These pictures (and this post) are from my second trip to Germany, earlier this year. I was there for a month, and although it was a lot of work, I did get out for a weekend visit to the Teknic Museum in Speyer. I am pretty sure I slaughtered the spelling there...
So this was a massive museum of technology, born from the collection of a single investor, I believe. One of the cool things was that they had a bunch of planes/aircraft on display up in the air. Some of them had stairs so you could go up in them and see the inside. The cooler ones had big stainless steel slides to get back to the ground. More on that later...
This is a German U-boat (submarine). I went inside (see below.)
This is me inside of a German U-Boat. It was crazy tight. When fully loaded it said that they had something like 40 guys in here. I think there was room for about 4. Midgets.
This is the back of the Russian space shuttle. It never actually made it into space (the Russians ran out of money...) but it was still cool to see a real space shuttle.
This was the inside of a humongo German cargo plane (military). They had a video showing them landing it on the little airstrip by the museum. Crazy. The overran the runway and bumped into a fence... and then stopped.
They had a bunch of sweet old cars. This was a fancy one.
They had a full-on 747 up on stilts for us to climb around on. Check out the slide twirling down out of the bottom of it. Also check out the fence on the wing. It comes up later.
I couldn't help myself.... You see a 747 laying around, you just can't help but pick it up.
So they let you walk out on the wing. That was pretty cool. And then Lennie and I started jumping. It moves. Then we got off of it.
I made it to the bottom of the slide. Very cool.
A piece of the Berlin wall. I have a vague memory of watching this wall come down on the news when I was little. It is interesting to start to see things I remember happening memorialized in museums. I am getting older.
They had a whole section of decked out model railroad tables.
When you enter this room you are distracted by all of the cool cars. Then you look up slightly and see a jet pointed at your head. Its a trip.
Another cool car.
This is a boat made by save-the-rain-forest-people and then sailed somewhere far away (across the Atlantic?) I'm a little sketchy on the details. All of the interpretive signs were in German.
It is hard to appreciate, but the back tire on this thing is about twice as wide as a normal motorcycle tire. The seat was so wide it would have been hard to straddle. Would make an interesting ride.
Hmm. Some pilot had a really bad day at some time in the past.
They had a lot of turbines on display, this one being the biggest. I think it went to a power generator (water??). Anyway it was cool. They also had a couple of jet engines opened up so you could see the inside. This place was the ultimate place to ask how something worked.
Another plane and slide. I didn't even go in this one.
The title of this picture is one word: HEAVENLY. This is chocolate milk that I got at the local grocery store. It is 3.5% milk fat and has real chocolate that settles to the bottom when it sits. You shake it up and oh man is it yummy. I went through like 5 or 6 bottles of this stuff. It seemed relatively cheap too-- 1.35 Euro? So a little less than $2 US.
Ha, so they have these awesome rolls that are cooked just enough to keep their shape, but are still doughy. You buy them for cheap and them pop them in the oven to finish cooking them. It is cool because they are so cheap, and because you get fresh baked bread with dealing with dough. I was unfortunate enough to learn, however, that if you forget to take them out of the oven for an hour or two, they turn to charcoal. I squeezed (spellcheck says squoze ins't a word) one of these bad boys over the trash can, just to see what would happen. It exploded into black dust, in case you were curious.
This is me by the river that ran by where we were staying. There was a quaint church across the river, and those European ducks right there, so I paused for a picture. It was frigid. I should point out my scarf. It is the first scarf I have ever owned, and I bought it in the mall (off the clearance rack--less than 5 euro if I remember correctly!!) It made me feel like I fit in better in Germany. I didn't fit in, of course, but the scarf helped me feel that way.
So the same river had a ferry. I'd never seen a ferry before that I could remember, and this seemed more interesting for being so modest in size, so we hung around and watched it go back and forth for a while.
The rustic cobble stones went right into the river... How did they get them there? How do they stay? Oh and there is a big river barge going up the river. The cargo is sandwiched into the floaty things up front, and then the boat in the back attaches to it and pushes it around. It is like a tractor-trailer in reverse. They pretty much hauled tail up and down the river, disrupting all the Euro-birds.
Hmm, I must have been fascinated by the cobblestone. I am sure there was a good reason to include this one. Maybe the chain that keep the ferry from floating down river?
And there was a bridge just around the bend in the river, but it was a train (and pedestrian) bridge. I don't know where the nearest car bridge was.
So right in the middle of a park next to the river there was this odd tower. I ended up seeing them all over the place. Not really sure what its function was...
So I think there may be other pictures, but this is what I have here, so I am posting this. I may get fancy later (which may equate to me putting a new date on this post (February 28. 2010) to get it in the right order), but in the meantime, enjoy!
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