As an American AFOL living in Europe, I had to store some of my collection back in the USA and I have relied on reading fan sites and listening to the Bricks King podcast to stay in tune with the hobby. My NLS and I decided to take our kiddos to a park and I ended up hitting the jackpot. The Gartenschau (Google Translate says it means "garden show”) Kaiserslautern is what my kids refer to as the dinosaur park. It has lots of great garden areas surrounded by large sculptures of dinosaurs. It also has a lot of playground equipment for kids and a bunch of other things to do. Here is the link to the site if you want more info (it's in German, but Google Chrome asks if I want to translate it).

As we walked into the park, we saw a sign advertising a LEGO display so we went into the building where it was located. And then I started to drool... Wow! It is advertised as creations and builds from builders from Germany and Luxembourg and boy is it ever. There were glass cases stacked with MOCs and sets from LEGO. Then there were huge display areas with some giant creations. At the end was a kid play area with LEGO System bricks, DUPLO, and some large toddler friendly rubberized LEGO bricks. To top it off, there was a LEGO store with some sets on sale (that wasn't open when I was there). The display is on site until the garden closes at the end of October 2018 (not sure it comes back regularly or not). If you're in the area, definitely check it out. If not, here are a few pictures of what is there. The lighting is not super great for pictures so my phone didn't capture the best shots for a website (sorry).

You'll notice in the one case on the top left there is a brick build sign that says Lauter Steine EV. This is a LUG in the local Kaiserslautern area that is connected to a LUG in Luxembourg (per LEGO's web site).

A few more display cases... I won't show them all, but you get the idea.

There were also a few MOCs of existing buildings. This first one is of St. Michael's Basilica in Mondsee, Austria. Here's a link to an Austrian web site with a picture of it. As an AFOL, I wish they had more info about the builder, some of the techniques used to build it, total brick count, etc. You know, all those geeky AFOL things that we're into. I realize the display is meant for non-AFOLs so it's all good.

I'm not an expert of the area yet, but I'll find out where these buildings are and post some actual pictures or links.

The Statue of Liberty at around 6 feet tall. I left the case next to it so you could get an idea of the size. I also threw a picture in of the train case next to it just because I'm a big LEGO train fan.

Ok... I was not expecting to round the corner and see this on display. WOW!!!!! The Cologne Cathedral looks phenomenal. If you believe the Wiki page I found, it took 2 years and 900,000 bricks to build. Another site I saw said it was more like 500,000 If anyone can find other references, please let me know. I could spend a whole post talking about this build, but I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. If you want to see more, definitely Google it. There are tons of additional photos and some videos if you want to see more detail and close ups (with better lighting).

The display also includes a few dioramas. Here’s a picture of the pod racing scene from Star Wars episode one..

This picture doesn’t do it justice, but here’s the fight scene from Star Wars: Return of the Jedi on the moon of Endor.

This picture doesn’t capture the whole scene either, but here is a LEGO Space display.

And of course, they have a giant LEGO city. Here are only a few pictures of the many I took. It’s quite an impressive scene with a farm area, a fairground, a train, a giant town square, construction, and plenty of buildings ranging from MOCs to some of the modular buildings from the Creator Expert line.

I’m hoping they do this setup again next year because it’s awesome! Thanks to my new neighbors in Europe for putting this together!