Technik Museum of Speyer

Tim took some extra time off after Thanksgiving, and we became the absolute coolest parents ever when we decided to keep the kiddos home from school on Monday so we could take them to a museum.  One thing about Germany, is they have a very healthy respect for Sundays.  Most, not all businesses are closed on Sundays.  I LOVE that.  However, it also impacts how busy attractions are on Saturdays.  We have learned to avoid pretty much any shopping area on Saturdays.  Now we'll still go places sometimes, but when we want to take the kids somewhere, and we know that it's going to take some time, we try and go during the week, so we don't have to battle with as many people.  Anyway, we went to a town called Speyer, it's about 45 minutes from home.  There is an awesome museum there, that Tim wanted to take the kids to.  So off we went.  Our first thought after seeing the pretty much empty parking lot, was, AWESOME, we have the place to ourselves, which we pretty much did.

The Technik Museum of Speyer is kind of a mish mosh of a lot of things.  There are trains, boats, motorcycles, old organs, a carousel, classic cars, military cars, space shuttles, models, rides, arcade games, an IMAX theater, and so much more, I couldn't possibly name it all.  Most everything (including the IMAX) is in German, but here and there were were surprised by a display with English translation.

Some of the displays would have a little coin machine, and for either 1 or 2 Euro, you could turn the display on.  Here, there was a giant brass band/old time Organ display that for some reason we didn't get a picture of.  We turned it on and old timey music started up and Tayzia danced up and down the pathway.

Something else we loved about this museum, was that while there was a lot of things we couldn't touch, there was a lot we could.  We could climb into things, really look at things, and we didn't have museum staff breathing down our necks because we have enthusiastic children.  She danced around the displays, and that was okay.

Another organ we were able to turn on.

I think this was by far, the most favorite thing of the entire day.  I couldn't get it all in one shot, but that... is a 747 static display, way up off the ground..... 

And this is the slide coming down from it.  And we all enjoyed going down the slide over, and over, and over again.

The museum is large, and occupies more than one building, and I think we still didn't see everything we could have.  In the next building, we were bombarded with space.  We got to climb inside a space shuttle.  There were a few displays of Lego creations.  Jabba's palace, and a lot of different fighters (the x-wing) etc. Corben loved that.

There were a few of these motion simulators around as well.  3 euro for two people to ride at a time, not too bad.  Each set of kiddos took their turn, and wished we were made of money so we could do this over and over again too.

Outside were several different kinds of aircraft we could go inside and walk around.  This is one of the small planes we could go on.

Outside was also where we could see a lot of maritime displays.... giant anchors.

propellers....

Submarines.....!  This U-9 we got to go inside of.

and we got to touch, which was awesome.

Just outside the Sub's entrance.

We spent a good 3.5 hours here, and had a lot of fun.  The weather wasn't too bad, which made the outside displays a lot more fun.  The kids really enjoyed themselves.  Another great place to visit here in Germany!