The People's Wagon

Mandatory Spring Break Day 1 & 2: Wolfsburg

In Wolfsburg there really is nothing. There is a science museum called the Phaeno Center by Zaha Hadid an Iraqi architect and it is really cool. It looks like a space ship landed on this site in the middle of Wolfsburg. The building is very cool and houses a bunch of neat exhibits which we of course got to play with.

There is the first Volkswagon factory in Germany is there. Its very cool. There is a little city attached to it meant to promote all the VW products called the Autostadt or Car City. There are separate pavilions for some of the VW products. There is a Lamborghini, Audi, VW, and Sezt. The Lamborghini one was incredibly disappointing. Lots of smoke and sounds and one car attached to the wall that did nothing. The Volkswagon pavilion had a weird simulator which was just a big advertisement for VW. The Sezt one was strange and they only have a few cars to show. The Audi one by far was the most incredible one. Got to check out the newest R8 sit in it and cheek out all the features. There was then at the other end of the Autostadt a museum of the history of cars. In it was a replica of the Model T and other original cars. Mostly VW cars there were 1st generation VW's and Audi's, old Bugatti's and even some american cars like an El Dorado. The Autostadt was a little disappointing as it turned out to be just a giant VW advertisement.

The last thing noting in Wolfsburg was the Hostel. The Jungenherbergen. The cost was 3E so that right away is not a good start. The rooms smelled like urine and the bathrooms were not attached to the rooms. Between being small and the place being smelly I was all too excited to get out of there.

The trying to get on the train to Düsseldorf was an adventure in itself. The trains here like to come in two cars and split at one station. So us being near the back of the train we were supposed to be in wagon 22 but the trains went from 35-45 until we realized that there were two trains. So all 27 of us including professors sprinted with seconds to go toward the other train bags in hand. The last of us jumped on just as it started to pull away as a few others ended up in first class and had to come to where we were at the first stop before the train split.

Happy to be out of Wolfsburg and on to Düsseldorf we checked out the bar strip which is what the city is famous for. Obviously not very happening on a Monday it was still pretty cool.