This morning, I took the very clean and efficient subway out to the BMW factory. I found the correct building alright, but first felt compelled to wander around for awhile until I could find the entrance to the front door. I paid my five marks and 50 pfennings without so much as a gripe.

I don't know how to gripe in Deutsche, but if I did it would have been something in the order of "I have been buying your overpriced but lovely stuff for over 20 years now, I want in for free, dammit!" but I smiled and paid and the pretty blonde woman handed me a ticket and those odd pseudo-headphones that they used to hand out on airplanes (before we all wised up and brought along our own).

The museum is swell. Lots of cool stuff, bikes, planes, cars, thingies cut away so that you can look inside. And films. Did I mention the films? Everywhere you go there are films that one can look at for awhile.

An enthusiast like me has his choice of languages to listen along, should one want to listen along. I chose English, though briefly considered French because it sounds so much better, though I hardly speak a word of French. Actually, I made that up. I speak none.

Since I am old and gray in thought, experience and vices, I have seen much of this stuff before. Concept stuff, old stuff. Neat, gee-whiz stuff that makes me get a lump in my throat. Some of it was so darn cool that I got a lump more southerly. I admit that I have lust in my heart for some of the models on display as well for the lady selling the postcards.

As a beer stein-half-empty type of guy, I noticed that there was a bit of an omission concerning BMW's participation in selling items for the war effort, though they did show some cool clips of soldiers motoring bravely toward the Russian front on sidecars, three up.

They also had (my hero) Helge Peterson's GS on display. That was sooo cool, since it was a bike that had actually been ridden somewhere, not a perfect fresh-from-the-factory model like everything else. And I know Helge and I know that bike. It was plastered with Aerostich stickers too. It was a bike from home.

But then I got museum syndrome. My eyes glassed over. I didn't care anymore what I saw. It was all so cool it was as though I was in a dream. It was time to leave.

But first the gift store. Maybe a new R1100s in black? Maybe even just a sticker?

They had no stickers, but they did have postcards and neckties and very sweet vintage-looking posters and leather wallets. I passed on the leather wallets. Real men use Cordura.

And should you by chance have the new 1200cc cruiser, they have everything just for you. And boy oh boy is it stylish! (And expensive. And really, really gaudy.) The cruiser with the sidecar was bitchin' though.

I ended up with some postcards and a couple of pins. I went outside into the rain and trundled back to my hotel, returned the soggy umbrella, went up to my room and took a nap.

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