The real reason for Hamburg

Okay, I confess. The real reason for visiting Hamburg was one of Germany's biggest tourist attractions, Miniatur Wunderland - the world's biggest model railway.

They have scenes based on locations in Hamburg, other parts of Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Scandinavia, and USA, with Monaco and Provence, France under construction.

Whilst there are many railway, town and countryside scenes excellently modelled, one of the big highlights is the airport where planes leave their terminal, taxi to the runway and then take off, disappearing into the sky, while other planes descend from the sky, onto the runway and taxi to the terminal.

They have just announced they are building a bridge across a canal (a real one) to extend Wunderland to another old warehouse across the canal. There, they will be doing scenes of South America.Read more