On Thursday April 10th we went on a space shuttle hunting adventure! On our commutes home, we both noticed a lot more people standing on bridges over the Rhein river than normal. After checking the 'local hometown paper' Stars and Stripes, we discovered that a Russian space shuttle was being transported down the Rhein from Rotterdam, Netherlands to it's new home at the Technick Museen Sinsheim & Speyer near Heidelberg. Kurt quickly navigated through the interwebs and found a live tracker indicating the exact place the space shuttle was on the river. We grabbed the GPS and cameras and headed out to find the shuttle!
Unfortunately, we missed it in Mainz and again in Mainz-Laubenheim, but continued driving along the river hoping to catch a glimpse of it. Traffic turned out to be horrendous...apparently, we weren't the only ones out to see the space shuttle. The banks of the river were lined with people and their cars were lining construction sites and every possible pull-off. There were even Polizei on a loud speaker telling onlookers to get off the road. After about 45 minutes of driving, Kurt spotted the barge carrying the shuttle. Luckily, the river split a bit here and the barge went on the side furthest from the road, allowing traffic to pick up a bit. At this point, our goal was to stay ahead of the barge and get to the next town to park and then make our way to the riverbank. We parked in Nierstein, a town known mostly for its wines and made it to the river just in time to take a few pictures of the space shuttle.
1 comment:
wow Carrie, that's so cool! I know Greg would have loved to see that!
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