Where's Bertie? He's in the car park of the Erwin Hymer Museum in Bad Waldsee (exact location: 47.93725, 9.76221).
Weather: Rainy morning and rainy evening, but with a dry spell in the middle of the day.
After weeks of moseying along, moving only a few kilometres at a time, today we travelled a whole hour. Bad Waldsee didn't fit in with the general direction in which we have been heading, but being so close down the road (in the grand scheme of things), we thought we would make the journey, thus taking Bertie back to his birth place.
More specifically of interest to us, the Erwin Hymer Museum is here and we had heard it was worth a visit.
Being gone noon by the time we arrived (and without having had elevenses or lunch, again), we had thought that we would save the museum until tomorrow and just visit the town today. However, when we arrived at the Stellplatz I had intended us to use, it turned out not to be a public one, but solely for the use of customers of the Hymer factory's workshop. We could probably have got away with staying there, as Bertie would have fitted in nicely with all of the other vehicles, but instead we reset the SatNav for the other local option: the car park at the museum. And, once we were here, it seemed sensible to go and visit today.
Whilst it is called the Erwin Hymer Museum, it's not about Hymer. It's a general caravan/motorhome museum, also featuring a collection of vintage cars, with just a few examples from its namesake. It charts the history of caravans/motorhomes right back from the earliest non-horse-drawn caravans.
As the website for the museum is in five languages, as are the welcome flags in the car park, we had expected the information in the museum to also be multi-lingual. Finding it to be in German only was a disappointment (and made the €9.50 entrance fee seem overly expensive if all you can do is look at the exhibits without knowing anything about them). Fortunately, I had a good phone signal, so Google Translate's photo function came to the rescue to transform our visit into a good one. It wouldn't have been practical to translate every bit of written information, but we used it enough to make our visit worthwhile.
It was 4.30 by the time we left (I reckon we would have been at least another hour if we could have read everything there) and it wasn't much later when the big area of ominously dark sky in front of Bertie translated itself into a heavy, thundery shower. The lack of any breeze has meant that two hours later, it still hasn't passed, so it looks like the day is going to end as it started, with many hours of rain. The difference is that this morning we went out running in it (getting so wet that when we got back I went straight for the shampoo on the hair, not feeling any need to add more water first), whereas this evening we will be staying indoors.
I'll finish today with some snaps of our afternoon:
Surprising how modern the teardrop shape of this caravan looks (1930s, I think).
A deluxe model
Looking down the interior of the above, with distinct areas for dining, lounging and sleeping, and with a separate kitchen/bathroom at the far end
A bath ... in the kitchen
Chintzy!
Note the bay window on the back and the stained glass windows in the roof section.
A windscreen this vertical was not designed with aerodynamics in mind.
Roof terrance, anyone? If my memory serves, this was a 1960s model, costing 40,500DM when new. There were 12 built, of which 7 are still in use - including this one.
Or how about a build-your-own? The plans for this 1980s East German model were availble for purchase by self-builders
Weather: Rainy morning and rainy evening, but with a dry spell in the middle of the day.
After weeks of moseying along, moving only a few kilometres at a time, today we travelled a whole hour. Bad Waldsee didn't fit in with the general direction in which we have been heading, but being so close down the road (in the grand scheme of things), we thought we would make the journey, thus taking Bertie back to his birth place.
More specifically of interest to us, the Erwin Hymer Museum is here and we had heard it was worth a visit.
Being gone noon by the time we arrived (and without having had elevenses or lunch, again), we had thought that we would save the museum until tomorrow and just visit the town today. However, when we arrived at the Stellplatz I had intended us to use, it turned out not to be a public one, but solely for the use of customers of the Hymer factory's workshop. We could probably have got away with staying there, as Bertie would have fitted in nicely with all of the other vehicles, but instead we reset the SatNav for the other local option: the car park at the museum. And, once we were here, it seemed sensible to go and visit today.
Whilst it is called the Erwin Hymer Museum, it's not about Hymer. It's a general caravan/motorhome museum, also featuring a collection of vintage cars, with just a few examples from its namesake. It charts the history of caravans/motorhomes right back from the earliest non-horse-drawn caravans.
As the website for the museum is in five languages, as are the welcome flags in the car park, we had expected the information in the museum to also be multi-lingual. Finding it to be in German only was a disappointment (and made the €9.50 entrance fee seem overly expensive if all you can do is look at the exhibits without knowing anything about them). Fortunately, I had a good phone signal, so Google Translate's photo function came to the rescue to transform our visit into a good one. It wouldn't have been practical to translate every bit of written information, but we used it enough to make our visit worthwhile.
It was 4.30 by the time we left (I reckon we would have been at least another hour if we could have read everything there) and it wasn't much later when the big area of ominously dark sky in front of Bertie translated itself into a heavy, thundery shower. The lack of any breeze has meant that two hours later, it still hasn't passed, so it looks like the day is going to end as it started, with many hours of rain. The difference is that this morning we went out running in it (getting so wet that when we got back I went straight for the shampoo on the hair, not feeling any need to add more water first), whereas this evening we will be staying indoors.
I'll finish today with some snaps of our afternoon:
Surprising how modern the teardrop shape of this caravan looks (1930s, I think).
A deluxe model
Looking down the interior of the above, with distinct areas for dining, lounging and sleeping, and with a separate kitchen/bathroom at the far end
A bath ... in the kitchen
Chintzy!
Note the bay window on the back and the stained glass windows in the roof section.
A windscreen this vertical was not designed with aerodynamics in mind.
Roof terrance, anyone? If my memory serves, this was a 1960s model, costing 40,500DM when new. There were 12 built, of which 7 are still in use - including this one.
Or how about a build-your-own? The plans for this 1980s East German model were availble for purchase by self-builders
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