The
night before last, the wind was strong but had calmed down by the time that we
ventured out. It was also windy last night but the wind continued throughout
the day. It has been very calm almost all the time that we have been away, so,
even when it was cold, the lack of wind meant that it was still pleasant. Today
it was overcast, cold (about 4°C when we left the van) and
windy, which meant that it felt bitterly cold.
We concentrated on museums today, starting with the Eisenbahnmuseum – the
Bavarian Railway Museum. This is run by a club that has 700 members, 70 of whom
are active in that they volunteer at the museum renovating the locomotives and
rolling stock or performing other duties. They have an amazing collection
including steam, diesel and electric locos, goods wagons, passenger carriages,
cranes etc. etc. They are especially proud of the large, working turntable
around which many locos are arranged – a really impressive sight. Some of the
steam locos in the sheds are enormous and most be quite a sight when they are
in steam. They have so much stock that deciding which ones to work on must be
really difficult and there are decades of work to be done. The routine
maintenance tasks are massive and then there are the many hundreds of man hours
required for each restoration project. Unlike Britain, there is still a very
large engineering industry in Germany and that should mean that there will be a
supply of engineer volunteers to continue the excellent work of the club.
Nordlingen is in an area called the Ries that has a very interesting geological
past. It is on the edge of a very large depression 25km across with hills about
100m high around the rim. It was thought that this was caused by volcanic
activity but geological investigation in the 1960s and 70s proved that it was
caused by an asteroid strike. About 15 million years ago, an asteroid measuring
approximately 1.2km in diameter, travelling at 30 – 50km per second hit the
earth here creating a 1.5km deep crater. Amongst many consequences, the earth’s
magnetic poles were reversed and almost all life within a huge area was
destroyed. The Rieskrater-Museum tells the story of the event and its impact on
the area. Although almost of the information on display was only in German, we
were issued with iPads that gave us English information on some of the
exhibits. A video, with English subtitles, showed computer generated graphics
of the asteroid and its impact. Exhibits showed the huge effect of the
collision on the geology at different distances from the impact. There was a
display of ‘Moldavites’, glassy bodies found as far away as Czechia (Czech
Republic) that resulted from the impact. A fascinating museum and well worth a
visit.
We spent longer than we expected at the Rieskrater-Museum and that only left 45
minutes for the Stadtmuseum (Town Museum) that was included on our ticket. The
museum mainly covered the town’s history with an emphasis on religious
artefacts and it was only as the museum was about to close that we discovered
the top floor with archaeological exhibits – too late!
Yesterday, we had noticed that there was a Saxophone Quartet Concert in the
town tonight but whilst investigating the venue, tickets etc. we discovered
that there was another concert in the St. Georges church by the Stadtkapelle
Nordlingen. Although I am sure that the saxophone concert would have been very
good, we wanted to support the local orchestra and we bought tickets from the
Tourist Information Office. The performance started at 19:00, so we arrived at
18:30 to ensure that we would get good seats. The first four rows of pews were
reserved for the great and good and the rest of the good seats were full of
people. There were seats available on the side but the view of the orchestra
would not have been good. I managed to find two seats on the end of a pew
towards the back of the church but with a good view. The orchestra filed in
wearing amazing costumes and proceeded to entertain us with a very varied
programme, from Bach and Mussorgsky to Abba. They were very professional and
very good. The programme came to an end and was greeted by a standing ovation
from the audience. I thought that it was all over but the conductor stood
looking expectantly at the back of the church. Much to our amazement, a Scottish
piper appeared and played the bagpipes whilst walking down through the church
to the orchestra and they joined in with the tune – brilliant! Jane did some
research and found that the piper was Horst Blank, a local man who plays the
pipes at local festivals as well as birthdays, weddings etc. – available for a
modest fee! The piece that he was playing was Highland Cathedral, written by
two Germans but adopted by the Scots and played at the Edinburgh Tattoo and in
the Royal Albert Hall amongst many other venues.
Photos: The railway museum turntable with locos lined up in front of the loco
sheds where there are many more; And here are some of them – they are very
large; But they also have small ones; A model of the Ries showing the asteroid
impact area; Glassy Moldavites from Czechia; The Stadtkappelle Nordlingen take
a bow after completing the programme; The piper during the first encore – there
were two!
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