In which Hermann braves an autobahn with no speed limits and Sid and Doris visit the amazing Technik Museum in Speyer.
A weekday autobahn is a very serious venue. This is a hilly route so Hermann is often in the second lane overtaking trucks but his modest 150 bhp is no match for the fast stuff coming by. We are top down and typically cruise at about 65 mph. We would be unsurprised if some of the outer lane cars are doing twice that. We know our place and it is not in lane three. After a couple of hours it all gets too wearing.
As we go past Stuttgart Doris checks for one last time that Sid is OK not to go to the Mercedes museum. Instead we get onto country roads going north west, past Hockenheim to the Technik Museum, which in CoVID year is almost empty. Madly this is an overflow museum from its twin at Sinsheim (30 miles away) where they have both a Concorde and Tupolev 144 plus any amount of cars and planes.
This whole thing has got out of hand (motto: “By enthusiasts, for enthusiasts” www.speyer.technik-museum.de ). There are many English captions in the museum. If you go Hockenheim for Moto GP or anything you should visit. In fact, don’t wait for an excuse, just visit anyway. It’s worth the trip.
We are encouraged to start our visit in the Wilhelmsbrau building of the You Don’t Need To Be Pretty To Be A German Doll toys and the Not Currently Being Demonstrated Mechanical Music Machines, which would usually occupy us happily for several hours, but we know we need to pace ourselves, so turning away from the delights of the self-playing violins and the Harmonipan we exit planewards.
Rather like Bicester this was an air force base, except here the runway is now a private aerodrome. It was the Pfalz aircraft factory. The German army dismantled a very fine building in Lille (that they occupied at the time) and brought it to Speyer. After WW1 France occupied the Rhineland, so had the use of the building again until 1930. Then the Germans re-militarised the Rhineland in 1936. The factory then had a few busy years servicing warplanes. This area had the dubious benefit of falling into the French zone after 1945 and the base was theirs up to 1984.
The museum has Europe’s biggest space collection with an entire real Russian Buran space shuttle, a complete Apollo lunar lander replica with a Lunar Rover in all the original materials, the original training mockups from the International Space Station, Soyuz re-entry vehicles and floors more. They are laid out with a thorough history of the Apollo programme (each mission with its set of panels) and subsequent space station missions. They even have some real moon rock, which for scientists is sufficient evidence that the Apollo project was not all done on a Hollywood back lot. And you can climb up into everything which allows you to comment on how the tiling on the space shuttle looks a bit wonky close up. [I have used a picture from the website as it gives you some idea of how massive the whole thing is – D.]
Tearing Doris away from this, the mere earth atmosphere air travel includes a Lufthansa 747 up in the air. You climb up, and inside it is partially stripped back so you can see the frame, hydraulics and loom. You can climb down into the hold to see how the cargo bins are moved and stowed. Once back at cabin level you can walk out onto the wing to look down on the rest of the madness and to renact your own Hudson River moment.
To pick out a few others, excuse my memory, they have: an Antonov 22 which they flew in, Junkers tri-motor, Me109 G, Star Fighters, Voodoo, Hawker Hunter, Fairey Gannet, Viscount, Migs many, Sukhois several, Mirage Mk3, Phantoms, Pfalz (WW1 and built at this site), F86 Sabre and a Fokker tri-plane. There are also some ex GDR ML helicopters. There is a Canadian forest fire water bomber. I have not got them all and nor does their website. Remember this is the overflow…. [More pics at the bottom of this thread – D.]
There are also railway locomotives, mainly steam with several in working order. Outside there is a little marshaling yard with locos steam and diesel from about 1930 to about 1980, including this monster from China.
There are any number of cars, fire engines, motor bikes and military vehicles. There is an amazing deep sea emergency and rescue boat and a 1960s U Boat both of which you can go through. The heads on board the U Boat were helpfully illustrated with this submariner and his copy of Playboy.
Lots of items were roped off or with restricted access due to the virus (eg in the 747 we couldn’t go upstairs or into the crew cockpit) but on the other hand we were practically the only people in the place, so we could see anything we did want to see without any waiting.
Even when our brains and eyes full we couldn’t stop looking. Oh, just one more charabanc, let me put €1 in to play this mechanical organ, and while I’m listening I will look at the exposed details of the brakes on a set of Concorde landing gear.
In the late afternoon we came into town. As our hotel is the Dom Hof we are right by the UNESCO approved cathedral, mostly built in the 11th century. Wonderful serene spaces and a crypt full of Kings and Emperors.
And as our hotel is also a brewery we repaired to the beer garden to restore ourselves.
That was a busy day and our heads were full. Even so, note to self: remember the lovely Iranian waitress. Not all Iranians seem to think you are spawn of Satan (or she kept her thoughts to herself).
As promised for the plane-on-stick aficionados, more pictures. And a charabanc, because Doris secretly hankers after one. And no, we do not have anywhere to park it.
