW series on the market. It also has a restaurant, concert hall, and a number of interactive displays advertising all the new technology being incorporated in the cars. The museum was even better, and predictably slick in its presentation. It began with a very cool dynamic sculpture of dozens of silver balls on strings that would form different shapes, like the outline of a car or abstract ideas like wind, progress, sportiness, etc. What followed was, from a cynical point of view, an hour or so of exhibits of essentially BMW self-congratulation and propaganda. It was, however, highly enjoyable, much like an exclusive motor show. I saw the history and development of the brand's cars and motorcycles, played with some very cool computer technology (the projector ones that sense where you're pointing), saw touring cars, F1 cars, luxury vehicles, a special section dedicated to the M-Sport division, a cool display that showed every model badge for the last forty years, and an interesting exhibit on the future of driving. There was a hydrogen race car, a concept car with a number of 'practical' developments, and some really out-there ideas like asymmetrical LED tail lights to improve the response time of the driver behind. Interestingly, BMW's design department operates in small teams in a competition atmosphere in the initial phase, so the first response is actually a design competition within the company. It was a very worthwhile experience, but I think Keeley did the right thing by not coming. She would've been bored and it would have been a waste of money.
The second part of the day was also enjoyable. In her travels Keeley had discovered a festival, and by the time we got back there it was well and truly in full swing. Almost everyone (including the middle-aged, almost more than anyone) had dressed up in crazy costumes, from fluoro fur to witches, dragons, clowns, bunny rabbits, blue men, criminals, you name it. There were alcohol stalls lining the streets, huge pretzels bigger than out heads (they even taste like the little pretzels in a packet you get at home), poor quality song and dance on three big stages, drum groups, and a general carnival atmosphere. More amazing than anything was how quickly it went up. There was no sign of it on our walking tour yesterday (the soccer must have distracted everyone) yet today it was completely on. It was great to be part of the party, the atmosphere was fantastic.
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