Category Archives: Cool Things

12Sep / 2014

Hamburg: All Things Great and Small (Really, Really, Small)

 
 
A programming note before we start. Older posts can now be found by clicking the “Older Posts” link at the bottom of this post. The all on one page thing was getting difficult to manage on free Wifi so now you can click back through posts or use the “Recent Posts” list at the bottom.
Hallo aus Deutschland, alles!

 

It would be an understatement to say we are in Hamburg for only a short while. We arrived yesterday at nine AM and by nine AM tomorrow we will be in Berlin. While I regretted spending such a short time in London it was a benign regret; I know we will be back. But the chances of our returning to Hamburg are slim (though we want to come back and revisit where we went today) and so I will leave here with a different kind of sadness. Hamburg is a beautiful city, everywhere you turn is another pretty bridge or an old building with great architecture. You get a sense of the age, here, as well as it’s place in history. It’s been a prosperous city, having been a major trade route, and that shows in the type of buildings and how well it’s all been maintained.

Love locks are affixed to many older bridges

 

“But Robin,” I hear you all yelling. “We don’t want to hear about the buildings, we want to know how all that German practice turned out.”

“Sehr gut, Danke.”

For reasons largely relating to the grammatical inconsistencies of the German language (that I won’t bore you with) I’m having a hard time when people speak to me, but so far I’ve managed to sort out a train ticket problem with a ticket agent, get bottles of water, read menus and brochures, and even suss out the occasional print advertisement. Knowing what I do has more helped me understand what’s going on around me than it has helped me actually navigate doing things in Germany, though people seem to appreciate that I’m trying. And if nothing else, I’ve been able to help Jim order food (and more importantly beer).

Yesterday we mostly walked around the city, found the Hauptbahnhof for logistical reasons (which turned out to be a good thing thanks to today’s Amazing Race style misadventure in Eurailpass bureaucracy) and walked along the pedestrian malls down by the water. Saw this gentleman playing some sort of hammer dulcimer type instrument. It was absolutely beautiful and he was very gracious when I asked if I could take his picture. (Of course I asked in German!)

Today we went to see what we came all the way to Hamburg to see: Miniatur Wonderland (also called Modelbahn Wonderland)

It’s hard to really describe Miniatur Wonderland. I’ve been calling it Legoland on steroids since we first decided to come here, but that’s not a really fair comparison. This place has Legoland beat by a mile, and even Jim thinks so. (But he is quick to point out that the two places aren’t really playing on the same field.) To call it a model train display isn’t fair either, because if anything the trains feel like an excuse for what the place is really all about, a scale modeler’s paradise. Everywhere you look, the whole place is just one vignette after another. Some morbid (quite a lot of death and accidents) some very typically European (there was a lot of sex going on) everywhere you look is some slice of life or another.

What makes the place most amazing is the sheer attention to detail in every single aspect of what is being done. For example, the entire display (3 floors) undergoes a day and night cycle. Sunset through night and around to sunrise. But when night falls, the most amazing thing happens. Lights begin to go on in all the buildings. The lights weren’t on and you notice them now, the lights actually start to come on. Headlights begin to flip on on the cars, and Las Vegas (seen above) comes blazing to life. As the lights come up, new scenes are revealed through windows.

Through the window of a hotel
 
But the jewel in the crown at Miniatur Wonderland is their airport, Knuffingen Flughafen which although fictional is fully functional. Planes begin at their gate, waiting for passengers or on the tarmac where busses bring them out to the planes. Then they push back from their gate (pushed back by a tug) disengage from the tug and taxi off to the runway. Overhead and in the train station beneath the airport the fully functional departure boards indicates which flights are where, boarding or taxiing or coming in for a landing, all in real time. If there is a plane you want to see, check the board. The time it shows as landing is the time on your watch it will land.
From the end of the runway the engines fire up and the planes go thundering down the strip and take off before disappearing into the clouds. Other planes are held on the taxi way (“we are third in line for departure”) waiting for inbound flights to come through the clouds and land. Then the landing planes go to their gates, busses and service vehicles come to gas them up or restock their peanuts and the whole thing eventually begins again.
Scattered around the place are 150 push buttons which activate animated scenes and effects. I can’t even describe them all, but they add life to the many scenes and vignettes (not many, the whole place is one scene after another after another and you can’t possibly take it all in).
Just come here. See this. Really. See this.
 
We have an early train to Berlin tomorrow (adventures in high-speed rail). The weather in Berlin is supposed to be crap, and we are scheduled for a six hour walking tour with David our British expat guide. Well, this is why we bought Gore-Tex jackets and waterproof shoes after all. Neither cold nor rain nor stairs (well maybe stairs) will keep these intrepid travelers from making fools out of themselves in Germany. At least the rain will keep the casual tourista at bay. Such weather is not for the faint hearted.
 
Until tomorrow!
 
 
PS Secret Message for Marni and John
Yours was better! Congratulations and we love you!
 
 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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08Sep / 2014

Welcome to London where the Transportation is Infuriating and the Art Subversive

Consider this fair warning, Gang, the internet at our hotel in Westmimster is dodgy at best. Getting posts up May take some doing and authorizing commenters may also be slow. Hooray for internet problems!

 

So to pick up where we left off, international business class is some fancy flying! Everything you expect the experience to be, we got a very nice (and not at all Seinfeld-esque) dinner and breakfast, pillows and real blankets, even Bose noise canceling headphones. Neither Jim or I slept well, even with lay flat seats but I guess short of having your own plane nothing makes it not uncomfortable somehow.

 

But no time for lollygagging, there is traffic to sit in.

No seriously a lot of it.

Really a lot. The cab from Heathrow was a real London black cab and the driver was a real London cabbie but I have never seen traffic like this and I lived in New York! Even the cabbie was getting infuriated, and there were some questionable “not quite still yellow” lights being run. But we lived!

(Yes I know my eyes are closed, but it’s all I have of the two of us. You people know what my eyes look like. Look at the nice Banksy art and deal)

 

Today we headed via tube (not at all infuriating) to Shoreditch, north of the Thames and bordering on the Financial District in London. Like Harlem or the Bronx, it’s long been a home of the undereducated, lower class and therefore a prime ground for artists needing cheap accommodation. Like both the Bronx and Harlem it’s been going through a gentrification period which makes all the art we saw even more surreal.

 

Our guide, Dave, a photographer and scholar of street art explained the difference between street art and graffiti so: Street Art, he said is created for the benefit of the viewer. Often subversive or carrying a political or social message it is a work of art meant to be interpreted and interacted with by the audience. Graffiti is made for the benefit of the artist. Normally consisting of a name, tag or other identifying mark, it’s a big declaration that the maker was “there” – a way of declaring themselves kings of a neighborhood.

 

Shoreditch is pretty well covered in street art. Sign and lamp posts are marked with stickers, like artist business cards announcing the presence of street artists from around the world, walls are covered in layer after layer of art as new pictures, stencils, and paper appliqué works are layered over the old. That’s one of the unique things about gone street art, it’s by its nature ephemeral and fleeting. Art lasts days or weeks, sometimes years and sometimes minutes and Dave pointed out several works that hadn’t been there earlier that week. Once it’s up, unlike a gallery, the artist has no control over what happens to it and art is modified and often obliterated by the artists who come along after. (And often building owners and the municipality – though many artists have permission, most don’t making the act itself illegal and that alone is a statement against authority.)

Tomorrow, (if we can make the internet work) it’ll be tales of terror, beheading, and pretty stones. But one it is time to crash!

 

 

 

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