Gnomes and Missiles

It has not stopped raining in Berlin for the last 2 weeks and the weather now is just as cold as Sydney. When we first got here we were both starting to get traddie tans (neck, forearms and the bits between socks and shorts) but now i have gone back to that overall shade of blue.

We had been putting off the trip to Luftwaffe museum until the weather cleared. It is on an old RAF base and 100% outdoors. Zach is heading out on Tuesday so we could delay no longer – he really wanted to go.

The museum is out in the middle of nowhere. It required a trip on the U-Bahn, then a connection on the  S-Bahn and then a delightful trip on a H Bus. I love trains – i hate buses. And as if i needed a reminder as to why – on this trip we had a crazy guy with no teeth have a loud conversation with us (in German of course) most of the way there. (See Gordon Freeman).

From the bus stop we had a 20 minute walk ( in the pouring rain)  to the museum . I use the term museum loosely – it really was a massive parking lot for old planes. To complete the picture, there was no mobile phone reception, we saw our first German trailer park and the houses that were there had front yards like this…

And i discovered that my jacket was not really waterproof. Good for a light drizzle – crap for a downpour.

So i was not in the best of moods when we got there…

…but then we saw the missiles – lots of them.

I cannot tell you how cool it is to be able to see real missiles in the wild. The testosterone just started pumping and I forgot how wet and cold I was and how deep that last puddle was and that rhythmic squishing was my shoes.

Turns out that racking up thousands of hours playing Battlefield 2 has turned Zach into a military hardware expert. He knew most planes and their origin from a distance.

Seriously it was like spending the afternoon with Nicolas Cage’s character in Lord of War.

 

So we wandered around the airfield for a about 2 and half hours checking out all the old jet fighters and the missiles! Way better than being curled up on the couch (with a blanket)