Roland had been wanting to see the Miniatur Wunderland for awhile, so for his birthday, we took the Intercity-Express train from München to Hamburg to see it. This was my first experience on the ICE and I enjoyed it; in First Class you can order beverages and snacks without leaving your seat, and looking out the window was much more interesting than anything I had brought with me to pass the time.
The model railroad (HO scale) has over a thousand trains, nearly ten thousand cars, and over a quarter of a million tiny figures. We were there for about 8 hours, which was about a month in MiWuLa time; periodically the overhead lights dim simulating sunset, night, and sunrise, to show off half a million blinking LEDs. It’s pretty incredible. There are real buildings, fantasy buildings, and figures acting in all the bizarre ways people and animals act in public (and at home).
Of course I took a thousand photographs of varying quality. Here are five.
Is it as cool in person as it looks like in pictures online?
It really is. There are a lot of moving parts, not just trains, but cars, rescue vehicles, boats, and animals. The insides of the buildings are also built up and staffed with figures. I’m pretty sure in 8 hours we didn’t notice everything!