The last piece of awesomeness before the storm
While it would seem a rather random stop over instead of going straight to Berlin from Amsterdam, there is one reason Hamburg came up on my radar when I was looking for places to visit on my trip. That reason was the Miniature Wunderland. I came across this while searching online and thought it looks pretty good, why not take a slight detour to check it out. I am so glad I did!
The trip to Hamburg was a decent slog on the train but with the trains in Europe being as they are, it was a comfortable trip, screw flying, trains are by far the better way to go where possible. Arriving in the city I was amazed by what I saw, there are some very impressive looking churches and monuments scattered around and I found myself instantly regretting I didn’t have an extra day to look around.
Regrets aside, I managed to check in to my hotel and made a bee line to Miniature Wunderland located in a warehouse district near the port. Now I was expecting this to be cool, but I had no idea just how cool this place would be, I was gob smacked and could easily have spent a few days looking around this place, it was massive, so much more than what I was expecting. We aren’t talking just a few dioramas here, these are actually fully realized cities and country sides. The amount of space these different scenes take up would be at least half the size of a football field. The exhibition is divided up into various cities effectively forming their own little world. This was nothing short of amazing.
While the scale alone was impressive, what really boggles the mind is the attention to detail. The amount of detail and intricacy poured into each of these massive worlds is unreal. The share amount of time it must have taken to make this gives you pause. And each world has been carefully crafted with small little details such as interactions between the people, funny moments, Easter Eggs for others thing (there was even Team Rocket!)
And to make it even more impressive, it was interactive! There are buttons you can push that set up a specific scene, from simple things like turning lights on to the launch of a rocket. All the while, there are set scenes happening within the worlds themselves and trains constantly moving around, all with pre-programmed routes that must have been a nightmare to set up. That difficulty however pales in comparison to an actual working airport, set with arrivals and departures. Even the bloody Millennium Falcon comes roaring through!
The only way to fully appreciate this place is to see it in person and really take your time seeing it because there is just so much to look at and pick through. If this kind of thing really interests you then give yourself most of a day to visit here (you can and will need to take a break) but even if it only mildly interests you, it is still worth a few hours to look around and be amazed.
The following morning I woke up ready to go to Berlin, only to find that everything had literally gone to shit overnight and that I would be spending the next few days stuck on my computer frantically trying to cancel my trip and get the hell out of Europe.
Marcus Powell has been living and working in South Korea since 2010. He is now on the road before returning back to NZ. Aside from writing his own blog, he is also a popular Club DJ, Gamer, Community manager, esports fan and anime enthusiast.
akadjblaze 
Great post 😁