One day rather than driving by I would like to go back and visit these places.

Here are 5 of the more unusual ones that spring to mind:

The Unimog Museum

A musuem about a particular type of 4-wheel-drive vehicle that is known for its off-road qualities.  I first saw one of these vehicles on a camp site near Koblenz and saw the museum from a traffic jam whilst travelling through the black forest.

www.unimog-museum.com

The Bauspar-Museum

A museum about saving money to buy or build a home.  I see the sign to it at least once a year, but I never seem to be there on a Sunday or public holiday when it is open.  It is located in Wüstenrot, home to one of Germany’s largest mortgage lenders.

www.bauspar-museum.de

The Panzermuseum

I saw a sign to this museum on my first trip to the island of Rügen, it is a museum about the history of tanks since 1917.  Situated just off the A7 motorway north of Hanover, the area is known for its military training areas, parts of which date back to the 19th Century.

www.panzermuseum-munster.de

Blaulicht-Museum

On my second visit to Rügen I took a different route and saw signs to this museum around half way on my journey.  It is a museum about vehicles with blue lights on them such as police cars, fire engines, and ambulances, including examples from the GDR and is located near the old inner-German border.

www.blaulichtmuseum-beuster.de

Technik Museum Sinsheim

Another museum that I drive by at least once each year, it is home to one of Air France’s retired Concordes and the Russian equivalent, a second museum in Speyer also houses the Russian version of the space shuttle.  Of course there is a lot more there than just that, but the Concorde is visible from the A6 motorway.

www.technik-museum.de

Maybe one summer I should just do a tour of all 5?  Until then, if any of these museums would like to invite me to visit and write about them, please do get in touch!

Some other posts on this topic that you might like to read:

• H.M.S. Otus – British naval history on the Baltic coast
• 10 Things to do in Frankfurt in Winter
• Take a tour of the Schwebebad at the Hessentag

From Thursday, 30th May 2am until Sunday, 2nd June, at 4am, the U-Bahn station “Willy-Brandt-Platz” will be closed.  The lines U1 to U5 and U8 will travel through without stopping.  The U5 will be running later into the night to ease changes at other stops.

Trams will not be running through the Altstadt.  Lines 11 and 12 will not run between Börneplatz and Hauptbahnhof.  The Ebbelwei-Expreß will not be running on Fronleichnam or on Saturday, and on Sunday will travel in both directions via Sachsenhausen.

Lines 11 and 12 will be combined, so that line 11 from Höchst Zuckschwedtstraße will continue from the Hauptbahnhof as line 12 to Rheinlandstraße.  Line 12 will run on the other side of the city from Hugo-Junkers-Straße via Bornheim Mitte and Konstablerwache to Börneplatz and continue from there as line 11 to Fechenheim Schießhüttenstraße.

Since there is also a sporting event taking place on Sunday, trams will not resume their normal service until around 4.30pm on Sunday.

Bus routes 33, 37, 46 and 64, along with night buses n1 and n8 will also be affected.  Route 64 will only run between Ginnheim and Miquel-/Adickesallee.

On Saturday morning route 33 will not be in service until 1pm.  Route 35 will only travel between Stresemannallee and Lerchesberg.  Route 46 will only run between Europaviertel and Hauptbahnhof.

Night buses n1 and n8 will be diverted to avoid Willy-Brandt-Platz.

As the situation in Frankfurt may change at any time, this information may change.  For the latest travel information (in German) follow @vgf_ffm on Twitter.  Follow us on @allthingsgerman for updates in English.

Some other posts on this topic that you might like to read:

• Travel Information for Frankfurt am Main for Saturday, 19th May
• Important travel information for Frankfurt am Main 16th – 20th May
• A day at the VGF Zentralwerkstatt in Frankfurt

To understand the tower, it is an advantage to know who exactly Ernst Moritz Arndt was and why it was built in the first place.

He was a poet and a thinker, born in 1769 on Rügen at a time when the island belonged to Sweden.  His works reflect the beauty that he saw in the island, but he known in particular for criticising Napoleon’s occupation of Germany and fleeing into exile as a result.  In 1848 he elected to sit in so-called Frankfurt Assembly (Frankfurter Nationalversammlung), which drew up a constitution for what was then the German confederation.  Parts of that constitution live on today in the German “Grundgesetz”.

He died in 1860 in Bonn and when the 100th anniversary of his birth arrived a committee was formed on Rügen to organise a monument in his honour.  That monument is the tower that can be seen today, albeit with a different dome on the roof which is also slightly higher.

Located on a piece of land called the “Rugard”, it is within walking distance of the car park at the summer toboggan run in the Rugardstraße.

There are 99 steps in total, with viewing platforms on three levels in addition to the dome itself.  It is open daily from May to October between 10am and 6pm, and entry costs €1.50 for adults and €1.00 for children at the time of writing.  For the opening times in winter call 03838 20190.

When you reach the top and stand inside the glass dome, you have a fantastic view across the entire island in all directions.  At least you do on a clear day.  Around the inside of the dome there are maps of the island showing the direction that you are looking in and which part of the island you are therefore looking at.

The day that I visited, it was overcast and started raining, so this was the view that I had:

Some other posts on this topic that you might like to read:

• H.M.S. Otus – British naval history on the Baltic coast
• How to get to Ralswiek by bus
• 10 Things to do in Frankfurt in Summer

The money is debited from your bank account in a similar way to a direct debit (“Lastschrift”), but the similarity stops here. Because whereas a direct debit can be reversed within 6 weeks, I recently found out that such protection is not offered when paying by PIN.

My problems began when I bought petrol using my ec-card on the motorway in Belgium. The petrol pump was one where you insert your card before filling up to release the petrol. I filled up and wanted a receipt, but although the terminal offered me one, it did not print it. A similar problem happened to the person at the pump behind me, so we both went into the shop to ask for one, but not until I had taken a photograph of the pump’s display on my mobile phone.

Inside the shop, there was no sign of a receipt either at first. “It can take a moment for it to appear on the computer” we were told, and a few minutes later the receipt for the other customer did appear. But not mine. After some discussion about which pump and the amount someone decided to re-start the computer controlling the till – and out came my receipt.

The shock came that evening when I checked my on-line bank account and saw that it had not been debited the €65,67 that the receipt showed, but with €120,00 – almost double the amount!

It was too late to the bank, so I fired off an e-mail to them explaining the problem, attaching a scan of the receipt and asking them to call me urgently the next morning.

However the next morning I received a reply that stunned me completely. “We cannot say with 100% certainty that the debit to your account is the receipt, because the subject (“Verwendungszweck”) is ambiguous. Although the date and time of the debit match the receipt and the name of the petrol station is in the debit instruction. As the payment was made by entering your PIN we cannot reverse the debit and you will have to sort out the problem with the petrol station locally.”

In other words, it was up to me to go back to the petrol station, which was by now about 300km away, and get them to correct their debit from me account.

I was not going to accept this and called the bank. Speaking to the central office rather than my branch, I explained the problem that I had had in obtaining a receipt at all and that I had photographic evidence of the amount as well. My PIN guaranteed that amount, but surely it did not guarantee the transaction if the vendor debited a higher amount?

Luckily I was speaking to someone who probably had more experience of these transactions and the moment they heard that I was talking about a petrol station in Belgium they realised was going on and explained it to me.

When you insert your card to release the petrol, the station effectively does a credit check on you by asking your bank to reserve €120 the expected debit. This permits the pump to give you up to €120 of petrol and takes place in real time. Once you have actually filled up they revoke the reservation and debit the actual amount owed. For this transaction they have several days. The advice was to wait a few days and see if this happened, because if it did not then the reservation would be cancelled automatically by the bank.

Relieved at this competent and informative statement I waited. And sure enough, the next day the €120 disappeared and €65,67 was taken off my account.

However the episode was not without a consequence for the bank. I was impressed that someone knew exactly what was going on, but not that my branch would not help me. Having had a couple of other bad experiences there since my advisor of 10 years got promoted and a new team took over, I decided it was time to leave the branch that I had remained loyal to for 19 years.

I learnt two important pieces of information from that trip:

1. If you have to insert a card in the petrol pump before you start filling up, then your account may show a debit for a higher amount for a few days.

2. If you pay for something using your PIN, and for whatever reason – computer error or vendor fraud – the bank will not help you and you’re on your own. It’s between you and the vendor. Maybe it’s a good reason to pay cash?

Some other posts on this topic that you might like to read:

• Oberursel’s Station Grand Re-opening: The Bahnhofsfest
• Inside Oberursel’s Station
• Oberursel’s shiny new (restored) station building

H.M.S.?  As in “Her Majesty’s Ship?”  Well, almost.  Actually it is an Oberon-class submarine that was launched in Scotland in 1962 and served with the Royal Navy until it was decommissioned in the 1991.

H.M.S. Otus in Sassnitz harbour

After decommissioning she was towed to Stralsund on the Baltic coast, before being moored in the harbour at Sassnitz, where she is now a floating museum.

At 90 metres long she is an impressive site in the harbour, and as with her sister submarine “Ocelot” at Chatham Historic Dockyard, it is possible to go on board and inside the “Otus” to see what submarine technology of the 1960s looked like.

Opening times are 10am-7pm from May to October, otherwise 10am-4pm.  Entry costs €6 for adults, €3 for children, and there is a €1 charge to take photographs.

There is pay and display parking nearby, and a number of boat tours leave from further along the quay to take visitors to the chalk cliffs including the “Königsstuhl”, offering a chance to see the “Otus” from the other side and making an interesting combination for a day out.

Prices are correct at the time of writing in 2013.

Some other posts on this topic that you might like to read:

• Chinese Buffet – All You Can Eat – on Rügen?
• 5 museums that I would like to visit
• The Ernst-Moritz-Arndt Tower