Well, Henry was right--on the way out of Speyer, heading back to the A6 autobahn, you go right past the big Technik Museum. And if you've got a 3-year-old boy in the front passenger seat of your rented minivan (I still haven't figured out what the rules are over here--for all their scholarship, Bruno and Lambert profess complete ignorance of German child safety laws, and Bertha still hasn't said a word to anyone except her son), you really don't have a choice but to stop, especially when Conrad starts shouting "aereo! aereo!"

So here's the budget for this stop: Henry had given me 20 euros to take little Conrad to the Technik Museum. (I know, I know--it was really my money, and Henry was just giving me a kickback from the payment he had just extorted out of me, but the weird thing was, it felt like something else--like I had these special Imperial funds in my pocket.) But of course it turns out that kids under 5 get free admission to the museum, so even with the 7 euro ticket to the Imax, you might think I'd be ahead 13 euros, right? Hah! That would be because you forgot about the four adults in the Opel! Adult admission is 13 euros, plus the Imax tickets at 9 euros each, and nobody but yours truly made the slightest move to pay. (I'm beginning to understand what it means to go on vacation with two monks and the royal family.)

So basically we're talking 95 euros, of which 20 had been "given" me by Henry, so even if I accept the fiction of Henry's beneficence, and deduct the charges for my own tickets (I did enjoy myself), I'm still down 53 euros, plus the 200 (or should it be 180?--this feudal finance is getting confusing) that I had already given Henry.

Anyway, it's great museum, it even has a Space Shuttle, which they floated up the Rhine. Really, that's how they got it there, on a barge.