Click here to view the embedded video.

Let’s face it, some things in life just defy description.

The Grand Canyon… awe inspiring, yes, but does the phrase do it justice…?

The birth of a child… life affirming, true, but isn’t it mind boggling just the same…?

The popularity of Glenn Beck… okay, well maybe that one does defy description.

All of us have similar feelings about places we’ve visited, sights we’ve seen, and experiences we’ve had during our travels that are so jaw-dropping they… well, defy description; they have to be experienced first-hand to begin to even grasp them.

This… um… ‘railway system’ you’re about to visit is one such experience that surely must be awe-inspiring, mind-boggling and jaw-dropping in person, because the photos and video absolutely defy description.

I dare you to not be blown away by the Miniatur Wunderland Railway in Hamburg, Germany. Enjoy the trip!

This is the world’s biggest train set which covers 1,150 square meters (12,380 square feet), features almost 
six miles of track and is still not complete.



Twin brothers Frederick and Gerrit Braun, 41, began work on the ‘Miniatur Wonderland’ in 2000.



The set covers six regions including America, Switzerland, Scandinavia, Germany and the Austrian Alps.



The American section features giant models of the Rocky Mountains, Everglades, Grand Canyon…



…and Mount Rushmore.



The Swiss section has a mini-Matterhorn.



The Scandinavian part has a 4ft long passenger ship floating in a ‘fjord’.



It is expected to be finished in 2014, when the train set will cover more than 1,800 square meters (19,376 sq ft) and feature almost 13 miles of track, by which time detailed models of parts of France, Italy and the UK will have been added.



It comprises 700 trains with more than 10,000 carriages and wagons.



The longest train is 46ft long.



The scenery includes 900 signals, 2,800 buildings, 4,000 cars – many with illuminated headlights…



…and 160,000 individually designed figures.



Thousands of kilograms of steel and wood were used to construct the scenery.



The 250,000 lights are rigged up to a system which mimics night and day by automatically turning them on and off.



The whole system is controlled from a massive high-tech nerve center.



In total the set has taken 500,000 hours and more than €8 million to put together, the vast majority of which has come from ticket sales.



Gerrit said: “Our idea was to build a world that men, women, and children can be equally astonished and amazed in.”



These pictures are just a taste.

Watch the video below and be amazed!

All aboard! That’s all I can say.

[REW] – [Source]

Photographs and Video Copyright © Miniatur Wunderland Hamburg GmbH – Photographer: Frank Zarges

Doug and I are always on the lookout for the unusual, the off-beat, even the strange when it comes to travel.

Seattle, for instance, has the Space Needle, the rockin’ EMP (Experience Music Project), Pike Place Market and enough quirky neighborhoods to keep even the most jaded traveler entertained for weeks. But what about Underground Seattle…?

So, when we read a post on one of our favorite websites — Mashable — entitled, “Ten Great Geek Destinations“, we just knew we had to take a look. We think you should too.

Don’t forget to pack your horn rims and pocket protectors.

[REW] – [Source]

But there is a not-so-hidden gem of a destination, just off the interstate in Bellingham.

The American Museum of Radio and Electricity is located in the centre of downtown Bellingham. Surrounded by small shops, restaurants and cafes, it makes a great day trip from either Vancouver or Seattle.

Bellingham (pop. 70,000) is a lot livelier than you might think. Improv guru and TV’s “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” funny man Ryan Stiles runs the Upfront Theater and the Boundary Bay Bistro has been brewing great things since 1995. And it’s just an hour from Vancouver, and about ninety minutes from Seattle.

The first thing you notice about Bellingham is the bohemian flavour of the restored downtown core. You see so much long hair and hemp clothing that you’d swear you were in a much larger city.

But the museum stands alone. In fact, it stands out.

The museum seems to take up a full city block. Out front, the art deco design announces the museum and large windows feature examples of the treasures that lie within.

I felt like I was going back to another time from the moment I angle-parked outside and dropped a quarter into the meter for a full hour of parking.

Inside, the history of both radio and electricity are presented as a storyline. As you walk through the museum, you see four centuries of really cool science.

The two driving forces behind the museum share not only a love of radio and electricity – they share the same first name.

Johnathan Winter (L) and John Jenkins (R) of AMRE in Bellingham.

Jonathan Winter and John Jenkins are the museum’s co-curators. Both have been fascinated with radio and electricity since they were kids.

The museum got its start when Winter settled in Bellingham to put down some roots. He decided to take his personal collection of vintage radios public and, in the mid-90s, opened the small Bellingham Antique Radio Museum.

John Jenkins was born Bellingham. He spent many years in the computer field, before retiring from Microsoft in 2001.

Like Jonathan, he spent his childhood playing with radios – ripping them apart and putting them together. He began to collect radios and also pieces from the early days of electricity – another subject that fascinated him.

It wasn’t until about a dozen years ago when Jenkins’ mother told him a shocking secret – there was a small radio museum in Bellingham. He was amazed – how could there be one without his knowledge? He drove from his home in Seattle to Bellingham and met Jonathan.

“We realized that by joining forces with the two collections we could create a world class museum,” Jenkins says.

Bellingham may seem an odd choice for this kind of museum, but to them it made perfect sense. Winter still lives there and Jenkins wanted to give something back to the community he was raised in.

In this case, size does not matter. “It could be a major attraction in any major city in the world, the collection is certainly worthy of that,” Jenkins explains.

True – being located on I-5 is a good place to be: Vancouver just up the road, Seattle just down it. And two blocks away, the Whatcom County Museum gets 100,000 visitors a year. “So there are plenty of visitors,” Jenkins says.

Walking into the 23,000 sq. ft. facility, you’re struck by just how big the collection is.

It is a unique museum, says Jenkins. “The breadth and depth of the collection – there really isn’t anywhere that tells the complete story of the development of radio and electricity from the beginning.”

Hundreds of vintage radios on display, as well as hundreds of artifacts from the early scientific exploration of electricity. Many of the pieces can only be seen elsewhere at places like the Smithsonian. Some are one-of-a-kind.

The Dawn of the Electrical Age features rare items from the 17th and 18th centuries. Much of the equipment comes from the study of electricity, and they’ve recreated the kind of lab that Ben Franklin might have used when he conducted his famous kite experiment.

Over in the Marconi Wireless Room the story of the Titanic is told. Built around an original Marconi wireless set, the display is an exact replica of the Titanic’s radio room.

It’s eerie to hear a description of the Titanic’s last moments as it clipped an iceberg and sank into the icy North Atlantic. Don’t worry, Celine Dion doesn’t sing!

If design is your thing, the collection of radios from the last century will have you spellbound. Some of the radios don’t even look like radios – they’re cleverly disguised as statues and vases.

Turn the corner and suddenly you’re sitting in a 1930s living room, staring at the radio and visualizing the adventures of The Lone Ranger.


The museum takes the experience one step further. They have a special system of internal broadcasting that lets them feed six different stations through the electrical wires. Each station broadcasts different vintage content – so when visitors twirl the tuning knob on the big radio, they surf though the stations and programs just like in the old days.

Education is a priority at the museum. “One of the things we’re trying to do is expose the process of discovery,” Jenkins tells me. “One of the ways of getting kids interested in science is to help them understand that inventions don’t just happen in a single ‘Eureka!’ moment. It’s a lot of trial and error and a lot of hard work.”

The hands-on approach means that kids — and adults — can learn by doing.

Winter points out some of what he calls the ‘Holy Grails’ of the collection: one-of-a-kind and extremely rare pieces – like the Collins Wireless Telephone.

Built in 1909, it was billed as the first device to transmit sounds without wires. After the invention of the telegraph and the telephone, radio was touted as the next big thing and investors were looking to get in on the ground floor. Collins went on the road with his device, saying it was the future of communication.

In demonstrations, the wireless telephone worked wonders. Conversations seemed to be taking place across great distances. In reality, the other party was 6 feet away in the next room. The wireless telephone was just a scam used to sucker investors.

Another bizarre item is the Theremin. It’s the world’s first electronic musical instrument, invented in 1919. It looks like a preachers pulpit with two antennas sticking out. One controls pitch, the other volume.

To play it, you wave your hand over the antennas – this changes the pitch and volume. A lot of skill is needed to be able to play it correctly, otherwise the beautiful music that it produces sounds more like a handheld metal detector. Or Kraftwerk!

The museum is one of the few places that actually allow visitors to play the instrument.

The museum itself is a broadcaster, too. Radio station KMRE-LP signed on couple of years ago (the ‘LP’ stands for ‘low power’), and it features vintage newscasts, plays and music along with some original programming. The station also streams to the world via the Internet.

Not bad for what started as a little collection in a small city off the interstate – and much more interesting than buying socks at Target.

[DCM]

Have you found any travel gems off the beaten track…? Let us know. Comments below.

Dennis knows where it’s “safe” and the spots to avoid. But I have my doubts. I am, after all, at the site of the world’s worst nuclear accident: Chernobyl, Ukraine.

More than 20 years after the atomic genie was released from the bottle, the invisible danger in this modern ghost town remains. Dennis tells me not to worry, but I can see the readout on his dosimeter. It reads 1800. Only a few hours earlier he told me that 50 is normal. What am I doing here?

On April 26, 1986, Reactor Number Four at Chernobyl, in what was then the Soviet Union, blew up. For some reason, I’ve always been fascinated by the tragic event. I’ve read the books, seen the movies and played the game (yes, there is actually a video game set in Chernobyl). I think this fascination comes from how man’s quest to control nature backfired and how nature is slowly reclaiming a city where thousands once worked, raised families and made a community.

At the time of the accident, four reactors were in operation and two more were under construction. It was during a systems test in the early morning hours of that spring day that things went terribly wrong.

Technicians tried to stop the test and rein in the reactor, but it was out of control. It overheated, resulting in a massive blast. While it wasn’t a nuclear explosion, the reactor blew apart, shooting radioactive debris more than a mile into the sky.

In the days after the explosion, winds carried radioactive fallout across most of Europe. Eventually more than 300,000 people were forced to relocate.

It may seem a macabre place to visit, but is Chernobyl any different than the sites of tragedies like Auschwitz or New York’s Ground Zero? It too has become hallowed ground where people come to witness history and to remember.

Chernobyl lies about 130 kilometres northwest of Kyiv (Kiev), Ukraine’s capital. It is an atomic bull’s-eye in the middle of the menacingly named Zone of Alienation, a 30-kilometre exclusion area that surrounds the power plant.

Just after nine on a sunny Wednesday morning I board a tour bus in central Kyiv, along with five Swedes and a Norwegian.

We pass through a series of military checkpoints before arriving at the town of Chernobyl. While the power station is referred to as Chernobyl, it is actually located in Pripyat, a model Soviet town founded in 1970 to support the nuclear complex.

We stop at a bland government building and head inside. This is where I first meet Dennis Zabarin, our young but serious government tour guide. The 27-year-old is dressed in blue jeans, camo jacket and a Formula 1 ball cap. He doesn’t smile. Perhaps he doesn’t like his job?

Inside a large room lined with maps and photographs of the disaster, Dennis gives us a short lecture about what happened and what to expect.

The tour begins at what Dennis calls the vehicle museum. It’s really nothing more than a few military vehicles scattered about a grass field in desperate need of a mow. Dennis waves his dosimeter a few inches from a tank – the numbers skyrocket.

Even though I know how dangerous radiation is, it’s easy to forget about the risk because it’s invisible. But the signs and the beeping of the dosimeter keep reminding me.

Most of the time our group is quite boisterous – making comments, asking questions, taking pictures. But at the Monument to the Firemen we become subdued. Until this point we’ve only seen objects that were affected by the disaster. The large blue sculpture before us reminds us of the human toll.

A few miles down a deserted road, partially completed cooling towers and idle construction cranes welcome us to the reactor complex. We drive past stagnant cooling ponds and a decaying network of electrical transmission infrastructure before reaching the heart of the disaster: Reactor Number Four, an enormous and enormously frightening building.

Nearby is another poignant tribute: the Monument to the Liquidators. In the weeks, months and years that followed the explosion, 100,000 troops and 400,000 experts and civilians worked to stabilize the complex and clean up the radioactive mess. They became known as the liquidators and their work may have saved countless millions. But they paid a high price: many became very sick and many died.

The Sarcophagus, a hastily constructed containment structure, covers the wreckage of Reactor Number Four. Built as a temporary measure, it is the only thing standing between tons of loose radioactive material and the outside world. As I stand before the giant tomb, Dennis explains that it is in dire need of replacement. If it were to collapse, clouds of radioactive dust would be released into the air, creating another nuclear disaster.

The final portion of our tour is Pripyat, the power plant’s support city that once had a population of about 50,000. Today it’s zero.

Back in 1986, officials told residents that the evacuation was temporary and they need only bring a few days worth of clothes. As a result, most people left everything behind, unaware that they would never return.


Pripyat was a modern city before the disaster. Today, it is a crumbling shell, a surreal place where empty roads are lined with streetlamps that never light. The only traffic is the occasional bright yellow dump truck emblazoned with radioactive symbols. Dennis warns us not to breathe when they pass by. The dust could be hazardous to our health.

It’s at the main square where I really feel Pripyat’s emptiness. Dennis tells us we’re free to explore the city’s skeletons: A grocery store filled with overturned carts and moldy signs. A hotel waiting for guests that will never come. Disconnected phone booths, empty swimming pools and overgrown paths that snake past faded signs highlighting the achievements of a country that has ceased to exist.

Books, chairs and even radiators are scattered about, the flotsam and jetsam of 1980s Soviet life. A child’s ballet shoe here, a trumpet case there. A strip of old film, perhaps touting the bright future of this atomic city?

The children of Pripyat must have been bursting with excitement in the days before the disaster. A new amusement park was scheduled to open on May 1, 1986 in honor of May Day. It never did.

Instead of children’s laughter, this amusement park is silent, a sad reminder of shattered dreams and the lives ripped apart. The large decaying Ferris wheel has become a tragic symbol of the disaster. A few steps away, I spot a rotting stuffed toy hanging in the smashed window of a ticket booth, as if caught in mid-escape.

It feels like the set of a zombie movie, but Pripyat is not dead. It’s renewing itself. Just as nature is slowly returning, evident in the grass that now grows between the cracks in the plaza or the shrubs and trees that have found root in the contaminated soil, so too are people slowly returning to the area, albeit in the form of visitors like me.

It may be thousands of years before this area is safe enough for human habitation. Until then, the site of mankind’s worst nuclear disaster may become one of the world’s most chilling tourist attractions.

[DCM]

Do you fancy glowing in the dark…? This trip could be for you. Comments below.