Technik Museum Spyer, Germany

We pretty much found Mecca for Grant today.

The Technik Museum Speyer (located in Speyer, German, located about a half hour south of Mannheim, is one of two Technik Museums in southern German that feature all things transportation, and then some.

 We went into the museum and we were greeted by...Nascar?  A Skoal Bandit?  What is going on here!?

 

But first things first.  We NEED to check out the retired Lufthansa 747.  Stat.  Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. 

It's a long way to the top if you want to rock and roll. 

Once inside the Lufthansa 747, some of it is cordoned off behind glass with all of the original seating and mannequins posing as flight attendants and passengers.

What the... is this for real?  Only in Germany can your son get a HUGE kick out of the fact that there's a male mannequin sitting on the toilet doing a number two.  While reading a newspaper.

Grant feels more at home in first class than back by the guy taking a dump in coach.

Natalie and Todd went out on the wing of the 747 - very brave!

 I don't know what kind of face Grant is making here (cause it kind of looks like he's crying, but I know he wasn't), but here we are visiting the neighbor to the 747, the Lufthansa Vickers Viscount!

The first thing Grant said when we walked onto this plane was that it smelled like a barn.  Nice.

MOM!  Remember these, but Delta style!?  I love that they kept them here in the retired aircraft.  I used to LOVE it when my mom brought home these flight schedule books from her job at Delta Air Lines.

Afterward, we were pretty cold, so we decided to go inside of the second hangar to check out some more cool stuff.  THIS Aston Martin is ****VERY BRITISH.***

 Our next stop brought us to a Russian version of the Space Shuttle.  I always knew the space shuttle was small, since it fits on the back of a 747 and I know how big those are.  But seeing it in the hanger made it seem bigger!  This is the space shuttle Buran, which the musuem website says, "The BURAN prototype OK-GLI shown in the museum was built in 1984 and was used for testing gliding flight and landing after reentry into the atmosphere."

 

The cockpit of an actual space shuttle! It blows my mind that people are smart enough to know what ALL of those little buttons do!

The cargo bay was open for us to see what it looked like inside.  Even though the space shuttle looked pretty huge in this hangar, compared to the vastness of space, we know how small it really is.

Actual moon rock!  It's 3.34 billion years old.  That's all.

Next we went upstairs to see the bicycle and motorcycle display, as well as model railroad exhibit.  This picture above is funny because not long before this picture was taken, I had an oil change at a VW dealership in Weiden, Germany.  Prior to arriving, I had stopped at the PX for some Makers Mark (I think it's well established how much I love Makers Mark).  The guy at the VW dealership went into my Jetta glove compartment to see if I had certain paperwork he was looking for and when he glanced at the floor and saw my bottles of Makers Mark, he said, "Oh, did you bring your own oil?"  (Which is something Germans sometimes do).  Nope, sir.  That's just Makers Mark bourbon!  That story was funny in and of itself.  Until we saw this picture and realized that oil bottles sometimes look EXACTLY like bourbon bottles!

 

We put  €1 in and turned on the train.  This was legitimately the most bizarre train track I've ever seen.  First... let's have the train drive beneath a German Chocolate Cake, or to use the more local term, a Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte.  Sure.  That makes sense.

 

There were many weird American character in this model railroad.  I know you're thinking, hey that's cool.  It's Sesame Street.  But wait!  What does that say?  Ernie ist dooof?  What does that mean?  Well, translated, that means, "Ernie sucks!"  What?  Really?  Really Technik Museum Speyer?  Meanwhile, please don't miss the prince and the princess under the central bridge.  And of course, to our left, Alf.  On a couch.  With a sash that says, "No Problem."  Sitting next a cat.  Which if you recall, he likes to eat.  This is all very disturbing.

The Russian space shuttle in full scale. Thank goodness for some normalcy.

SKYLAB!  Probably only Cory Swales will get this joke.... It is literally the only reason I took this picture!

Back in the summer of 1997, when I was interning at WFLA in my hometown of Tampa, Florida, one of my good friends from Auburn, Beth Linteris (at the time, she's married now!) came down to Cape Canaveral to watch her uncle Greg Linteris on his second space mission as a payload specialist on the Space Shuttle Columbia (which we know in 2003 disintegrated upon reentry, killing 7 astronauts). I was fortunate to sit with her in the family section at the Cape, which is the closest any human can get to the actual launch. I remember you can actually FEEL the launch.  You can see the ripples over the lake from the sound waves...and then you can feel them!  It was incredible.  STS-94 holds a special place in my heart. It was neat to be in Germany and see a little memento from that!

The next stop was the Russian Antonov 22.  It's the worlds largest turboprop, and was used as military transport for Russia.  Above is the interior of the aircraft.  Not super exciting because again, it was used as military transport.  But it's still pretty impressive that props can fly this plane!

 This shows the scale of this plane.  Todd and the kids are beneath the far right prop.  It's an impressive aircraft!

 On our way to our last stop, which was a couple of aircraft near the front of the first hangar, we saw this.  A piece of the Berlin Wall!  How interesting that we found it in the Rhineland Palatinate, which is pretty darn far from Berlin!  I appreciate that all of Germany shares this history.

 Heading over to the other aircraft, we had one last pass under of the Lufthansa Boeing 747!

 

Hi Nat!  That's a Boeing 747 above your head!

  

Two more planes to explore?  Yes please!

 

Here's Natalie in the first aircraft (which in the picture above this one, is the one with the red stripe down the middle. It's an Antonov AN-26) Once again, the Germans (or the Russians?) have stumped me with their strange dioramas.  In this picture, we have a mannequin to the left reading some literature about Lenin and Stalin, and on the right we have a man taking a nap with some strange deer antlers and a fallen picture of a man above him! 

 

Meanwhile, this aircraft also had a car in the back of it!

 

Ok, hopefully the Air Inter is a little less confusing. 

 

But first, let us appreciate the pigeon and all of the bird poop on the wing of the Air Inter in front of the Technik Museum Speyer.

Air Inter was okay but you could really only go in about this far and you couldn't walk around the airplane.

But they had the entire plane still intact and you could see it from the front of the cabin.

 

Last but not least, we have a little bit of Nazi history.  The airplane on top is a model of one that the Red Baron flew.  And of course, we have Nazi unforms on display which Grant is checking out.

If you have children, or even if you don't... this is an incredible museum.  I'm really looking forward to visiting the other Technik Museum in Sinsheim soon!