With Christmas upon us, I tried to find some cheerful sights that bring us into a mood appropriate for the season and/or the message of the celebration.

Today’s pick was the jingle above, a clever little scenario which requires that you push the unmute button, so you can hear the music. It was produced by Miniatur Wunderland (actually from 2 years back,) an attraction in Hamburg, Germany, which sports a model area of over 2,300 m² (24,757 sq ft). The exhibit includes 1,300 trains made up of over 10,000 carriages, over 100,000 moving vehicles, ca. 500,000 lights, 130,000 trees, and 400,000 human figurines.

The world’d largest miniature railroad set is, of course, now closed, due to the Covid-19 lockdown to which Germany committed at last. But you can still explore all of its little worlds virtually.

Here is the website. It has an option for English, and if you click on any of the geographic names it shows you a bit of that “world.” Or the way German engineers envision those worlds…

Here is a train ride through the Rocky Mountains during x-mas….

Make sure you also visit the imaginary place of Knuffingen, capital of hearts, with its favorite destination of arsonists, Löwenstein Castle – I kid you not.

It’s not exactly a museum, which is what I usually cover. I felt, though, that it deserved some exploration, because these kinds of collections celebrate something that is increasingly rare to find: passions or hobbies that run across different sections of society and/or nationalities. This kind of cross-section might enable people to talk to each other when they otherwise would not. It might be about the trains first, but it could eventually humanize the vision of the other. As I said, clinging to cheerful thoughts this week….

Model trains were a typical Christmas present in the late 50s and 60s in Germany, for boys, of course, and often usurped by their fathers. It is a hobby that has strangely not gone out of style. Just this summer the Wallstreet Journal had a long piece on the implications for real estate (people build these large rooms around their passion) and the insane money that gets stuffed into these created worlds. These days new miniature locomotives retail for up to $1,800 each, while collectible antique trains can sell for $8,000 each. Better start saving up.

Tales that model building makes you smarter or improves your mental health are to be taken with caution…have you ever heard the screams of frustration when the glue didn’t hold or a piece broke off? Which is why I enjoy visiting these engineering wonders in museums – here in the Northwest you can, under normal circumstances, admire midget trains in Tacoma, WA, at the Washington State History Museum. Worth a trip!

Today’s topic really serves as an excuse, though, to look at my photographs of the city of Hamburg where I lived before coming to the US, including the Speicherstadt, the area where the exhibition is located, and two of the main train stations where I arrived and departed innumerable times. Another cheerful thought: there WILL be travel opportunities again!

For music it shall be Auden today….