Richard Bannister

Towards the end of last year I proudly declared my season of coaster trips to be at an end, only to end up visiting a fair two weeks later. It goes without saying that I had contemplated trying to return to the Nottingham Goose Fair, but had decided against it as there wouldn't be any new coasters there to justify the trip. My resolve was tested still further in mid-October when I received an e-mail about the coasters at the Hamburg Winterdom, but after some contemplation I decided that a trip just wasn't feasable. Then, out of the blue, right at the end of October, I received an e-mail from George...

And thus I found myself going out the door at the eminently civilized hour of 7:15am for a bus to the airport. I only had to wait twenty five minutes at the stop for a service that is advertised as running every fifteen minutes. Clearly the severe traffic always found at early hours on a Sunday morning caused difficulties with the scheduling. Fortunately, it had disappeared completely on the run into the airport, with the journey taking just over half an hour.

The departure lounge in Dublin was surprisingly busy, and the reason became clear almost immediately; all the morning flights to London Heathrow were delayed due to weather conditions on the ground there. A wave of relief washed over me; Hamburg was on time; until I suddenly realised that George had driven from Birmingham to London as the flights from there to Hamburg were a great deal cheaper. A frantic exchange of text messages indicated that all flights were being delayed due to fog except for the Lufthansa one he was on. As he put it, "Obviously they found the pilot a seeing eye dog thats able to see go fog.". Indeed.

On landing in Hamburg, I received another text message; "In hanover outside term 1 arrivals by the volvo.". Exiting the arrivals area, I located the demonstration BMW (in Hamburg) and sure enough George was nearby, having located the obligatory cup of coffee. We managed to find the only Taxi driver in the airport without a word of English, but having anticipated this I had a printed map showing where we wanted to go. Twenty five minutes and twenty euro later, we had arrived. It was 1:25pm; we would need to leave for the airport no later than 4:30pm.

There was over ninety minutes to kill before any of the rides opened, but this allowed ample time to explore the fairground and take all the photographs we wanted. The presentation of the various rides, walkthroughs, and restaurants (all portable) was astounding. It was hard even for a german fair veteran like me to believe the scale and attention to detail on constructions that are moved several times per year.

Chief among these attractions, and our reason for going to Hamburg in the first place, was Olympia Looping (#672). One can only begin to imagine what people thought of this ride when it was first presented at the 1989 Oktoberfest. Even now, fifteen years later, Rudolf Barth's giant portable monstrosity with five loops is still the largest portable roller coaster in the world, and arguably the best looking ride in the world with no theming, the five loops being set up with the logo of the olympic rings. Remarkably, the tracking remains very smooth despite constant assembly and disassembly, a testament to the quality of the engineering and maintenance.

The Wilde Maus (#673) was a familiar sight from parks and fairs around the world. It was for this reason that it looked oddly out of place here, an off-the-shelf ride with no theming to speak of amidst so many unique attractions.

Star World (#674) in some ways epitomises the nature of travelling fairground rides in Germany. The front of the ride features a bright orange animatronic robot which must have been sixty feet tall. Its only purpose seems to be to catch the eye, and it does that in style. Unfortunately, for us at least, the rest of the coaster didn't live up to the first impression. The reason was simple; the car we were in spun so quickly that both of us were feeling ill when the time came to disembark.

One could argue that a drop ride probably isn't the best way to clear nausea, but in my case the Huss RIdes Freefall (Goetzke) did the job. The program was surprisingly long, with six full sequences; three upward, and three downward. It seems likely that the owners run a longer programme on quiet days; as it was, there was no wait whatsoever.

There is a little epilogue to this day that I feel compelled to recount. On arrival back in my apartment block in Dublin, I was followed into the lift by a German, who had evidently been on the same flight as me. He asked me if I was just back from Hamburg, and when I confirmed this he enquired what I had been doing over there. When I told him that I'd made a day trip to attend the Winterdom he was aghast. In a strong Bavarian accent, he made his feelings known; who wants to go there? Its full of scumbags!