Re: Mostly Germany [Hamburg to start with]
Day 1 : Saturday 28th May
Flew into Bremen, picked up a car (was pretty nice actually, a Fiat 500X) and drove off to Hamburg for a couple of nights.
No coasters for day or so, so you'll have to put up with some "culture" and stuff for a bit (sorry, I'll try and make up for
this).
I had a cunning plan to pick hotels near transport stops so I could easily get into the various citys I'd be visiting to have a
looksee at the places, so my first stop was near a train station that would get me easily (10 mins) into Hamburg city centre for
the evening.
Only the trains weren't running - some silly engineering works ; so after I'd worked that out, onto the replacement bus service
(pah, how common) which took quite a big longer to get into the city.
Wandered around for a bit looking for somewhere to eat / watch the football (Chanpions League final) but must admit in hindsight
I was probably wandering all the wrong areas (no research, just thought I could wing it) so despite the city being quite nice
I wasn't really finding those 'sports bar' locations that I assuming I'd just come across.
Was getting a bit annoyed at myself for my dopeyness as kick-off approached when I literally turned a corner to find one of those
German beer-house places - perfect, got seated right at match kick-off ; all good in the end then
Was quite rowdy in there, but thats the idea, good beer, crap food, girl on the table next to me throwing up ; all good even if I
was siding with Athletico rather than Real for the match (gentle rivalry with some Columbian chap at my table who was all for
Madrid). The match went into extra-time and penalties, with meant I ended up drinking a bit more of their HUGE beers that I
perhaps intended to, but still managed to find the replacement bus service back to near my hotel ; phew.
Day 2 : Sunday 29th May
Somewhat the worse for wear, the plan was to do-some-culture in the city today, so after another go on the replacement bus I
started out at the main
Kunsthalle (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunsthalle_Hamburg) - the German of 'art' being almost a very
rude word.
Was quite good ; the main bit had a mixture of old-master stuff (which I can tolerate if its good and most of this was OK) and
a bit of the more modern stuff which I tend to prefer;
and then they had an annex bulding (quite cool you went through a kind-of underground passageway to get to it) which was all
modern-art
and I really liked that, some good-culture there then. Recommended.
Wandered down the street a bit afterwards to a place I'd walked past the previous evening - the
Deichtorhallen - which was a
dedicated modern-art place / photography exhibition. (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deichtorhallen)
Hit up the art place first which was in this huge hall (formerly a market / formerly a railway station it seems) - but this is
where my modern-art enthusiasm was tested somewhat; because the whole place was an installation consisting entirely of
portable toilets.
I'm not even joking.
Whilst this was funny/amusing ; not really "art" I thought.
Oddly one of the "pieces" was called this;
Yes well didn't loiter in the toilets very long and went over to have a look at the photography exhibition, which was a lot more
"art" ; there were 3 photographers work being shown but all 3 seemed to be the same sort of stuff ; lots of black&white photos
of drug-addicts with the rude-bits on show. "Challenging" is what I think they call it.
(no pics of that because it was all a bit NSFW, anyway taking pics of photographs just seems wrong, so I didn't)
Clearly goons in Hamburg are going to end up at the
Miniatur Wunderland (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miniatur_Wunderland) so
that was next.
And this was great ; why did Alton remove their model-railway in favour of that psuedo-church place, bring it back I say!
Took lots of pics in there and spent a few hours wandering around it was great, will dump just a couple though;
Hamburg's portable toliet obsession here too it seems...
Control centre;
Creds!
Bonus cred (in the workshop rather than on display);
Ok so thats enough "culture", proper goon-behaviour to commence shortly...
--
Day 3 : Monday 30th May
Just a little drive up from Hamburg to the coast gets me here for the days goonery.
Hansa Park, which I'd visited 5 years ago, but they'd only gone and built some super big new Gerstlauer thingy since then
that I felt I needed to go and have a look at.
I'd got there a little before ride opening (10, confusingly a lot of German parks open at 9, but the rides don't open till 10,
previous trip here I had found myself wandering around for an hour before I could do anything ; not falling for that trick
again!) and they were running
Nessie Superrollercoaster before 10, so made her the first coaster of the trip - nice enough
old Schwarzkopf - decent loop (interested by another ride)
And a dive into the super-nessie's gaping mouth to finish with
By full-opening time a little Q had built up at the entrance of the new-ish ride
Schwur des Kärnan (Oath of Karnan)
But a short Q so not long before I am wandering thru the almost completed themeing;
and you end up watching a little "archaeological discoveries at the site of the old castle" video in what wait there was;
In the next room, the video playing makes some joke about loose articles not being allowed and to store them in this historically
discovered cupboard
Annoyingly they force you to store your glasses, even with a goon-strap holding them on ; this is annoying because there is still
a themed corridor and a cool themed loading room to negotiate before you get to the boarding area - bad planning that, I for one
struggle without glasses and especially in poorly-lit themed rooms ; either let me ride with my secured glasses (like on almost
every other coaster out there) or let store the glasses at the point I get on the train - after I've been through all the
themeing. Hmmm.
The loading room (the one that I can't really see) is pretty cool though, batched into rows, some effects play out and then doors
are opened seemingly at random and each batch of peeps are loaded one at a time. Even half-blind I could work this out, but some
on the punters on some of my trips through the room seemed to struggle with the concept and were trying to go thru doors that
weren't open or exit their batched row when it wasn't there turn. People are muppets.
Anyway first ride was front row, really cool lift hill experience - huge vertical lift obviously and then at the top we get
dropped back down the lift backwards as a surprise (and to be fair I didn't know about that at all so it did surprise me).
After we recover from that and head back up the lift, the ride-music reaches a crescendo and we dive over the top back down the
castle tower and out into the light - great stuff.
After that its a big mess of a spaghetti-like ride; swooping up in this funny element high up in the sky and then shooting out
for a quick trip around the farther reaches of the park before coming back to the castle for another surprise inversion after what
you think is the brake run before getting back to the station.
Mercifully re-finding my glasses isn't too hard as the magic-cupboards open up onto the unload platform ; at least that was
well thought out.
Exit thru the (nice) gift shop
The Q entrance des Kärnan
The test seat des Kärnan
The back of the gift-shop des Kärnan (looking a bit un-themed here)
Anyway, loved the ride. Great stuff.
Rode it a couple of times (with no vision) and came back later on to ride this (and Fluch) with some contacts in ; in fairness
there isn't a lot themeing-wise to look at on the ride itself, bar some flag at the end of the ride - so my lack of vision
didn't really affect the ride-experience, but wandering through the two themed rooms and a themed corridor and the themed
station wearing contacts _was_ a whole lot easier.
On my previous visit,
Fluch von Novgorod (Curse of Novgorod) was the "big ride" and I recalled it fondly, so was looking
forward to that too. It was a lot more rough than I remembered though - and they had that nasty no-glasses rule to so I only
rode it the once fist-up before coming back later in the day contacted-up to ride it a few times. This has a bit more to look at
than Kärnan on-ride so think that this one does make a difference being able to focus (or not). In my memory the vertical lift
hill bit was a lot bigger than in was too ; perhaps just because no its dwarfed by its new cousin across the park it seems
smaller (definitely felt a lot shorter too).
Near to Kärnan is their wild-mouse
Crazy Mine, its just a normal wild-muse (which is always better than those spinning
ones), but they do a lot with it in terms of themeing and stuff ; its all built into this wildwest-mine theme with animatronics
and a mine tower you could wander up - for what it is, really good then.
New the last time I came was their kiddy-coaster
Die Schlange von Midgard (Snake from Midgard), which was running then
but without all its themeing. Disappointingly in the 5 years since some themeing had been and gone it seems since the actual
snake head themeing (I'd seen pics of this) of was not there today either.
Quick ride on the Vekoma junior
Rasender Roland before wandering the park to take a few pics for a while. This was a bit
more rattly/bouncy than I remembered, in need of a bit of TLC I think?
Some of those random park snaps;
IFC the ride;
#notacred #removed
First of many spinny-water-rides on the trip, inflatable rafts on this one like the one @Thorpe.
Bit of observation tower stuff (I do like a good observation tower me
)
When I'd been here before, I'd felt that the park layout was a bit odd ; there was this 'circular' park layout (presumably
inherited from the days when the park was a Legoland) and then a whole big chunk of stuff seemingly stuffed in/around a field
to the side of it. Replacing some of that stuff with Kärnan made the place feel more cohesive I think, more park like and the
stuff in that field (like the spinny water ride thing and the bell ride) felt more a part of the park than they did before.
Dunno if that makes sense, anyway I know what I mean.
Just past Kärnan, there is the remains of the big field ; ideal location for a nice little family woody I think.
--
So rather good day to start the park-going side of the trip off ; Hansa is a nice little park, couple of very worthy rides,
reasonable amount of supporting rides ; well worth any goon's trip here.
Little drive later I'm in the next hotel, setup for the next day
Famous for the wooden toilets anyway
