Einbeck to Amsterdam

Today we travelled by car to Hanover, leaving about 8am. 

After 2 days of Einbeck being in drizzle / fog, this morning was clearing. It was cold today, minus 2 degrees, the car was iced over and we needed to be careful of ice on the roads, but did not encounter any.

We stopped by a supermarket to get some breakfast at their bakery section, then hit the road.

After a short drive on local roads we were on the Autobahn. It was a beautiful morning crossing the German countryside.

We finally managed to hit 200 km/h which was a struggle for the car and it needed a long time to creep up from 190 to 200. Still, we did it! Now here's what amazes me about Germany. Take a look at the GPS navigation map in the photo below. We are passing through a cloverleaf interchange where cars are coming on the off the autobahn, and yet still the road is engineered such that we can cruise through safely at these speeds. Simply unthinkable in New Zealand. 

We stopped at a clothing store on the way into town, then filled up with petrol, then dropped the rental car.

We had about a 10 minute walk with suitcases to a nearly tram stop. We had somewhat planned how to get to Hanover Central Train station and thought we had this all right, expect the trams were running late and we had no spare time either. Thankfully the tram finally arrived. By the time we navigated out way around the station, and grabbed a quick takeaway lunch, and then found our platform, we only had 10 minutes util the train arrived.

The train rise to Amsterdam was in a first class cabin of six seats. Unfortunately we had a mum with two young kids that were quite rowdy, so we had 4 hours trapped with them, not our favourite train journey.

We got into Amsterdam at 4pm, allowing me time to catch up on blogging before heading out to find some dinner.

We have one full day in Amsterdam tomorrow then we fly home.

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Einbeck and PS Speicher

Today we arose to normality, supermarkets and shops are open! Well, not all, but enough for us to get what we need.

We went out to a supermarket to find some basic essentials like drinks to put in the fridge at the hotel, and find some breakfast in the baking section.

PS Speicher opened at 10am so we parked at the hotel and wandered over there. The exhibit is spread across multiple floors. The lift starts by taking visitors to the top floor then we work our way down. The list even had chairs in it!

The top floor is where transportation began, starting with horses, and learning how a horsepower is measured. Then most of the early transportation is some variation of motorcycle before cars.

We even had an opportunity to sit on a real penny farthing!

The museum progresses through the decades especially mentioning the war and post-war periods where firstly motorcycles were particularly popular and then the rise of consumerism in the 60's when cars became increasing affordable and desirable.

There were also exhibits of other items beside cars for each decade. We found a Commodore 64 here, the second we have seen on this holiday! Also a DeLorean, they did not say if it was used in the Back To The Future movies but if not then this was a very good replica.

They also had a special exhibit about the Easy Rider movie and biker culture. Here they had replicas of the bikes in the movie, one had Peter Fonda's signature on the tank.

It took about 2.5 hours to go through the exhibits. After we were done, we went into the historic Market Square which according to their website is "showing an ensemble of timber-framed houses.... It has its origins as a medieval street market and is today the heart of the city and stage of public life". Here there were Christmas Markets open so we took the opportunity to get lunch here. This would be our last Christmas Markets on this trip.

Next I was booked at PS Speicher Motorrad across town, which has three floors of motorcycles, thousands of them, mostly pre-1950. I spent about an hour looking through the exhibits. It was overwhelming just how many bikes they had. Three floors like this:

A small sample of the weird and wonderful:

As this was our last night in Einbeck, and for that matter Germany, we went back into the Market Square for a nice hearty meal at the Brodhous. What better way to finish Germany than Schnitzel and beer?

Tomorrow we return to Amsterdam and start making our way home.

Hamburg to Einbeck

Today we drove from Hamburg to Einbeck. This is roughly a 2.5 hour drive. Everything is closed again today in Germany. Our checkout time at the hotel was midday. After a sleep in, I decided to go for a walk while Helen slept in.

Hamburg was still cold at 2 degrees with a gentle drizzle across the city. Knowing on Christmas Eve the central railway station was open, especially including places to buy lunch, I decided to walk there and check it out. The walk was nearly 5km return, just over an hour.

On the way I was able to take in more of the Hamburg area we are staying in called Speicherstadt which are historical warehouses along a sequence of canals. They are all beautiful brick buildings and there are many bridges connecting the roads across the canals.

The railway station was open, it's huge and very busy on Boxing Day. Plenty of places open to eat. 

Surprisingly apart from the various food shops all through its concourse, it also had a huge foodcourt hiding off to the side that was better than any foodcourt we have at home.

I returned to the hotel through the main shopping district before connecting back with the Speicherstadt. 

Our hotel:

After returning it was time to shower, pack and vacate the hotels. We drove to the railway station and had burgers from lunch, at the same Burger Hero we had on Christmas eve. By being open to feed our bellies, they are our hero! We then drove to Einbeck via autobahns, bypassing Hanover.  Today's speed record in our Peugeot rental car was 196 km/h, we could not quite crack 200 km/h because people pull out in front of us slowing us down.

We arrived mid afternoon at our hotel. Now some explanation about why we are here. We came to Einbeck, a small town south of Hanover, to visit PS Speicher which is a car and motorcycle museum. Notable is that it contains the largest collection of German motorcycles in the world. Actually it has a number of exhibits spread across buildings, even across town, not all together.

We booked in the Freigeist Hotel which we knew was nearby PS Speicher. Actually they are related, right next door.  A wall inside the hotel has scooters on it.

The hotel restaurant is located next door as a part of the museum. Both are very modern with an industrial aesthetic. We went for a drive around town, almost every restaurant was closed or fully booked, and no supermarkets were open. So we went back to the hotel and had dinner there. It was quite expensive, but very nice.

Hamburg - Miniatur Wunderland

Miniatur Wunderland (it's German spelling) is where we chose to spend our Christmas day in Hamburg. When researching our trip, and knowing Germany shuts down for Christmas, it was a relief to see this is open. We booked tickets in advance.

Miniatur Wunderland is full of large scale models containing miniature trains, cars, people, animals, buildings, landscapes and more. All hand built. All with amazing detail. Moving objects, sound effects, lights, smoke and more. Every 15 minutes or so, it cycles between daytime and nighttime so every model is worth seeing twice at least.

It covers two floors across two seperate buildings, linked by a bridge over a canal.

Some vital statistics from Wikipedia:

• 1,120 digitally controlled trains with more than 10,000 wagons.
• 4,300 houses and bridges,
• More than 10,000 vehicles – of which around 350 drive independently on the installation
• 52 airplanes
• Around 290,000 figures.
• Almost 500,000 built-in LED lights.
• Of the 7,000 m2 of floorspace, the models occupies 1,545 m2

We spent about 5 hours in here and could easily have spent longer except it was getting way too crowded mid afternoon and our feet were getting tired.

Apart from the realistic aspects of the models, all amazing, those who design the models have a great sense of humour and there are funny little stories being told all over the place.

Here's just a small selection of my photos, of the incredible and the humorous...

Mission control where staff keep an eye on everything for problems. They have cameras and sensors everywhere!

A fire.

Peak hour traffic at night.

Crossing between the buildings.

Horse poo.

Errr.... yeah....

Tour de France including an accident.

General view, gives you an idea of the scale.

Santa and his sleigh have become separated, each on different roofs across the road from each other.

The bears are not happy about this shop.

A Coca-Cola truck like you would see on Christmas ads. I had to wait ages for this. I saw the truck drive past and had to wait for it to drive all around the model and back to me. When it came back, it was sitting at traffic lights, with its indicator blinking. I had to wait for the lights to go green for it to turn the corner. The realism is incredible and thoughtful.

The airport. Here, planes actually take off and land. There was a Millennium Falcon parked on the runway too.

Venice including the Rialto Bridge and something strange happening in the crowds at Piazza San Marco.

Monte Carlo with the Grand Prix in progress.

This is all just amazing. You could visit here a hundred times and still notice something new. It's very clever and hats off to everyone involved in the creation of this marvel. Thank you Miniatur Wunderland for being open on Christmas Day.