Hamburg or Bust!

Out of Control!

Spring break has arrived!

Two weeks off of school for Spring Break is a long time, so we are trying to squeeze in a few trips since our time in Germany is starting to draw down.

Our first stop was Ronnenberg to visit the Kellersmann family again. They are so good to us. Our trip wasn't as long as we would have liked because someone (Russell) had to teach a class. Oh well.

Our friends wanted to take us to Hamburg for the next day, so we all hopped on the train and off we went.

The train ticket we had, a Niedersachen ticket allows you to ride any local train (which means not the fast ICEs). Luckily, that ticket also included water taxis. Once we arrived in Hamburg, we hopped onto a water taxi and had a tour of  the Elbe through Hamburg.

I took a picture of this building before I even read the text painted on the house.  It says "Out of Control". I love the mixture of styles and colors on this row of building!

I also saw these two amazingl doors. 

This one made me a little home sick. Mermaids are the symbol of Norfolk. If you look closely, you can see the mermaid enticing the sailor.

We took a short walking tour of the city and saw the Rathaus. A Rathaus is basically city hall. Hamburg's Rathaus is open to the public and holds concerts and exhibitions. It is not a museum, but the building itself is pretty historical so there are tours through it.

Our next stop was an Italian restaurant where we ordered, then waited and waited for our food. Then waited some more. Sadly, bad service seems to be exactly the same here as it is in the U.S. I am convinced the waitress forgot to put in our order!

Luckily our children were very well behaved and waited patiently.

Our final destination of the day was the Miniatur Wunderland.  Just in case you have no idea what that is, imagine an entire building filled with model train layouts. I am not talking about your strange neighbor's train set that circles the basement. This was truly amazing. You can walk through a good portion of the world in HO scale. The lights were set on a timed dimmer to give you the night time perspective every few minutes.

There were so many amazing displays that is was hard to pick a few out to share.

Can you see the Ferris Wheel in the picture above?

This palace reminds me very much of King Ludvig's Chimsee palace in Bavaria. This is the same king who constructed Neuschwanstein (Cinderella's Castle) .

This exhibit (below) was one of the most popular. There are doors on the wall that let the model airplane through on it's "take-off", complete with jet noise sound effects.

There was even a post war exhibit - "Never forget" is pretty important here.

The exhibits included city and attractions from around the world. It was interesting to see what someone from another country would pick as a representation for other lands. Here is a desert scene from the US. I think it is supposed to be a part of Utah.

Here is a depiction of Las Vegas. The details were pretty impressive. This portion was complete even with the column of light beaming out of the Luxor.

Here is a scene from Scandinavia. The water in this section was no simulation!

One of the last sections we saw this beautiful replica of a church in Scandinavia.

The last section was a winter wonderland, complete with sign warning you that the snow is actually small pieces of glass that can cut you!

No matter what age you are, if you ever have a chance to visit Hamburg, the Miniatur Wunderland is definitely worth a visit if you have time.

One day is really not enough time to really see Hamburg. There is so much to see there that I really hope we can visit again to experience more of the city.