Western Europe 2018 Trip – Part Nine: Sinsheim

A few years ago I randomly stumbled on the Technik Museum Speyer while travelling in the Rhine region. Since that trip I’ve wanted to visit the sister museum Technik Museum Sensheim, and fortunately, I was able to convince my friends on a very cold and wet day that it was a good place to visit as well.

Overall the museum was excellent, with an incredibly large collection of planes, cars, tanks and trains. In particular, I enjoyed seeing the Concorde and the North Africa WWII military displays. Although I did leave thinking that the Speyer museum was slightly better (it has more variety – including space craft).

To wrap up the very cold day, and to see off my last full day in Germany we ate and drank traditional food in nearby Weinheim.

Western Europe 2018 Trip – Part Eight: Heidelberg and the Neckar

Heidelberg is a tourist town, not just any tourist town, but one of the front cover of guidebooks, where everyone who visits Germany, visits, tourist town. It is both beautiful and overrun with tourist and associated tourist nicknacks. Because of this, the experience of Heidelberg also depends on the exact time you visit and what places in the town you visit, and this certainly extends to food. The first place we opted to eat at, we ended up walking out of, due to a lack of service. Fortunately the next restaurant was divine. 

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Western Europe 2018 Trip – Part Six: Side Trips to Lübeck and Osnabrück

After failing to make it to Lübeck on our first day in Hamburg, we did a quick trip on our last day. 

It rained the entire time we were in Lubeck, despite this we still walked around the city and even stumbled on a church (St. Petri Kirche) which is now a community centre after the Soviet government refused to allow churches to be restored after the second world war.

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Western Europe 2018 Trip – Part Five: Hamburg

We allocated three days to explore Hamburg and it’s surrounds.

On the train ride from Berlin, we had decided to take an immediate side trip to the nearby town of Lübeck. However, when we arrived at Hamburg’s Main Station all the departure boards for connecting trains were showing the words “Tiere Im Gleis”.

With the little bit of German I know I was left trying to figure out what “Animals on the Platform” meant, and both in a rush and not seeing any animals, we went to the nearest platform for a delayed train to Lübeck. 

After sitting on this train, going nowhere, for 20 minutes, we managed to speak to someone in English and realised that the word “Gleis” isn’t just “Platform” but also “Track”, that is, there are animals on the track and the trains are not running, which also explained why our delayed train was not going anywhere either. 

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Central Europe Adventures 2016 – Part Twenty Three: Frankfurt

My final day in Germany began by being woken to the sound of Worms Cathedral’s bells tolling. After taking a shower in the freezing bathroom of my hotel room (it was more of a B&B) I carefully packed my suitcase and carry-on backpack for one final day of adventure and then the long journey back to Sydney.

Once I had finished breakfast I rugged up as it was a very cold morning and walked through the pedestrian mall of Worms back to the Worms’ Hauptbahnhof to catch a train to Frankfurt. As I walked I discovered a plaque noting the place where Luther had lived during the Diet of Worms.

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Central Europe Adventures 2016 – Part Twenty Two: Technik Museum Speyer

The Technik Museum Speyer was the biggest surprise of my trip. As stated in my previous post I had not heard about the town of Speyer until the previous evening and I went there on a whim. Visiting the museum was then a last minute decision as I had a few hours spare.

The museum is very large and has an amazing collection of planes, trains and automobiles from all areas of the globe. Seeing the Buran Space Shuttle alone would have satisfied me but also walking through a Boeing 747, Antonov 22 and German U-Boat made this museum the best I’ve ever been to – better than Kennedy Space Center.

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Central Europe Adventures 2016 – Part Twenty One: Speyer

Until the previous evening I hadn’t even heard of Speyer and discovering it turned out to be one of the highlights of my trip. After spending the morning exploring Worms I jumped on a train for the 35 minute journey to Speyer.

Arriving at Speyer I walked from the Hauptbahnhof along to the Altpörtel and Maximilianstraße, Speyer’s main street. Here the pastel coloured buildings of Speyer felt a lot more like “stereotypical” Germany than Worms or Mainz did. This may be due to it receiving much less damage during WWII than the other two cities.

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Central Europe Adventures 2016 – Part Twenty: Worms

Finding my way from Worms station to my hotel for the night should have been pretty simple. All I had to do was walk down one road and then turn once and walk down a second but somehow I still managed to get lost. It turned out that my hotel was above a restaurant that was closed over the winter. Once I had figured out how to get into the hotel I put my bags into my room and headed out again to find food for dinner.

Worms was a lot smaller than what I was expecting. Trying to find dinner turned out to be quite a challenge as many of the restaurants and pubs contained people openly smoking inside. In the end I just settled for a hot chocolate at a cafe, planned ideas for things to see the following day and then had an early night.

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