"Miniatur Wunderland" written by Joe on estrip.org

08/07/16 02:41 - ID#60568

Miniatur Wunderland

I had seen Miniatur Wunderland in a documentary online before. It's close to the most German thing you can image. A old shipping warehouse on the docks with three stories of model trains and landscapes in amazing detail.

There were different scenes in each area (we saw Mittel Deutschland, Italy, US, Switzerland, Hamburg, Flughafen Hamburg, and Scandinavia).

You could probably spend all day looking at one scene and not find everything. Look in the woods and you'd see two model people doing it. Watch the cars drive around the road for a while and you'll see an accident with smoke, that police cars and and ambulance rush over to. The airport was a full model of the Hamburg airport with the actual flight schedules, and planes that took off, landed and taxiied to the terminal. I've never seen anything like it.

The said sexers

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I nerded out over the model ICE 3 trains

And here is a floof bahn for (e:robert).

Bro-butt

The american scene was mostly trucks on highways in the desert (they modeled Los Vegas)

Hamburg itself

We spent about 5 hours in the whole museum and didn't even see everything.

Permalink: Miniatur_Wunderland.html
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Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 08/08/16 11:53

Category: vacation

08/07/16 01:34 - ID#60567

Volkspark Altona

Olmsted you ain't got shit.

" >(MAP TO:

)

This volkspark was had more manicured parts then Flensburg, it even had a botanical garden.

It still had miles and miles of paths through forests. You could walk for miles in a forest in the middle of a city, right on an S-Bahn line. I wonder if anyone ever camps in it. And if you look on the map only 10 minutes away in one direction were farms.

Permalink: Volkspark_Altona.html
Words: 104
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 08/08/16 09:27

Category: vacation

08/07/16 01:21 - ID#60566

Landungsbrucke and Hamburg Rathaus

Some pictures from walking around the Hamburg Landungsbrucke and altstadt. The Landungsbrucke is like canalside times a million with more actual shipping traffic.

We also saw the Hamburg city hall, which was ridiculously big. It looks it was built in the same style as the city hall we saw a month before in Philly. I wonder if they were trying to copy the Hamburg one.

A fountain in the middle of the city hall had this statue of a lady stomping on a dragon.

The city is so capitalistic even the churches have stores and restaurants attached.

After walking around we went to some of the gay bars around the Hauptbahnhof. They were mostly terrible and smoky, but at one we ended up chatting with a old-time Hamburger who gave us some recommendations.

Permalink: Landungsbrucke_and_Hamburg_Rathaus.html
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Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 08/07/16 01:21

Category: vacation

08/07/16 12:44 - ID#60565

Hamburg Altona

After Flensburg it was back to Hamburg. We took the regional express back, through Tarp (Yvonne's town), and Neumuenster.

On the way there I managed to book another AirBnb there (no we don't plan ahead for anything). It was in a neighborhood called Altona on the west side of Hamburg.

We stayed on this street called Gaußstraße, right across from this crusty punk encampment of trailers.

" >(MAP TO:

)
When we got there, there was a girl with a pack of like 9 dogs following her out of the alley it was in.

(e:paul) was having a small-time meltdown when we got there. I think he was stressed out by big city life after being in Flensburg. So we walked around to get some food, and ended up at this amazing Vietnamese place called Green Papaya.

On the same street (e:paul) got pulled into some film project where he sat in a taxi and answered questions about religion, music and politics. I'm glad I didn't get picked because I wouldn't have been able to answer fast enough.

Permalink: Hamburg_Altona.html
Words: 185
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 08/07/16 12:44

Category: pics

07/30/16 03:07 - ID#60561

Thanks e:terry

I'm going to end my posting drought because he's letting me post his vacation pictures. I barely took any!

Permalink: Thanks_e_terry.html
Words: 19
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 07/30/16 03:07

Category: vacation

07/20/16 12:41 - ID#60560

Fussball in Flensburg

From the Volkspark hill we heard a bunch of people cheering and yelling to music down by the way. We thought it might have been a concert. It turns out it was a outdoor viewing of the euromeister. I don't like soccer but it was fun with some elephant beer (10%) and erdnuss flips (peanut puffs) beforehand.

Everyone at the event was a giant. I felt average height at least.

Permalink: Fussball_in_Flensburg.html
Words: 74
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 07/20/16 09:58

Category: vacation

07/20/16 12:40 - ID#60559

Flensburger Volkspark

On Sunday the 12th we were back by ourselves. So we grabbed our brötchens and started wandering around the town again.
We ate at a vegan cafe called "Molly und Alf"

The food was alright, I think I had a seitan parm type panini. I don't think I ever had vegan cheese before - I barely noticed the difference it was so mild.

There was a band playing music in the sudermarkt and everyone was watching.

Paul wanted to rest before we walked to his old school, so we went back up the hill on the stairs to our wohnung. I got a few pictures of the cemetary and Terry imitating the Flensburger Löwe.

Later we walked around the fjord to where Paul's old school used to be.

Gangsta clothes.

Even on a cloudy day the water was nice. To get to the where the school was you had to walk all the way around the fjord, up the east side, and climb up through the volkspark. The folkspark was this huge forested hill right on the edge of the city. I don't think I've ever seen anything like it. You could live in it and nobody would ever find you.

They had a ton of excerise and balance equipment you could use. I'm not sure what was for the kinder and what wasn't but we tried it all.

By the time we got to Paul's old school it turns out they got rid of most of it when it merged into the city's university. His dorms may have still been there (?) but they were houses now.

Apparently Paul used to sit on some of these benches auf pilzen. I bet it was nice.

Permalink: Flensburger_Volkspark.html
Words: 305
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 07/20/16 09:22

Category: vacation

07/20/16 12:34 - ID#60556

First night in Flensburg

Our apartment was an AirBNB on Mathildestraße. It was right up the hill from the Südermarkt, which is one of the two squares in the town along the Fjord, the other being Nordermarkt.

I don't know how I didn't take many pictures. But the apartment was beautiful and huge on the fourth floor of a Treppenhaus. It had a balcony looking over the street and the yard in the back, plus it had amazing insulated windows that either tilt for ventilation or open all the way, depending on how you turn the handle.

After we settled in we walked around the city a little. We ended up at Cafe Central which had vegetarian options that Terry and I ordered... which turned out to be mostly potato. After (e:paul) had ordered a side of pommes frittes. Oops. It was still good.

It almost never gets dark near the peak of the summer - the sun didn't go down until 10, and it wasn't actually night until after midnight!

Permalink: First_night_in_Flensburg.html
Words: 174
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 07/20/16 09:28

Category: vacation

07/11/16 09:18 - ID#60550

24 hours to Flensburg

From leaving home to arriving at our first stop in Flensburg it took us almost 24 hours of traveling.

I think this is my third trip on a plane. Even though everyone always talks about hating flying and traveling I was still pretty excited. We were on a new Boeing 787 and everything, going from Toronto to Zurich, and then Hamburg.

It turns out it's pretty terrible and impossible to sleep on it. I think I want a tranquilizer if I ever fly this long again.

Luckily they fed us a lot.

The Zurich Airport was like the fanciest capitalist mall you've ever seen. I don't think I even saw a sandwich for under ~$10USD. They also had smoking lounges everywhere with huge cigarette ads. All of them have to say in huge letters "Rauchen ist tödlich" or "Smoking is deadly". I can't believe smoking is a big thing in 2016, but at least it's voluntary to go into the ventilated rooms.

It turns out our plane was an hour late to Zurich, so we missed our flight to Hamburg (by five minutes). We ran but they had already closed the gate. So they put us on a few hours later on a Swiss plane to Hamburg. At this point I freaked out a bit because I had a hard time understanding Swiss accents and thought I wouldn't be able to speak German with anyone.

Luckily we landed in Hamburg only 90 minutes later! The airport was also huge, and connected right with the Hauptbahnof via the S-Bahn. Once we got there we had a few minutes to kill before our train to Flensburg, so we walked around the streets nearby. It was amazing. I don't know why I didn't take more pictures. The area near the main train station is also the gayborhood, which isn't much for a 1.5 million+ city.

Otters for sale in the train station

And an otter in the regional express train :O

I made up for lost sleep on the two hour trip while Terry stole selfies.

And then, at 4pm Thursday, almost 24 hours after we left Buffalo, we were in Flensburg!

Here's the Flensburg Hauptbahnhof. In front of it was a park full of LARPing boys.

Permalink: 24_hours_to_Flensburg.html
Words: 379
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 07/15/16 05:17

Category: vacation

07/03/16 09:04 - ID#60546

Toronto Airport gambling

I meant to write about the trip to Germany and Italy as it happened but slow internet and too much to do stopped that.

The Toronto airport is gargantuan and surrounded by the biggest spaghetti of highways and ramps I've ever seen. On the way in from Buffalo via 427 you pass by a mix of greenland farmland, and suburbs with downtown's twice the size of Buffalos.

Once we were in the airport waiting g for our flight, every seat had these iPads at them, where you could order food and fake gamble. I have never spent money on gambling in my life but these iPads were pretty addicting. I could just press two different buttons on a slot machine game as fast as I can and get a bunch of free food. Snacks proved to be handy later.