Day-trip to Sinsheim

On Saturday, we took a day-trip to the nearby town of Sinsheim. Those of you who follow German/European soccer may have heard of the Hoffenheim soccer team which came out of nowhere a few seasons ago to give the big-name teams a run for their money. They have their main stadium in this town, but we had come for technology. Yes, folks, you read right, technology. Sinsheim has a large museum dedicated to cars and technology, so I had read, and we wanted to check it out. We had to take a ride on the S-Bahn for about 40 minutes from Heidelberg, which was much enjoyed by Alex, as you can see here.

I really didn't know exactly what to expect and was as surprised as Alex to see this view as soon as we got off the S-Bahn:

There seemed to be two or more giant airplanes hovering in the sky. I had read online that visitors could  go into them, but how could that be possible if they were so high up? (Keep reading for the answer.) As we walked closer, Alex demanded the camera to take a picture of me in front of whatever giant machine this is. Not a bad shot for a 4-year old, I think.

Once we got to the entrance, we realized the scale of this museum. There were several hangars, an IMAX theatre (which we skipped), an outdoor playground (though the weather still left a lot to be desired), and those planes everywhere suspended in the sky on top of the buildings. Here is a view from the entry gates/parking lot.

Well, we found the main entrance, dutifully paid our fee, and then entered the first of these massive hangars/halls. It was filled to bursting with cars, trucks, trains, planes, tanks, motorcycles, engines, mechanical musical instruments, etc. An odd and sometimes seemingly random organization of things, but fun to look at and explore. Here are some of my attempts to capture the scale and the hodgepodge in photos.

It was hard to make sense of it all, but we mostly enjoyed the sights and sounds of it. Thankfully, they had removed most of the Nazi insignia from the German military gear, but it seemed weird to me to see a Soviet tank, and German anti-aircraft gun, and an American Jeep all mixed up with each other as if they had all been on the same side. I kept thinking about to what extent this technology is ideologically tainted, but kept these thoughts to myself as I wandered through these gigantic displays with my 4-year old, who cannot yet make sense of any of these things. After we had more or less tackled the first hangar (it took almost 2 hours), we went outside and spent a little time on the playground, all the while intrigued by the planes hovering overhead. We were most interested in the Air France Concorde and the Aeroflot Tupolev (two supersonic passenger jets of the late 20th century).

When we took a little break with our picnic brought from home, I told Alex the story I remembered from my childhood that my dad had once been a passenger on a flight on the Concorde from Paris to New York and Catherine Deneuve had sat across the aisle from him. (I skipped the part about Ms. Deneueve in my version for Alex.) He now became obsessed with figuring out how to get into that plane. Well, it turned out, we had to enter another hangar filled to capacity with various vehicles etc., climb a set of stairs to the roof, walk along a walkway on the roof, and then climb up a spiral staircase up to the plane, which was mounted at quite a steep angle several hundreds of feet up in the air. Have I mentioned that I have quite a strong fear of heights and it was freezing cold, windy, wet, slippery, and snowing slightly? Here is our view of the plane from the roof of the building!

I was scared the entire time, but I could not say no and so we clambered up there together. And, guess what? On the inside, it looked like a passenger airplane, slightly narrower than the one we had been in just a few weeks ago. Was it worth it? For Alex, absolutely. In fact, he made me go up into the Tupolev as well, for comparison, and we've had multiple conversations about those two planes since. After that excursion into the sky, we went back down into the hangar and looked at more things for several more hours. We kept thinking that Alex's cousins, especially Niko would really love this place. 

With the exception of the two planes we visited, I think Alex's favorite exhibit was this "Blaster Master" - not least, because he was allowed to climb all over it. What a way to spend a Saturday!