Tropical get-away

Call me ignorant but I thought all practical application of dirigibles outside of football game advertising halted after World War II.

I didn’t know that there were companies that even up into the 2000’s were planning heavy lift airships with zeppelin technology.

Such a company built the largest freestanding building per volume (5.5 million m3 or 194 million ft3) in the world.

 

This Building is huge.

The Statue of Liberty could stand in the middle with plenty of headroom.

The ground covers 8 soccer fields or 13 American football fields.

I don’t know too much about the heavy lift cargo industry but I can say I was surprised that this company went bust.

What did surprise me though, was to find that this huge building has become a tourist destination. 

But it’s not a museum.

Instead, it is a tropical rainforest to take your mind of the bitter north German winter.

And this is exactly what we did.

For three days this past week, we enjoyed wandering through a tropical rainforest.

In T-shirts and swimming suits.

Greeting the flamingos every morning 

Swimming in the lagoon or at the beach.

Petting

 

Or just watching Koi

Driving little jeeps, 

 

Building life size Lego huts,

Climbing really high

And sliding down a long twisty slide.

It was enough to make us forget that it was 0 degrees Celsius.

And as payment, Mother Nature has dumped a lot of snow on us the past few days.