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|  Dutch Coastin' .// Euro-Mir (Europa-Park)Her days are numbered, but still she will always be remembered. She had a pioneering role in establishing a permanent humar presence in outher space. She made if possible for man to live close to heaven. I'm talking of the Russion space station Mir. Unfortunately, her noble career isn't quite without adversity. A few years back, docking collisions, dying batteries and hinky computer systems laid bare the intrinsic pitfalls of boldly going where no human has gone before. Now, the Russian government has decided to give Mir a final salute. Soon, Mir will no longer exist but in our hearts. All the courageous space cowboys who kept her alive for so long have learned one important lesson: 'you're never safe out there'. An extreme machine with such a history, which left us such a legacy, can never disappear. In 1997 Mir found her 'daughter' in Germany. In the shape of some kind of rollercoaster. A rollercoaster unlinke anything you have seen before. A unique senstion. As unpredictable as deepspace. This rollercoaster is called Euro-Mir. She takes you for a ride you couldn't possibly imagine. You twist and turn and speed down the track. Up becomes down,
In the last 25 years, Europa-Park has grown into one of the major European amusement parks, and the number 2 of Germany, only proceded by Heide-Park. Europa-Park has American propertions, with the lavish El Andaluz hotel, the medieval Castillo al Alcazar and the amazing shows. Drawing 2.5 million visitors a year, Europa-Park is a thriving amusement park. Eleborately and extremely realisticly themed areas are devoted to the European cultural heritage. You can find Italy, France, Spain, Scandinavia, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Holland and Greece here. Theming is truly pussed to the limit of realism. You can find pieces of the Berlin Wall in the German-themed area, and an exact replica of Mir in the Russian area. But what is the most interesting about the park still is that its nothing but an operational display for a single developer: Mack GmbH. The German ride manufacturer Mack has been doing business for over 200 years. In their portfolio you will find among others steel coasters, flume rides, Wild Mice, bobsled coasters, dark rides, boat rides, monorails, spinning rides, kiddie rides, bumper cars, watercoasters, and their most recent innovation (in cooperation with Bollinger & Mabillard) the hypercoaster. Sounds enough to fill an entire themepark, doesn't it? So did Mr Mack think. Mack wanted a place to test and display its prodigious output. It didn't take long for them to decide that the easiest way to test their rides was with people in them. And thus they decided to build a themepark of their own. An ideal property in the town of Rust (not far from the Mack plant in Waldkirch) was found and Europa-Park opened its doors in 1975. During time, the park grow to impressive proportions. And almost all rides are Mack models; the Euro-Sat indoor coaster, the Tyrolean White-Water Run, the Alpenexpress Enzian runaway train coaster, the Fjord Rafting ride, the Mississippi Steamboat, the Bobsleighs, the Poseidon watercoaster, the SilverStar hypercoaster. Who wouldn't want to buy a Mack ride after visiting this park? Well, enough said about Europa-Park. In 1997 the Mack Company decided to have us all gawking at the sight of Euro-Mir. Euro-Mir is the centerpiece of the Russian area, and her superstructure is as dramatic as it gets. The steel trackwork wraps itself around five enormous mirrored towers surrounded by a rocky, extraterrestrial landscape. Every time a train comes rushing down the track, you can see it reflected in at least 3 different
The Euro-Mir boarding station looks very much like Mission Control. The operating booth, filled with computers and video surveillance systems. Right in front of you, you can see a video of the history of space travel. Whilest you wait, you can get a good look at the strange, extraterrestrial trains of Euro-Mir. The round metal cars look surreal, they look like steel turtles. Almost deceptively cute. You'll also notice that the trains aren't just surreal and cute, but also as minimalistic as can be. You are completely exposed, exposed to the fierce wind and high G-forces that come with space travel... Once the train leaves the station, you enter the largest of the five mirror-covered duodecagon-shaped towers. You slownly move up the spiral lift. The lift takes about 5 minutes, setting the total ride time at over 6 minutes. But do not fear! The lift isn't boring at all. While you climb up the lift, you are blasted away with the sound of true German techno. You'll never get bored on this lift hill. Unfortunately, the lift has to end sometime. You now exit the duodecagon, and go off into the unknown. You now go, where no man has ever gone before. The ride has now started. You slowly twist in between and around of the four narrower towers, seeing your reflection on their sides. So far, Euro-Mir is just an ordinary wild mouse. But then suddenly the world starts moving. You start spunning round 180 degrees, again and again. You can see your panicking face all over the four towers while you renegade down the mouseturns. You can see the big drop coming up around the final bend. You can see everyone wondering whether they're going face first, or if their but can be the first part of their body that goed down. You take another spin, and another. Which way will you look when your capsule plunges down to earth? Once the last tower is cleared, your gentle orbit comes to an end. Euro-Mir goes ballistic, making a wide, swooping descent down to the planet's surface, hitting a startling top speed of 72 km/h. You suddenly don't find the train half as cute as 5 minutes ago. Euro-Mir puts the pedal to the metal, and the capsulte is hauling you over a nice long serpentine course, speeding back around the towers with some perfectly banked curves. The wild visual effect as the train makes several near-mess turns past the mirrored glass should be rather startling, if not terrifying, no matter which way your looking. Before your nerve wrecking space race is over, the train enters some extremely tight spirals, zipping through a tower and down into a subterranean cave. This all staying unnervingly close to the ground. One final bend feeds you into the brake run and back into the station. Perhaps now you will realise that space travel is not for the weak-hearted!
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