Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Hamburg Day 2: Miniatur Wunderland

Miniatur Wunderland (website)
Kehrwieder 4, 20457 Hamburg

At the end of day 2 in Hamburg, we were to make the visit that I was most excited about for the trip: Miniatur Wunderland! According to their website, it's "the largest model railway in the world, and one of the most successful permanent exhibitions in Northern Germany."

I have read many other bloggers' posts about this place. At first, I was not moved to action. I'm not really into model trains or anything like that. However, the response to M.W. was so positive in the blogs that I found myself getting excited about visiting it! In fact, wanting to see it was one of the main reasons I chose Hamburg for our mini vacation.

Having read other blogs, I knew some hints for visiting Miniatur Wunderland, such as booking tickets ahead of time and going at an odd time. Our appointment was at 7 p.m. and we were there for almost three hours! I had no idea that the exhibition would draw me in so much. Three hours wasn't enough time to see everything, but it was a start and we found many hidden secrets, jokes, and naughty things in the exhibition.

Even though the place really caters to kids, adults will find plenty of interesting things to look at (and be surprised at some of the naughty surprises inside). Also, the exhibit is constantly evolving. For example, a section for Italy is in development. When we visited, we saw temporary displays with videos about the various political parties in Germany. These were just informational, not meant as propaganda, but there were certainly many jokes in the displays!

It's definitely worth a trip and I can't wait to go back and see what other little things are hidden.


One of the tamer jokes - a guy taking a break from a traffic jam.
There's even a model of Miniatur Wunderland itself!

This is a model of the Elbphilharmonie, which will be Hamburg's new opera house. I wasn't impressed by the real thing in the construction phase, but now that I can see what the final plan is, I find it very striking.
Push a button and it plays music and slowly opens.

No comments:

Post a Comment