The museums I’ve visited in Europe have largely been interesting and informative. While I don’t always seek them out, if there’s a decent-sounding one nearby I’ll generally venture into it.

Since I was staying in Stuttgart with my son and grandson, the Museum am Löwentor (the Natural History Museum of Stuttgart) sounded like it had promise, plus it was comparatively close to where we were stayring. So with promises of dinosaur memorabilia and some relatively decent traveler reviews dancing in our heads, we decided to give it a shot. Unfortunately, we probably would’ve been better off downing a shot or two instead.

It’s not that it was horrible, but it was definitely geared toward kids younger than Masi’s thirteen years. Okay, we got a couple of cute selfies out of it, but you have to admit, neither of them are very realistic. I’ve rarely seen sharks burst through tables, and dinosaurs are extinct. Finito. Dead-o. Gone forever. And no amount of Jurassic Park movies will ever change that. Also, why didn’t that dino just go through the glass door? Big dummy.

Many of the exhibits were just dioramas; no actual dinosaur bones or the like. In addition, almost all the written material was in German, so we just kind of wandered around for 30-45 minutes, shrugged, and left.

Truth be told, the most fun Masi had there was finding this play structure and climbing around while chatting up some cute German girls. I don’t think he got a date, but he probably bragged about drinking beer with his dad and grandpa.

Fortunately, our faith in the whole museum experience thing was restored after a visit to the Sinsheim Technology Museum, just about an hour south of Frankfurt. I mean, all we had to read was that it has a U Boat and a Concorde and that you can go inside of both, and we were sold. Besides, I needed to get the taste of that previous museum out of my mouth. I’d accidentally licked one of the exhibits, you see.

The Sinsheim museum features an extensive collection of military vehicles, mostly from WWII. Luke made sure to emphasize his neutrality by wearing a hoodie with a Swiss flag. It must’ve worked because none of us got shot at while we were there.

In the last photo you can see that they have so many vehicles they just keep a bunch of them sitting outdoors. If that had been in Russia I think they would’ve already taken them away and put them into service just to see them get blown up by the Ukranians almost immediately.

The museum also features the world’s fastest tractor.

They also have the world’s coolest looking car failure that could go 88 miles per hour (142 km/h) within the length of a movie screen. In real life, the DeLorean DMC-12’s dashboard only went up to 85 mph, even though it could go faster. Great Scott!

I don’t think Masi understood any of those references.

But he started acting up so we made him do some training. Push harder, kid!

It isn’t often you get to see an authentic U17 submarine outside its normal habitat. Apparently it’s still fully functional, but now the poor sub can only look to the rain to get wet. Unless maybe she see’s a real hunky battleship lumbering by.

Masi disappears into the bowel of the beast. Truth be told, it didn’t feel all that claustrophobic, unless of course you envisioned yourself trapped in it underwater for days at a time with 22 other stinky sailors. The sub was in service from 1973 to 2010, so while the term “U Boat” conjures up things like Das Boot and WWII, this was more modern than that and had no blood on its ha– er, rudder.

Sometimes it’s just easier to take pictures of the provided information, but that can also screw up my made-up stories too. It’s a delicate balance, this game I play.

And this was a real racetrack, honest. Really. No I mean it. Why you lookin’ at me like that?

They had old classic cars galore.

And race cars as well, both old and new, and everything in between.

Some of us cared more about those things than others.

Do you know what happens when you sample a little too much of the wares from a beer truck?

Yeah, that’s right, you crash and burn your tank. Don’t get tanked in your tank is what I always say.

However, it’s okay to drink away if you’re driving a train. It’s not like you can make a wrong turn or anything, and based just on the size of that beast, you’re gonna win any confrontation you have with just about anything stupid enough to be in front of you. That’s why many big trains like that have huge minibars in their locomotives. And that’s why they go chug-a chug-a chug-a.

One of the highlights of the museum was of course the Concorde and the Russian Tupolev Tu-144. Since the Russians lost the space race, I think they were doubly motivated to be the first to put a supersonic airliner into the air. They won that contest, getting the Tupolev to go airborne on December 31, 1968, albeit with lots of duct tape showing as well as a few screws plummeting to the ground and in one case, killing a cow. On March 2, 1969, Air France gamely crossed the line in second place. Isn’t it kinda funny that oftentimes countries act like little kids, competing for some nonsensical prestige that no one cares about only a handful of years later?

I think that’s a pretty typical reaction anyone would have if they saw that the pilot of a supersonic airliner was thirteen years old.

The exhibit was really mostly just a big empty shell, not unlike most airliners (except for the lack of seats), and the fact that it felt fast even while stationary. When it was in service, it could fly from London to New York in 3-1/2 hours, achieving speeds of twice the speed of sound. Meaning you could fart aloud to your heart’s content but the plane would outrun the noise. It made watching movies difficult, however, which is why they mostly offered up silent films.

A pretty majestic piece of machinery, that. Unfortunately, both the Concorde and the Tupolev suffered some crashes as well as a lack of financial viability… and so humanity’s march to the future did a U-turn, and we ended up back to the future with ever more shrinking and uncomfortable seats besides.

Dachau

Now this entry takes a decidedly more serious and somber turn. If you’ll recall a while ago I dedicated a whole entry to Auschwitz-Birkenau. After visiting that, I really wasn’t looking to see another example of man’s inhumanity to man, but I think it’s important that everyone understands what really can happen when hate is used as a cornerstone of a dictator’s message, so to me it was a must-see for my son and grandson. The fact that people are so gullible and so easy to coerce into hatred is still evident to this day, and that’s why it’s so freakin’ scary.

Dachau is less iconic and doesn’t have as many of the old structures still standing like Auschwitz-Birkenau.

But that doesn’t make it any less sobering of a site. Dachau was one of the first concentration camps built by Nazi Germany, opening on 22 March 1933. Unlike Auschwitz, it wasn’t purely an extermination camp, it was originally intended mostly to hold political prisoners. In 1935 it added Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals and emigrants, and eventually Jews and any other undesirables from all over Europe.

Most of the deaths in Dachau were as a result of inhumane living conditions, leading to disease and starvation, with some torture thrown in for good measure. These ovens were used to cremate the bodies. At least 40,000 people died in Dachau, but the exact number will never be known.

This is the building that housed the ovens.

These grounds used to be lined with wooden barracks. The number of prisoners incarcerated in Dachau between 1933 and 1945 exceeded 200,000 people.

I dunno, but if I were an alien species and I visited earth and learned all about it, I think I’d put a “Do Not Enter” message around our entire solar system. Also, political events around the world lately seem to be screaming, “We do not remember or learn anything from the past!”

While visiting a notorious concentation camp doesn’t really make it the highlight of any trip, I think it’s very important that people learn and remember. It was not so long ago. The people who committed these atrocities were people just like you and me. It still amazes me that one man can manipulate so many people with lies and hate, despite all the evidence we have that it always leads to disaster. I can understand how it might happen the first time, but to see it maybe happen again? Blows my frickin’ mind.

We can make memorials, but we can’t ever forget that the people here were mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, with people who loved them. The senselessness of it all can be staggering to the normal mind. So when any politician acts gleeful at the idea of opening up harsh prisons, or touts the death penalty, especially not as deterrent but as penalty, or vilifies and even prosecutes anyone who opposes him, those who support said politician would do well to remember that the people who are bothered by all of that are often bothered because they understand history. It’s not always about what is happening, but what history tells us always happens when we allow people to have too much power or wealth. That’s just a fact.

(Scroll down to see previous entries.)