Speyer and the Technik Museum

first look at the car

I got my car at about 10am this morning, 
for a small car it was half as wide 
again as my vitara and from my seat I 
can’t see right side or the bonnet. 
This was quite scary as Frankfurt has 
many tiny single lane streets that I 
had to try and navigate because as 
usual I had no idea where the hell I 
was going and got lost. It took me
an hour to get out of the city (not 
easy when you can’t read german) and 
then I ended up on a bridge above 
autobahn 5 which is the one I wanted. 
It took me another 15 minutes to find the entrance to the autobahn.

I intended to stay on the right side of the autobahn and take it easy on 
my first time out on it. I couldn’t help myself and my average speed on 
the autobahn was 160km/h, the maximum I got upto was 180km/h.



clearly i'm not driving here

 
I would have liked to have done more 
but the car couldn’t go any faster, 
as it was it was at nearly 6000rpm 
in 5th gear.
Flying along the autobahn I forgot 
which exit I needed to take and ended 
up 100km further south than I intended. 
I pulled into a petrol station and with 
some bad german and some pointing I got 
directions on how to get to speyer. I 
finally got to speyer at 2:30pm which 
is ages when you consider speyer is 
only 2 hours away from Frankfurt 
(driving aussie legal speeds).

In Speyer I went to my hotel, checked in and dumped my stuff in my room. 
I then walked to the technik museum which was only 2km away. This place 
is an aviation dreamland. Apart from the main indoor area filled with cars 
and trucks and planes, there is a massive outdoor section.



infront of the 747 at Speyer

 
The outdoor section has many planes 
and helicopters that are put up on 
pillers and have stairs going up so 
you can go inside. One of the first 
planes I went inside I met Tony and 
Maxine. It was funny because I was 
speaking german to him and he was 
speaking german to me until we
realized we were both aussies. We 
decided to go around together as its 
nice to speak English to people and 
this was we could go on the other 
aircraft together. This was cool as 
Maxine ended up taking most of the 
photos of me infront and in the aircraft.

After the boeing 747-200 (definitely the main attraction), Tony and Maxine 
had tickets for an IMAX movie and they went to that. I used this time to go 
on the submarine, the antonov 22 cargo prop and many helicopters. 

After the movie we had a drink and a feed, Tony was kind enough to shout me 
a beer and a couple of Bratwurst sausages (damn tasty I must say).



under the 747

 
Part of this outdoor sitting area had 
a few rides and things. I went on a 
ride called the Titanic. Cost me 1 
euro, once you go through the gate you 
sit on a small boat and strap in. then
you pull on a chain and are hoisted up 
backwards on a ramp. Once the top is 
reached the boat is let go and the 
thing goes flying down the ramp and 
lands in the middle of the pool. 
Wicked fun! Tony shot some footage 
of me with my video camera.

After this we all went to the main hall 
of the museum and looked around. 

At 7pm when the park had closed we went and saw an IMAX film next door that
was about hurricane Katrina, so much destruction there it was very amazing 
to see. I hadn’t been to an IMAX movie in years and forgot about how you feel 
like you are part of the film.



enjoying the food

 
When the movie was over we exchanged 
email addresses and we parted ways. 
I then went for a walk around Speyer 
which was cool as its an amazing town. 
So old and even the main street has a 
massive church and cobbled roads. 

Its been a long day so I’m going to call 
it a night. My plan for tomorrow is to 
get up early, check out of my hotel and 
drive to sinsheim (45km away). At 
Sinsheim they have a similar setup of a 
museum but this time the concorde is the 
main attraction. From Sinsheim I am 
going to drive back to Frankfurt hopefully not taking as long this time.