Graf Zeppelin

Turns out that zeppelins, also known as blimps, were named after the man who invented them. And he was a count!

It also turns out that Graf (Count) Zeppelin was from the Bodensee area and he started his company building Zeppelins on the north shore of the lake.

We learned these facts and many, many more during our two-hour visit to the Zeppelin museum in Friedrichshafen a few days ago.

The museum took us from LZ-1, the very first luftschiffe, or airship to the modern blimps that mostly seem to exist for advertising. A large part of the museum was devoted to the Hindenburg, the 129th version of the Luftschiffe.

Inside and outside of a zeppelin

There was a replica of parts of the Hindenburg, as well as a variety of artifacts. Uniforms of crew members to menus, and even some twisted girders. Additionally, you could watch films of the disaster and read the newspaper reports. (German newspapers stressed the number of survivors rather than the number who died.)

It was an amazing place and I could go back again, because my brain filled up way too fast and I was unable to fit in any more facts. One interesting fact that I did manage to absorb was that the US demanded a zeppelin as part of the reparations from World War II. I wonder what we did with it.

Somewhere over the Bodensee

Not surprisingly, we saw at least two blimps in the air during our bicycle ride around the Bodensee.