A lifelong dream was going to come true today. That is if by lifelong you think I mean ever since I saw an article in a model railway magazine about five years ago. Maybe that's not as big a deal as lifelong, but even still, it was pretty much the sole reason I decided to come to Hamburg - to see Miniature Wonderland! It's funny; when we decided we would plan to come to Europe all those years ago, in the back of my mind I always had this desire to come to Hamburg to do this, but also in the back of my mind I knew that it would be a really long way to go just to do it, and doing so would be ludicrous. Then I thought that when I was older it'd make a pretty good story if I did ("when I was a young'un, I once travelled thousands of kilometres to see a model railway..."), so for the story's sake, I decided to do it. And here is that story. I hope you think that reason is as funny as I do, and not some elaborate made up story to cover up any unsubstantiated predetermined nerdiness you may think I have. Or to pointlessly extend the length of this blog. Anyway I digress. I bet that surprises you. Unlike yesterday, I had no train to catch this morning so had nothing to get up for in a hurry, so I set my alarm for the latest extremity that I would like to have gotten up on the off chance I slept through. That was never gonna happen, with the combination of painfully thin walls (expected; I was in a hotel with 'basic' in its name) and the excitement of my impending visit to Miniature Wonderland making sure I was awake early. It was probably (mostly) also the excitement of the amazingly fast wifi, which had provided me messages from home overnight. Actually of course it was this, because not only did it mean I was awake well before my alarm, responding to them also meant I was still in bed well after it. Go figure! When I finally did get up, I gathered my toiletries, some clothes and my towel and, after first checking to make sure nobody was in the hallway so I didn't get caught in my pj's (not that it actually would have mattered), I scurried down the end to the shared bathroom (which looked like I was the last one in the night before, yay) and got myself ready for the day. Once I got back to the room, I decided to take advantage of the quick wifi and prebook my ticket to Miniature Wonderland, which meant I'd get a set time of entrance through a secret door and not even have to line up to get in. Yep, that's how eager I was. After I did that, I made sure I knew where I was going with a quick look at Google Maps, and then I set off. I walked through Hamburg HBF, which was between my hotel and most of the city centre, and briefly flirted with the idea of getting a coffee from one of the shops in the station, but thought better of it knowing the quality of coffee I'd had so far in Germany. After getting through the station, I turned left and headed towards the port area of the city. Hamburg has the second largest port in Europe, which I find odd because it's a hell of a way from the ocean. But needless to say it's big, and Miniature Wonderland was located in a warehouse in the old port at the edge of the city centre. It took about 25 minutes to get there, and mercifully the rain held off, which was a surprise given how grey it was. I knew I'd gotten where I needed to be given there were a heap of fathers and their young sons congregating in the area; it's exactly what I would've been like with my Dad going to model railways when I was younger. Cough cough nerd. While finding the building wasn't particularly hard, the same cannot be said for the secret door. It was so secret I couldn't find it. I get the feeling they were fairly literal when they named it secret. I gave up looking in the end and just went in the normal entry, and I guess at least I looked a little less eager doing so. It didn't really matter anyway because it was still pretty early in the day, and was midweek, so it was only five minutes before I was showing my ticket and making my way inside; endlessly excited inwardly, a picture of serious calm outwardly. Once inside, my excitement shone through. And that was just in the gift shop, which interestingly came before any of the exhibits. The amount of train related things in here was amazing. If only it was located close to home; nobody would ever have any trouble finding me anything for any Christmas or birthday ever again. Lucky I was fast running out of room in my bags because I could've spent a lot of my budget in here! I managed to pry myself away from the merchandise and up the stairs into the first exhibit, which was a special exhibition with displays based on World War 2, in particular around the Berlin Wall. It went step-by-step through different timeframes from before the war till well after when Berlin was reunited. The most intriguing part was when the displays centred around the time of Nazi control. Interestingly none of them showed the swastika on any flags; apparently its use is illegal in Germany now. Moving on, I was ridiculously excited that it was already so good and I hadn't even gotten to the main train displays yet. Stepping into the first room, that look was replaced with awe. Disbelieving, shake-my-head awe. This place screamed that its creators have way too much time on their hands. I mean I get told I have way too much time on my hands all the time (they used to ask where my time machine was hidden when I was at uni), but seriously this was something else entirely. It's like they have taken all the time that has ever, and will ever, exist in the world, and put it into this place! I can only imagine the dinner table conversation between a worker here and his wife, and in my mind it would go something like this: "Wie war dein Tag meine Liebe?" "Es war so toll, bekam einen Haufen getan. Wirklich das Gefühl, ich trat einige Ziele heute" "Das ist eine gute Nachricht Lieber, was hast du getan?" "Oh, es war so produktiv Sie wissen nicht einmal! Am Morgen legte ich 500 kleine Figur Menschen in einer Gruppe, so dass es aussah wie ein Moshpit. Dann am Nachmittag Ich verstreut einige gefälschte Gras im neuen Szene!" "Oh, ich bin so stolz auf dich Liebling, ist, dass die Förderung gleich um die Ecke, ich kann es fühlen!" Obviously since its Germany they'd be speaking in German, but I imagine the English equivalent to be: "How was your day dear?" "It was so great, got a heap done. Really feel like I kicked some goals today" "That's great news dear, what did you do?" "Oh it was so productive you don't even know! In the morning, I placed 500 little figurine people in a group so it looked like a mosh pit. Then in the afternoon I scattered some fake grass in a new scene!" "Oh I'm so proud of you darling, that promotion is just around the corner, I can feel it!" Seriously, there are over 215,000 deliberately staged figurines spread throughout, from a flock of sheep to a skiing accident, a corpse in water to lovers having sex in a field of sunflowers. There are over 150 animated push button scenes, including a pallet jack race and tractor pulling competition, all self-built with ridiculously sophisticated technology. It's insane! The first room was based on Switzerland, and once in the room I was greeted with mountains extending six metres all the way to the next level! There were towns at the base, countless bridges through the valleys, and snow capped peaks with ski lifts and lodges up top. There was even a concert, with over 20,000 individual figurines watching on as fans. See what I mean about them having lots of time on their hands? Moving up the stairs to the next level, I got to see underneath the mountains, and even then they managed to put details in, with mine shafts, workers, and fossils all 'buried' in the mountains. This is where it got even more insane. Depicting German scenes, it had a castle made from more than 4000 parts, and without a doubt the most ridiculous of all, an airport. Knuffingen Airport, as it is known, is based on Hamburg Airport, and cost €3.5 million. Million!! That's almost $7 million. At the very least this place must make some money to invest that much! But it was impressive, with airport vehicles making their way between planes, and even the planes taxiing to the runway, taking off and landing. And when it turned to night (I didn't mention this place modelled day and night, but of course it does), thousands of lights started to come on individually to light the whole airport. I know even you're a little bit impressed by this, even if you don't like this stuff. I realise I'm probably waffling on a bit about this so far, and I'm wary of that and the fact not everybody that reads this will be as in love with model trains as I am, so lucky I'm good at caring for people, which means I'll spare in depth analysis of each and every scene still to go. But know this; the words written so far still don't give justice to the amount of time spent on this exhibition. I really don't know how there has been that much time in history to accomplish this. And the words still to come will briefly describe some of the most impressive things of each part. There is Knuffingen, a fictional city that was first to be built. It has a whole street network where each vehicle is programmed to individually travel - from overtaking other cars, to pulling over for emergency vehicles, they did it. There is Austria, complete with ski fields including lifts and skiers. There is Middle Germany, with a 12 metre long bridge and a ferris wheel with 30,000 lights. There is Hamburg, with a model of the stadium with 12,500 spectators, and St. Michael's Church made with 15,000 individual parts. There is America, with the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas. And there is Scandinavia, ranging from a port with 30,000 litres of real water complete with tides and moving ships, to the far north which was covered in snow. Finally, I was back in the gift shop again. Unfortunately my bag situation hasn't changed so I still couldn't go nuts and buy things. That was fortunate for my hip pocket though. All up, in my time at Miniature Wonderland, I'd seen over 15 kilometres of model train track, a great way to spend my morning! But all good things must come to an end, so sadly, I trudged out of the complex, wondering what on earth I'd do to fill in the rest of my day; I mean, how can anything adequately follow that experience? It also didn't help that this really was basically the only thing I came here for, so I wasn't really well versed in what else I should do in Hamburg. Clueless and hungry, I went for a wander around the port area, which was quite a nice spot, hunting for wifi and food. In that order, of course. The port was filled with a lot of offices as well, and I found this little cafe that was getting busy with business people seeing as it was getting close to lunchtime. To me, business equals wifi like smoke equals fire. Plus there was a wifi sticker on the window which made its presence even more obvious, so this was the place for me! I went inside and looked at the menu. I'm not really sure why, it was all in German. Not knowing what anything said, I settled on a pasta dish I could hand pick out of the fridge, and took it to the counter so they could heat it. I should've been sceptical then and there about buying lunch that needed microwave heating, but we all know it wasn't the lunch I was particularly worried about anyway. As it turns out (unsurprisingly), it was ****. Think pasta with stir fry sauce, microwave heated, and you get the picture. Worse, I couldn't connect to the wifi. How horrific, and what a waste of such bad food! Lucky, because I hadn't eaten to that point, I could force the food down to cure my hunger. But without the wifi, I still had no idea where to go, or what to do, for the rest of my day in Hamburg. My stomach filled without my tastebuds or bearings being fulfilled, I headed out into the great unknown. It actually wasn't that bad, those who know me know I'm good at directions, and with a great big tower in the close distance I had a good indication where the city centre was, so I decided to head towards that. It wasn't the nicest day in Hamburg and I got a little bit wet en route, but I did end up finding my way to the city centre, even after getting a little lost on the way (yes really). Turns out that tower wasn't actually in the city, but from what I can gather, part of the port further downstream. Oops. Oh well, at least the city was actually closer than I thought, so I wasn't as wet as I thought. There's always a silver lining! I had a stroll around much of the city centre for a couple of hours then, in need of a break and suffering withdrawals from wifi, I found a nice little place on the banks of Binnenalster, a lake in the city, called ALEX. I sat down and relaxed over a couple of beers and a snack. Sadly, it was too late to get in touch with people back home, but the wifi did allow me to research a bit about what my next plans for my trip were, because I was fast running out of days I'd had planned. In two days, I'd have no itinerary! It also allowed me to research how exactly I got back to my hotel from here, because I was completely disorientated! I decided after my couple of beers to head back to the hotel. As I was on my own, I was looking forward to having a little bit of my own space, and I also knew I had to seriously consider what it was I wanted to do after Hamburg, and I knew the super quick wifi at the hotel would help. Armed with an idea of where I had to go, I headed back to the hotel and kept doing a bit of research. After an hour or so, and well past dinner, I was getting hungry. I'd already made my mind up earlier that I wasn't gonna go out and find a restaurant; instead I crossed the road back to the station, to a nostalgic classic in Pizza Hut, and got myself a large pizza and drink to have back in the hotel while watching German TV. Yep, life was good! With that, my dream-come-true day came to an end; an early night on the cards in preparation for tomorrow morning!