A Lot to Discover

 

I-15 at Las Vegas

We are still in Miniatur Wunderland on the second floor with its model railway racing through Germany and some parts of Europe. In my post about Hamburg you've seen the Speicherstadt where the Wunderland is located, how big it acutally is. The entrance is on the first floor; there's also a cafeteria style restaurant furnished with train seats. The second floor houses the model railway with all its theme worlds.

Some of you asked whether it was just one person who built this - no, this has been an entire team. It needs a lot of people to work on such fine details and also to maintain the entire site. It is huge. I think just the operation of the airport alone needs at least a handful of people. Every now and then we could see someone walking through one part or another, fixing something. It's quite the sight to see those big humans in this miniature world. The next two signs give you an idea.

As you can see from the image at the top, Miniatur Wunderland also has a USA section, however, it is very small. Of course there is sin city, Las Vegas - I find this an interesting and telling selection of what to display in a section featuring the US.

Right next to it the Space Shuttle is lifting off.

But there's also the American Southwest to discover - cliff dwellings and the unique landscape of this area of the US (which is one of my favorite parts).

And look who also made an appearance!

Now come with me to South America! For this we have to leave this building of Speicherstadt, cross Kehrwiederfleet on a covered glass bridge and enter another building of Speicherstadt. You bet that the trains are also running along this bridge, connecting the continents! Here is a view from the bridge over Kehrwiederfleet and Speicherstadt.

Welcome to Rio de Janeiro!

Perfect timing! Let's join the famous carnival!

Wunderland made sure to include the diverse neighborhoods.

I took the following photo because of the horse - please look closely. Aren't the details fantastic?

And now we're finally in the part I was looking forward to the most - Patagonia and Antarctica!

What about some glaciers and towering mountains? This is Perito-Moreno glacier. Just like at the real glacier, huge ice blocks fall into the water. A special mechanism lets this happen every few minutes.

Interesting fact: The tracks in Patagonia have a different size, they are smaller. Since Wunderland tries to be as realisitc as possible, this difference in size is incorporated which meant a lot of work since they also had to adapt the size of the trains. It took four years to construct this section of Wunderland.

So now we're crossing the infamous Drake Passage. I hope you're not seasick! True to its nature the water was moving wildly here. I still regret that I didn't take a short video of this.

Here we are in Antarctica with its research station, research boats and penguins.

The penguins... I hope you take a minute and look closely at the next photo. Can you see the rock band? And the guy who sells ice cream to the penguins? Yeah..., but don't you just love this kind of silliness?

I loved this section so much. There was so much to discover.

And we were even able to travel back in time.

I hope you enjoyed this adventurous trip to the Southern tip of our world.