Miniature Gardens at Hamburg’s Miniatur Wunderland
While sightseeing in Hamburg, Germany in winter 2013, we headed over to the warehouse district to visit the amazing Miniatur Wunderland, the miniature transportation world that has to date attracted over nine million visitors. This collection of miniature exhibits features over 1300 square metres of moving trains (one of which is the longest miniature train in the world), planes, automobiles, and ships, along with a vast miniature landscape that includes cities and towns, mountains, lakes and rivers, people engaged in their daily lives within their little communities, and – of most interest to gardeners – a variety of absolutely charming formal and informal miniature gardens. And, during your visit, you get to enjoy a progression of the day through several sunrises and sunsets, taking in the night lights followed by the lovely hues of dawn as the lighting swings round again to morning. This is a thoroughly delightful experience and destination.
Here are a few statistics from the 2013 visitors’ brochure:
Model Area – 1300 square metres
Number of Theme Worlds – 8
Track length – 13,000 metres
Trains – 930
Wagons – 13,450
Longest train – 14.51 metres
Lights – approximately 335,000
Figurines – 215,000
Trees – 228,000
Construction Time – 580,000 hours
The exhibits are housed on two levels within the warehouse. In addition to the marvellous action of the trains, trucks, cars, vans, ships, and motorcycles moving continuously through the landscape, the garden lovers among us will be amazed at the attention given to the fine details in each of the scenes – whether it is the meticulous shaping of a sculpted hedge, a (miniature) overhead canopy of roses above a park bench, or flowers growing wild along a riverbed.
The HO Scale (1:87) used in the railway exhibits applies consistently throughout the exhibitions. In imperial measurements, a figurine of a 6-foot adult would be roughly 7/8 of an inch high; children, half that size; cats, getting to be rather small. Each scene is beautifully crafted, and many scenes evoke a little chuckle when the visitor happens to notice a visual joke embedded somewhere – conveyed perhaps in a person’s posture, or clothing, or social circumstance depicted in the exhibit.
Whether you are a miniature hobbyist who enjoys constructing gardens landscapes, someone who loves trains, or someone who simply enjoys “wonderlands,” this is one of the terrific stops to add to your list of destinations for a future visit to Germany.
