TLCB staff don’t often get out to LEGO shows. Partly because our mysterious identities may be revealed, but mostly because the Elves have a habit of sneaking into our luggage, and our insurance is nowhere near that comprehensive.
Luckily our readers can be more mobile than us, and one such reader contacted us with an offer to cover a LEGO event. Over to today’s Guest Blogger, Jan Mueller…
On the 18th and 19th of March 2017 the exhibition “Floating Bricks – The maritime World of LEGO Bricks“ was held in Hamburg. It took place, appropriately, at a retired ferry terminal in the Altona district of the city.
Up to 1863, Altona was a harbour town which belonged to Denmark, and the Danish influence is partly still present until today. That weekend there were a lot of ships in town, made of Danish LEGO elements.
The fair was organized by the city event guide Hamburg-Führer and powered by the North-German RLUG Stein Hanse (recognized LEGO User Group). The Stein Hanse has organised several well-received exhibitions before and this was their first one in Hamburg. Members of the Stein Hanse had built a detailed oil platform, part of the Hamburg Airport, the Hamburg tube (which mostly goes overground) and many other models, which were put on display for the two-day event.
The RLUG, founded by Martin and Lutz in 2013 has more than 150 LEGO fans as members. One of the invited exhibitors was Brynjar Karl with his 6.5m model of the Titanic to Hamburg. The LEGO Titanic was on its way to New York, but was damaged on the way. Not kidding! Now the Titanic was undergoing some dock-time for repairs in Altona and Brynjar Karl was on-site for live building, supported by some of the other builders present at the show.
Two further additional LEGO artists were also invited: Arjen Oude Kotte (aka Konajra) and Edwin Korstanje from the Netherlands, who are both specialised in large highly detailed ship models.
The location of the exhibition, the old ferry terminal, offered a wonderful view of the Hamburg harbour with its container vessels and cruise ships and made it the perfect place to present maritime LEGO models. There was a fine collection of food trucks present to cater for the 6,000+ visitors, and the attendees also had the chance to build a huge mosaic of Hamburg’s newest landmark: the Elbphilharmonie, a new concert house on the river Elbe.
Many thanks to Jan for joining us here at TLCB with his summary of the Floating Bricks exhibition in Hamburg! If you’d like to report on a LEGO event as Jan has then we’d love to hear from you – simply get in touch via the usual channels and your words and pictures could appear here too.
