Miniatur Wunderland

Today Birgit and Jana took us into Hamburg city centre via U-Bahn (underground train) and the bus.  Curtesy of Sabine and her birthday  present to the boys and in fact Tessa and I, we went to the miniature world, which is located right in the harbour in Hamburg.  I really like the area there and remember it well from a previous visit.  In fact we are planning to spend more time there next weekend, so for today I will just insert a little taster…now that I can!!! 🙂

The Speicherstadt, a unique historic warehouse complex, where boats used to ‘park’ alongside and cranes unload the goods through the windows straight into the warehouses.

Anyway, back to miniatures…this wonderland is set in one of these fabulous old storage houses just like the one on the photo above.  Floor after floor it is laid out with amazing little worlds.  Each room or area has a theme, starting with various ages in the story of mankind on the ground floor, to Hamburg specific attractions on an upper level.  I must confess we missed out the Scandinavian section altogether, as after a couple of hours we were saturated and needed some good fresh harbour air!

I did notice a few grandfather, son and grandson combinations around the place, and it seems a popular place for small groups of young male adults, too.  There were lots of local people on a Sunday and a few tourists, just like us.

I think the Hamburg specific miniature areas were the most attractive ones and the most relevant to us.  The children really liked it all and there were lots of amazed “oh” and “ah”s as not only were there plenty of trains driving past everywhere, but there were buttons to be pressed that made the little figurines do things.

Here are some examples…

Ben admiring one of the scenes. It looks weird with ‘real people’ in the backgound, doesn’t it?

Could be a photo of any German city itself, don’t you think?

This was ‘back stage’ at a concert…public toilets ha ha

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Hauptbahnhof in Hamburg

We were quite hungry after all this and had ‘Asian’ food in a pleasant place in ‘Hafencity’ which reminded us a bit of the Viaduct area in Auckland.

There was a nice little playground where the children could get rid of some energy gained with lunch.

At lunch in Hafencity.

Me at the playground, chilling.

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Birgit cuddling Jana

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Nick and Jana being pushed by Tessa (note the new shoes with purple laces!) after Ben abandoned post ( he was meant to help pushing!)

After that we went to see the ‘real’ Hamburg Hauptbahnhof (the main city railway station) which is a very impressive building and we went to book our ongoing train tickets.  I am amazed to report that any children under twelve traveling with a grandparent or parent travel for free!

So all our ongoing tickets from here to Fulda, from Fulda to Heilbronn and from Heilbronn to Munich, including seat reservations, were Euro 149 (just under NZ$200).  That is very reasonable, considering we are travelling the entire length of the country.

Excellent, I will email all relevant times to all relevant people in the next couple of days.

Needless to say everyone was extremely tired tonight and Ben mentioned that he was looking forward to going to school again tomorrow!  That’s just dandy, don’t you think??

That’s it from me,

Bye for now

Tanja

xxx