“Life In The So-Called Space Age”
Yesterday we went to Köln zoo…
And then went to Wipperfeld for a wonderful party with many (at least 30!) of the extended family. Here’s dad with his four brothers:
It was really a special event. I met about a dozen (of my 22) cousins id never met, and many of their kids. Often I was told I have a “Schmitz face”.
Sorry for the brevity of this post but internet availability has been poor these past few days. Hopefully I can make up for in today’s post, which will be the last of this trip.
In case I forgot to mention, we’re all reasonably exhausted after the go-go-go of the last ten days. Today’s activities did nothing to alleviate this! We started with a cruise on The Alster, one of Hamburgs two rivers.
Hamburg is proud of this river and treat it well. Home to birds and with a beautiful shoreline, the two-hour cruise gave us a good look at the two lakes formed by the river as well as the many canals.
Were we here longer, and were the weather cooler, it would be fun to rent a boat and explore the canals myself 🙂
Afterwards we split up again, with Dad going to see the catholic cathedral, Jim off to the botanic gardens and the three youngsters (average age 44!) off to The Reeperbaum, a red-light district that is a major tourist attraction.
We boggled at the sights before eventually ending up at our destination: Germany’s oldest waxworks!
I’d never ever been to a waxworks. It was surreal and a lot of fun!
While many of the models were German historical or celebrity figures, there were still many world-famous ‘people’ on the four floors that we knew.
That’s apparently life-sized, a famous cross-dresser that runs (?) many clubs on The Reeperbaum. It’s rare someone dwarfs Bernard 🙂
Afterwards… we ended up back at the fair!
He’s emerging from ‘Geister’, a surprisingly scary ghost-train ride. The glasses have diffracting lenses to give the strobes a rainbow effect. It was fun 🙂
That’s taken in a mirror maze. Can you tell the real from the reflection?
It got hot when we were at the fair, and we all started dropping like old flowers. With a very early train tomorrow, it’s an early night tonight!
Like kings, we rode today in first class seats to Germany’s largest port (and second largest city) Hamburg.
That’s the Rathaus (town hall) which is the most spectacular we’ve seen so far. It’s surrounded by shopping and adjacent to two large ‘lakes’ on which boats cruise and swans swim.
Although dozens of miles from the ocean, Hamburg is a major sea port and also features many canals…
And churches…
More about both of the tomorrow (hopefully)!
That’s a rare shot of the five of us together, taken using a handy mirror in our (lively) hotel. This was just prior to visiting a destination that is so popular it needs advance registration: Miniature Wonderland.
This is a place that has ultra detailed miniature dioramas on display, many of which include model train sets.
There’s dozens of themed displays on two levels, each of which features hundreds of buildings and vehicles and countless tiny people. Each of these are massive and it would take days to see everything there was to see in a given scene.
The attention to detail is astounding, and what makes it even more amazing is that virtually everything is hand created. There’s also a day/night schedule. The displays light up with thousands of LED and fiber optic lights when the sun goes down. Here’s a day/night example of a rock concert, which itself is only a portion of a much bigger display:
Miniature Wonderland is crazy in the best way, and certainly worth a visit if you’re in Hamburg.
Afterward we were all tired, but I had used my large nose to sniff out the existence of Germany’s largest fair, open in Hamburg right now. I had to go! So while B and Dad went to crash at the hotel, J, K and me headed to St Pauli (the red light district) and the giant fair called ‘The Dom’.
Now I’m super tired right now, so I’ll just say it was pretty amazing how large some of the (portable!) rides were.
And how complex some of the fun houses were.
And how many (pretty, flashing) lights there were.
And how much fun the Euro Coaster was to ride 🙂
We looked at everything and ate fair food and rode that one ride but eventually failed our saving throws against exhaustion and had to call it a day.
Tomorrow’s our only full day here. I’m looking forward to it 🙂