Today we went to a Technik Museum at Speyer. They had a great collection of German and American cars, which Gus enjoyed. The one pictured is a 1934 BMW.
Also lots of big stuff like aeroplanes; draglines, a Russian space shuttle; U-Boats and even an antique Merry-Go-Round. It was pretty amazing what they had there and we wondered how they’d transported everything to the site.
One of the planes happened to be a 747 raised high off the ground, with a high staircase leading up so that you could look around inside and even out onto the wing (with handrails) – then you had the option of a slide back down – we chose the stairs.
The Merry-Go-Round had two floors – very cute.
The U-Boat was amazing, we walked right through it. I’d hate to go under the sea in it, or even sleep in it, not a lot of room to move around.
They had a few quirky things, like this bike with springs instead of rubber tyres, used in the war because of the shortage of rubber apparently.
This poor little mini was used to cart tourists around a zoo – would be a tad top heavy! We spent most of the day there then proceeded to get stuck in traffic, agh! This time it was kinda my fault – advised Gus to take a wrong turn and ended up on the wrong motorway... Found our way to Bingen, right on the Rhine, eventually.
Today we had the most picturesque drive, up the Rhine from Bingen to Mehlem, just before Bonn. We can see two castles from where we’re camped – one is a ruin but it still counts. The road follows the river all the way and there was a castle around every corner, often two. They are lovely castles too, remind me very much of sandcastles with the jagged tops on the turrets. There are also vineyards all the way, they are grown on steep hillsides with high block retaining walls.
On the way we stopped at Bacharach; this has been a town since 1356, but the castle and a few of the other buildings date back to 1100. The house in the photo must have been an early one, it has a year on it - 1368 I think it was. It certainly looks as though it’s been around a while! They’ve been making wine in this area since the Romans planted the first vines...
The river itself is very busy, lots of container ships and coal barges as well as tourist river cruisers. It must be a swift river, the ships going downstream are a lot faster than the ones struggling up. We went for a short bike ride when we got to the camp, lots of beautiful houses line the river here. Gus reckoned it reminded him of doing the ‘Lions Walk’ at Taupo.
Next drive was up to Hamelin – the one with the pied piper who drowned all the rats. The town has lots of buildings that appear to be leaning on one another for support. It also has a statue of the pied piper on a fountain with rats running all round it – we rode our bikes over the river that they were supposed to have drowned in. They don’t really know where the story comes from, but apparently the Brothers Grimm travelled all around this area and collected local stories which they wrote up into their Fairy Stories.
Now we are in Hanover with Darcy (nephew) and his wife Tanja. My sister Fiona and niece Jess are holidaying here at the same time so we’ve met up here to go on a little holiday in the Enterprise. Will be a bit of a squeeze in our little house but Darcy and Tanja have a tent and I’m sure we’ll have a lot of fun!
The first visit was to the town hall which is well worth a look around, it is beautiful inside and out. We also went up to the top of the tower – it had a lift with a glass window in the top and bottom and glass sides, it also turned slightly as it went up (because the tower isn’t straight) and we got tilted from one side to the other as we went up – quite weird.
Inside there are four models of the city: one in medieval times with a wall around a small town; one pre-war; one after the city was bombed in WWII – this one is amazing, there is barely a building with its roof on, the town hall survived intact though; and the last one is as the city is today.
A couple of fun things we noticed around the city: The Nanas (rhymes with Bananas) are three statues, made in the 70’s – abstract women’s figures – quite neat. Apparently they were frowned upon when first put up but now are a proud icon of the city.
The other thing we really noticed was the amount of stag and hens dos. Lots of groups of girls dressed up in a theme – the bride selling things to random strangers to raise money for their drinks. The stags just make idiots of the groom – the one at a bar we were at was wrapped up in gladwrap, then came round to ask for money for the entertainment value – all harmless fun - we thought they were the best behaved stag do we'd ever seen!
Our other major destination while in Hanover was... you guessed it another castle! Schloss Marienberg is a classic castle, the stuff of fairy tales. Fiona, Tanja and I went on a tour of the castle (the others satisfied themselves with a beer in the carpark – heathens!) It isn’t all that old as castles go, built in the 19th century as a gift of a king to his wife for her 40th birthday – I can’t remember what I got for mine. :-) The really interesting part for Fiona and I was the connection of the Hanoverian royalty to British royalty. For about 6 kings in a row, they were king of England and Hanover at the same time – I’m not quite clear on how this came about but I believe it was because there wasn’t a suitable Protestant heir for the English throne so the closest relation was already heir to the Hanoverian throne; so he got to be king of both – then this carried on for about the next 6 kings but the tradition was broken when a women (Queen Victoria?) came to the throne of England, it was against the law of Hanover for a women to rule so some bloke became their king instead... well that’s my version, not quite as worded by the guide...
No comments:
Post a Comment