TRAVELOGUE: Visiting a museum - war-time; vehicles; toys; music; technology

WARNING: LONG POST AHEAD

Was on the way to Heilbronn, a vineyard to buy wine and eat. We dropped by the Auto & Technik Museum Sinsheim, a technology museum in Sinsheim in the southern part of Germany. There were displays of machines and vehicles from the war times, vehicles from the American when they occupied the base in Germany after the war; and also pre-war, colonial kinds of vehicles and also musical machines; as well as the modern types of fast machines. It was a real eye-opener.

From outside the museum, the infamous Concorde airplane from Air-France, one of its kind of turbojet-powered supersonic passenger airliner; only one of two supersonic transport to have been operated commercially. Too bad... following a crash in 2000 and after the September 11 scare... business was tough, they had to retire all the Concorde planes. One of the key outlooks of the plane that you would immediately identify is the droop nose. Here's a video of the supersonic takeoff of the Concorde. Video courtesy of Paddy Barry (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJrLSGqrV7TYMvDL_9YVdcg)

The entrance fee was €16, €21 if you wanna watch a movie, but nah~~ so we went for the museum entrance.​

Some of the American classic cars displayed here...

and the cops too~

and then there's the famous car you've seen in some movie hehe~

Then we went on to the war-time exhibition, there were tanks, all terrain vehicles, half-terrain vehicles, they even had a mobile kitchen, rockets and anti-aircraft machines. Tankers and army carriers and something about the colorful tank; didn't recall what was told to me haha.
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The vehicles were of German Nazis, Russian army, French army and some other armies, I can't tell which is which haha, didn't do that well in WW2 history.

And these rockets were Americans' and Germans'. I didn't take the Russian rocket though...

Anti air-craft machines.

Some of the planes, a wreckage too. There were a few wreckage of tanks and planes, all were reported to be self-destructed to avoid losing them to the enemy.

The left one was a one-man bunker, right one a two-man bunker. These looked like postal box huh? But the bunkers were made out of concrete that were at least 1 foot thick. The one below was another bunker, taken someplace else, it was the defense against the enemy along the border during the war.

Then again, these weren't all there is, in another exhibition hall was the exhibits of vehicles from early on. The early cars and a hybrid electrocar as early as the 1910's.

Agriculture was a big part of this place, and so the development of tractors was also displayed, including one used during the war.

Then there were the trains...

Other vehicles featured here are:
Hitler's car (same model, not sure it's the actual car)

Classic cars

Motorbikes

Retired F1 cars

How can we forget the Beetle... the left one was used during the war and after the war, Volkswagen (literally translated as the "People's Car") began manufacturing cars for the public, seen on the right.

This one was recycled, the whole car packed into one large cube, all 1,200kg of it.

There were toys displayed here too... from huge musical box to player piano, the piano that plays itself.

and here is an Orchestrion, a machine that plays a few instruments at the same time.

and something I had wanted since young, train tracks as big as this!

I took a video too.

Finally, this one. The Trabant, has always fascinated me, its body made from hard plastic - a product from the East Germany after the war. It was said that if you had no connections in the East Germany, you could wait up to 10 years for this car. It was not a fancy car, slow too, and if you crash it, it's most likely a total loss.

It's been a really great trip visiting the museum, I wasn't much of a museum person, but this was fun!