Weekend Trip

Hey guys!

So Hubby and I went on another trip this past weekend.  He planned the whole thing as a surprise.  We ventured a little farther away from home this time- three hours by car!- to get to our destination.

Hubby took me to the Speyer Technical Museum which covers the history of all sorts of technology, everything from cars to airplanes to space exploration.  The museum was big and rambling, with exhibits loosely divided into time periods, so I'm dividing my pictures into categories based similar items.

Cars

This red beauty was a Fire Chief's car.

A Volkswagen Beetle, similar to what my mom had when I was very young (although hers was an orange number named Sunshine.)

I loved the ever-so-literal "trunk" of this car.

Check out the sloping fenders on this one.  You need a very sharp hat to drive a car like this!

Airplanes

I am, admittedly, much more interested in the history of aviation than the history of cars, although Hubby is a real car guy.

This is a wreck that was recovered from a lake in northern Europe decades after WWII.  It had crash landed on the ice and then sunk come spring thaw.

Several large planes outside the museum buildings.  You could climb up into several of them and two even featured large slides to exit through!

A jet plane hanging above the WWII planes.

The entrance of the museum.

An F-4 Phantom that was part of the Blue Angels (the US Navy Flight Demonstration Squad).  I was lucky enough as a kid to see them perform on the Fourth of July and they're still one of my all-time favorite groups!

A large WWII-era German passenger plane that was commandeered into military service, complete with bullet holes.  

Space Exploration

This was my favorite part of the museum.  As a teacher, and self-professed science nerd, I'm fascinated by space exploration and was very excited in particular to see their exhibits about the Apollo program.

A zero gravity simulation chamber...

Complete with a "floating" astronaut inside.

A mock up of the Apollo landings, complete with a moon rover, landing capsule, space suit, and "MTV flag".

An actual moon rock brought back by Apollo 17.

A Saturn V rocket, used to power the Apollo missions.  You can get an idea of the size by looking at the people walking underneath it!

A Russian Buran space shuttle, essentially stolen from NASA's space shuttle program.

One of the payload doors.

Underneath the shuttle lets you get an idea of the size.  The TV was showing videos of test flights from the mid '80's.

A mock up of the later moon rover driven on some of the last Apollo missions.

Recreation Apollo-era space suit.

A scale mode of the International Space Station with the Buran behind it.

Musical Instruments

There were several mechanized musical devices. Many of them could be played for a Euro or two.

Miscellaneous

Cute blue scooter.

Turn of the last century merry-go-round.  You could make it light up and spin to music by putting in a Euro coin, but there were no riders allowed.

A piece of the Berlin wall.  I was in Kindergarten when this came down and I have a few memories of it, mostly because there was a girl named Laura in my class who came with her family from West Germany.

Early water heater, complete with a very spooky child mannequin.

This is a Mephistopheles Mobile.  I have NO idea what the heck it is, beyond a pile of extremely random parts, because the signs explaining it were only in German despite the fact that most of the other exhibits had English signs alongside German ones.

It even had a Gnome!

A hand made raft from a conservation group.   Like the gnome-mobile, there were not English signs for this one, so I wasn't able to catch the specifics of who the group was or their goals.  

Let me know what you think of our trip in the comments below.  Don't forget to follow my blog and check out my YouTube Channel to keep up with our Germany adventures!

Stay stylish!

Amy