Eesti
While thoroughly enjoying my time in Tallinn, visiting the local sights such as Paterei Prison, Sea Plane museum and walking through the streets of old town (which never gets old for me by the way), it seemed a shame not to travel the rest of Europe. After all, we travelled all the way from the other side of the world! And Aussies are also famous for travelling
My housemates and I (famously known as “the Aussies”) made plans to travel to the famous Oktoberfest during the end of September. Our travel plans included visiting Berlin, Hamburg and celebrating Oktoberfest in Munich along with leaving a couple of days for proper sight seeing.
Having already visited Berlin and Munich 2 years ago, I was more excited to visit Hamburg. Instantly, my first impression of Hamburg reminded me of a mix between Berlin and Munich. It had amazing history just like Berlin and it also had amazing architecture similar to that of Munich.
We were given excellent advice on what to see and do in Hamburg. One particular advice was to go and see the amazing Miniature wonderland. So, this is exactly what I did. After walking around the old town and doing a bit of retail therapy – most of the day was spent being amazed by the Hamburg’s miniature wonderland!
This amazing place is the largest model railway attraction of its kind in the world. It has 9 sections including their on made up city. They have managed to recreate famous sights such as Scandinavia, the Alps, Neuschwanstein Castle, Italy, Switzerland, Austria etc. There are approximately 1,040 trains made up over 10,000 carriages, 385,000 lights (and counting), 130,000 trees (and counting) and about 260,000 human figurines and counting. They are also planning to build, Italy, England and more of America.
This place is just hard to describe. You hear people talk about model trains and mini figurines which is typically a boring subject only enjoyed by retired men or young boys but in fact once you are in there, you will be wonderfully surprised and amazed at the detail of this place! I usually have a rule where I don’t take photos inside of museums or inside of churches. This is a personal rule I gave myself to give the place the respect that it deserves. However, I couldn’t help but take multiple photos and I believe that the only way to interest you on this topic and this place is to show you the amazing photos! So take your time and please enjoy!
Hamburg in itself is an amazing city and I would highly recommend for anyone to visit!
Once the Hamburg experience was over, we quickly moved on to the Oktoberfest experience!
Part of every Aussie’s travel adventure always includes the amazing Oktoberfest experience. We don’t drink much beer but we were definitely looking forward to meeting new people. Our first mistake was deciding to go to Oktoberfest during Italian Weekend. And this is no offense to Italians because I love them but it was apparently the most rowdy weekend and many Germans tend to avoid it. However – Starting the day at 9am, we beer-tent hopped all day, ate many pretzels, roast chickens and German wurst until we felt sick in the stomach.
We also got into the spirit of getting dressed up and met some lovely Americans who live in Europe and we partied with them all day!
There’s a saying in Germany –
You will always meet someone twice (Man trifft sich zweimal im Leben).
And safe to say we will definitely meet our American friends again very soon.
We then spent the rest of our time visiting sunny Munich, immersing ourselves in the amazing architecture, history and drinking more beer!
While in Munich we stayed with a friend of mine who lived in a sweet little town called Erding. Not far from there is Munich’s famous and largest water park/spa resort. Many business trips and luxury travellers tend to visit for its famous facilities. However, we decided to visit the town and check out the colourful buildings and cute medieval settings.
While we were enjoying the sun, we missed our new home Tallinn and we couldn’t wait to go back to experience more of Estonia!
Stay tuned for the next episode of my Life in Tallinn!
Chervil
Author: Chervil Tan
Photos: Chervil Tan
