Miniatur Wunderland... and more

Today, our friends Elder and Sister Frank drove into Hamburg from Kiel to spend the day sight seeing with us.  We were very glad to see them.  We laugh a lot when we are with them.  They arrived about 1100 am, parked their car (yes, they have a car) and off we went.  First we took a Stadtrundefahrt, (a sight see in bus that you can jump on and off all day) ans toured the city of Hamburg. We saw some beautiful areas with great big houses and some not so nice areas  like the "red light district" or "Reeperbahn".  It originally referred to the amount of hempen rope produced here during the 18th and 19th centuries for ships in Germany's biggest harbor.  Now it is known for it's nightlife and "off color" entertainment.  We were not impressed. 

After touring for awhile, we had lunch at a Haufbrou.  Yes, we had real German food and yes, it was tasty.  We were introduced to at drink called FassBrause, (apple beer).  It is very tasty and non alcoholic.  After lunch, we hopped back on the bus and went to the Speicherstadt along the Elbe River.  This is a historical warehouse district in the heart of Hamburg.  There we found the Minitaur Wunderland.  It is a giant model train exhibition.  It covers 1 1/2 floors of the warehouse with more construction to be completed by 2020.  There is over 13000 m of train tracks with 930 trains running.  The longest train is 14,51 meters long.  There are1270 signals and 3050 switches.  It is run by 46 computers.  There are approximately 335,000 lights, 215,000 figurines, and 228,000 trees in the exhibit.  It took 580,000 construction hours to build to date.  These numbers will increase as the new areas are built.  We spent 2 hours wandering around, looking at each area.  There was a USA area which included Las Vegas, The Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, New York.  There was a Swiss ares, A Bavarian area.  Scandinavia,and Austria were also represented. Germany included the Knuffingen Airport with planes landing and taking off, middle Germany, and  Hamburg  It was worth going to Hamburg just to see this exhibit.  (You can find a video on you tube about it).  After leaving the exhibition, we returned to our hotel, took a short nap and went for a ice cream run.  It was a great day.