The Museum Building @museum.de

M: The Museum building combines business and pleasure...

F: Because it houses both a museum and a hotel with a restaurant serving hearty regional cooking. The Specken museum has existed for more than three decades and sees itself as an ideal complement to the Open Air Museum by the lake. Old craft skills are documented and kept alive here; there's a display of Ammerland customs and traditional costumes; and you'll also find an extensive collection of early vehicles: from centuries-old farm wagons to elegant landaus and horse-drawn hearses.

M: Heinrich Kapels built the house in the early 20th century and set up the "Kornspieker" in 1912. This was an inn with a banqueting hall as well as a grocer's shop where you could buy coffee, tea, spices, chocolate and other up-market goods.

He also opened a grain distillery that made bitters and schnapps. A bowling alley was added in the 1950s, and the Kapels family switched to producing mineral water and fruit juices. The grocer's shop was forced to close in 1970. By then small shops were struggling with the competition from supermarkets.

F: In the early 1990s, after three generations of the Kapels family had run the Kornspieker, the Local History Society purchased both the land and the building and set up its museum. The inn, which had always served as a hub for the small village of Specken, was of course preserved.