The attraction, in addition to the sea itself, with its stainless-steel ocean floor, is the pair of sandbars floating on it. Germans of all ages frolicked in the sand nearby, while others camped overnight in canvas tents (just $30 a person for a pallet with high-thread-count sheets). Densely planted coffee bushes and banana trees conspired to create a remarkably realistic jungle, the effect spoiled only by the sound of flip-flops and the occasional bad European bathing suit. Just beyond the turnstiles, there was a bridge over a swamp heavily stocked with mangroves, and paths leading past thousands of specimens of tropical flora. “Wow,” I said, gazing at the acres of palm trees and then up, up past the building's massive steel ribbing, way up to the umbrella-spoke ceiling. The snow might be piling up against the building's base, but inside is 175 million cubic feet of air kept at a temperature of 79 degrees round-the-clock, 365 days a year, not to mention eight football fields of landscaping made barefoot-friendly by an under-floor heating system. Instead, in 2004 it became a German water park with an English name, Tropical Islands, the moniker apparently lending an extra touch of the exotic for the hordes of Berliners who patronize it. Sure, CargoLifter went belly-up in 2002, its business plan disintegrating faster than the several Hindenburgs you could fit inside its stately pleasure dome, but still: You'd expect that a scheme equally grandiose, or at the very least sinister, would have found a home there. There before us stood hubris of a rare order: 14,000 tons of steel supporting a 700,000-square-foot structure 32 stories high, an aviation Xanadu. “Yeah, um, wow,” I replied, my voice a mixture of awe and profound confusion. “Wow.” That's all my son could say as the bus rounded a bend and an enormous elliptical dome appeared in the distance. The Kublai Khan-worthy plan: to construct a heavy-lift aircraft, “heavy-lift” as in having a loading bay capable of carrying “a diesel locomotive engine (120 tons) and a humpback whale (40 tons),” according to the book “International Logistics” by Douglas Long, which unfortunately does not go on to explain why you might want to transport both of those at once. It was flat and treeless and abandoned in 1998 when a German firm called CargoLifter purchased it with the stated intention of building a massive hangar. This was land that the Nazi Luftwaffe once used as a training ground for pilots, that the Soviet Union later turned into an East German military base. And even if they had been clamoring for it, no one would have built it here, in the German countryside somewhere between Berlin and Dresden. No one was clamoring for an artificial biosphere so enormous that the Statue of Liberty could stand upright in it or the Eiffel Tower lie on its side. It was never supposed to be the largest indoor water park in the world, much less a parable for our times, a cautionary tale on the perils of dreaming big. The Statue of Liberty could stand upright inside Tropical Islands, the world's largest indoor waterpark between Berlin and Dresden, Germany.
CARGOLIFTER UPRIGHTER FREE
Tropical Islands operates free buses from the train station to the park. Up to five people can travel together for one round-trip fare, which starts at $33 on weekdays. Transportation: The RE2 regional express train runs hourly from the Hauptbahnhof, Berlin's main train station, to the town of Brand (Niederlausitz) and takes about 50 minutes (011-49-33, Visitors can stay as long as they like but are assessed a 10-euro fee (about $12.50) if they stay beyond 3 a.m. daily.Īdmission (for both park and spa area): About $36 for adults, $32 for students and seniors, $25 for children 4 to 14, free for children 3 and younger. The sauna and spa area is open 9 a.m.-1 a.m. Hours: Open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
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