Paderborn, Germany: A Quaint City of Technology and Theology

Paderborn: a charming and quaint old style town with cobblestones, gothic architecture and gold plating.

This weekend, our destination was a large town in the state of Nordrhein-Westphalia:  Paderborn. Paderborn was established in 777 AD under the ruling of King Karl the Great. It has been a university town since the 1600s, where most of the students major in theology. As we walked around, we saw a lot of the architectural style of religion- such as golden crosses and cupolas on many buildings, including several high schools. It is a delicious delight for those who fancy such architecture. The town is primarily built with a gothic style, which is reflected in the city hall, several churches, and other buildings. 

Outside of the town of the city is the Castle Neuhaus neighborhood, whose main feature is- you guessed it, the Neuhaus Castle. The castle was built  around the 1200’s. It  is quite charming, and is no longer used as a residence, but rather as a high school. Crazy! The Germans are so lucky to be able to go to school in a CASTLE! I don’t think they understand what it is like, having high school in those boring flat buildings in the U.S.

The most special thing about the castle? It has a moat! This is the first castle I have ever had the chance to see that has a moat. Needless to say, the moat was really gross and full of algae and fish and green things, but this is because the water from the moat doesn’t flow anywhere, nor is any fresh water introduced. But it still ups the charm of the castle, if you overlook the gross factor.

In addition, Paderborn has the shortest river in Germany – the Pader River. It has a distance of 4 km or 2.5 miles. 

The best part about the city, however, was Peter the robot, who I got to meet at the technology museum. I’ll tell you about him in just a minute. 

The Heinz Nixdorf Museum is an interactive museum about technology, with several floors. On the ground floor, you can play video games on about 15 different computers, all the way from the first Nintendos to some of the more modern Xboxes, and even the Nintendo Wii. 

The next level of the museum features some of the groundbreaking inventions (for the 1800s) such as a telephone switchboard and typewriters, and even computer punchcards.

The third level of the museum was my personal favorite. There were two talking robots that would roam around the museum, and you could interact with them by telling them to play a game with you, and they would lead you to different exhibits and ask you questions about them. You got to select the answer from those they provided, to see if you won. This is how I met Peter! Peter showed me around the museum and played a game with me, and even was wearing a mask due to precautions for the Corona Virus.

In addition, there were other talking robots, a realistic-looking receptionist (who was a native English speaker) that you could ask questions, Vincent the robot that would draw a picture of you, and even Beppo, a robot that would sweep the floor based on your position to him. Both Vincent and Beppo came from processing facilities where they were used to put products on conveyor belts, but were modified for use at the museum.

Other things you could do on this floor were to interact with virtual towns and fix their problems using certain discs (the basis of computer programming). You can also get your heart rate, blood-oxygen level and step counts read, see giant old computers the size of rooms, as well as supercomputers, both which have since been compacted down to twenty times their power in the size of a small laptop. The compaction of processing speed, space and price has been huge!

The top floor of the museum was also a highlight for me, as I am a huge fan of space and the heavens. The featured exhibit was a space exhibit, complete with a life-sized model command station for a landing pod of a space shuttle, see the second-oldest known representation of space (from the year 4000 BC). It was a blue and gold tablet with moon shapes.

In addition, there were models of different satellites, different space scenes, an interactive exhibit of the gravity on different planets based on cans of beans you could pick up, and even the glove and fire extinguisher from two actual space missions (these objects were actually in SPACE!!!). Furthermore, there was a thruster from a shuttle! Super exciting. This exhibit is only temporarily there, but I can assume that the other exhibits they include will at least be as fun as the technology part of the museum is.

The man who the museum is named after is Heinz Nixdorf, one of the top developers of computers in Germany, at competition with IBM. His company started in Essen, Germany (yay Essen!) and then moved to Paderborn. It has since been taken over by Siemens. 

In short, Paderborn is a charming and quaint city, and is unique for its technological contribution to the world as well as its theology school. Paderborn is a must see alone for the museum- we could have spent the whole day there. As it was, we spent over two hours there and did not nearly have time for everything we wanted to see.

I highly recommend a trip to the museum, and that you take a trip to Paderborn! You won’t regret it! We also made a video of Paderborn, so you can come see the city, too (Check it out below).

“THE WORLD’S MINE OYSTER, WHICH I WITH SWORD WILL OPEN.” – WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Video about Paderborn below!