March 29, 2004

Weekend in Review

This past weekend was the most active we've had in a while. Here's my story of the weekend (pictures still to come) -- compare and contrast with Shelby's version ...

Friday night: The Hamburger DOM

On Friday night, we kicked things off by going to the Hamburger DOM, a "fun fair" held three times a year. The DOM is like an American county fair, with all of the parts that aren't fun taken away -- leaving you with rides, midway games, and food of all types. We sat down for a meal of Bratwurst, Bier, and Pommes, and then started walking down the midway. We stopped at our favorite attraction, the Mouse Circus (basically, just a giant cage full of mice, with all kinds of ropes and ladders and wheels and mouse houses -- the kind of thing that a 10-year-old boy would build in his room if his parents gave him an unlimited amount of money and let him keep hundreds of mice). We rode a few rides, chasing each other with gas-powered go-karts around a oval, and riding The Largest Portable Ferris Wheel In The World. The Danish were there with a giant tent, hoping to convince us to visit Denmark; about two-thirds of the tent was filled with a big exhibit from Legoland (the original one) in Billund, Denmark.

This year is the DOM's 666th birthday, so "Hamburger DOM 666 Jahre" posters were sprinkled throughout the grounds. ("DOM" and The Number Of The Beast make for an interesting juxtaposition, since Dom means "cathedral" in German -- why is a carnival named after a type of church? It all goes back to 1337, when a group of merchants, craftsmen, and entertainers were granted permission to hold a market inside the Hamburg cathedral [during rainy weather; so, in Hamburg, pretty much all the time -- silly priests!] -- permission they retained, and used in one form or another, until the cathedral was demolished in 1804! The DOM then exisisted in an itinerant fashion until 1894, when it moved to its current permanent location, still retaining the name of its previous permanent home. So endeth the lesson.)

Saturday: Trains, Printing Presses, and Riot Police

On Saturday morning, I got up early to get the grocery shopping out of the way. The novelty value of shopping for food has more or less faded, so I won't say much about that (but rest assured that if there are further discoveries in the area of "American-style" food, you'll hear about them here). After the groceries, I set out to find a model train store. Research on the Web led me to Züge und Mehr. German model train equipment is well-known for being highly detailed and finely engineered -- and in the US, expensive and difficult to get a hold of. At Züge und Mehr, these German things were just as expensive, but available in great abundance, so I walked around and drooled for a while. Thankfully for our bank account, I didn't come home with much, just a set of HO scale cats and dogs.

Later, in the afternoon, we went to the Museum der Arbeit (Museum of Work) for DruckKunst 2004 -- an exhibition of original prints and lithographs from different artists and workshops, along with demonstrations of printing technology. After touring a large room full of artists with prints on display, we went to see demonstrations from the museum's workshops. Most interesting was the chance to see a working Linotype machine; the operator sat at the keyboard, typed a line, and once she threw the machinery into action, it cast that line into a type slug, using a crucible of molten lead for material. Afterwards, it automatically resorted the matricies (the brass forms used for molding the lead) for each letter into their individual bins. It was a frighteningly complex machine; I can see why so many people, including Mark Twain, went bankrupt trying to build mechanical typesetters. After the Linotype, we crossed into a different building to watch lithographs being made off of a stone; interesting to watch, but I was having a really hard time following the man giving the talk; he spoke German with what sounded like a thick Norwegian accent.

Walking between the museum and the U-Bahn station was a little disconcerting, as the streets were full of police and police wagons (from the elevated U-Bahn platform, I counted 20 police vans). While we were there, I thought it was nothing but typical police overreaction to a brewing minor disturbance -- for a student demonstration that would merit a couple of bored cops in police cars in the US, I've seen the Hamburg police respond with overwhelming force, getting out the riot gear and blocking streets with police vans parked five across. (I've seen the Hamburg police tank driving around three times!) After getting home and reading the news, though, it turned out that this was the real deal; there were two demonstrations planned for later that day -- one by a group of neo-Nazis, the other a response from anti-Nazis. Conflict was expected. Total projected attendance: 1000 neo-Nazis, 2000 anti-Nazis, and 3000 police officers. As the papers would say the next day, the police and the community were giving the neo-Nazis keine Chance. (In the end, the neo-Nazis ended up being outnumbered 10 to 1: 400 of them to 4000 police.)

Sunday: More Trains

On Sunday, the weather was gray and drizzly again, so we looked for an indoor tourist attraction. We settled on a visit to Miniatur Wunderland Hamburg; I think that Shelby was suitably impressed, although probably not enough to let me try to duplicate it in a basement or garage once we get back to the States.

Seeing the model railroad towards the middle of the day on a weekend was a mistake, as it was packed with people. My previous visit was near closing time on a weekday, so there was plenty of space -- but now, at 9 Euro a head, it was easy to see how they could recoup their 4 million Euro investment. There were a lot of kids there; not only were the German children their usual atrociously-mannered selves, pushing and shoving and climbing over everything, but a lot of families were using Junior as a wedge -- you'd be standing at the railing watching the trains, and a kid would wiggle his way in front of you; then the rest of the family would elbow you out of the way, since they had to maintain connection with their precious one. It reinforced a rule I'd already learned -- anywhere where a lot of German schoolchildren are present, you've got to assert yourself and be prepared to use your elbows.

Posted by Kevin at March 29, 2004 07:56 AM