Seeking out the Pied Piper of Hameln

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Monday 10th August
Seeking out the Pied Piper of Hameln
Our hotel room is very well equipped and this morning Gretchen was able to enjoy her favourite way of cooking eggs,poached style.
We plan only to do some local driving today with the town of Hameln the main focus of the day.Hameln is famous for the Pied Piper who when the town would not pay him for ridding the town of rats,enticed the children of the town away with his music,never to be seen again.All the children but one that is,who was on crutches and unable to keep up and he lived to tell the tale!!
So with all day at our disposal and probably no more than 100km to do the round trip to Hameln we took our time over breakfast and getting ourselves ready for the day.
Thank goodness for CNN as that is the only TV channel in the 20 odd available that is in a language we can understand!!!We shall miss our junk TV in the morning when we have a bit of time to fill in and we don’t think we will be able to find Jeremy Kyle on German TV dubbed in to the local lingo!!
The only roads we plan to drive today will be local ones and hopefully they will take us through some quaint German villages that we can take a walk through and explore a bit.The drive out of Sehnde south towards Hildesheim was down a road with an avenue of trees.On the outskirts of Sehnde there is an artificial mountain that we assume has been built up from some sort of mining down in the area and by the looks of the outline of the mountain it may have been salt mining.Gretchen also thought she had read somewhere that salt mining had been done in the area in the past.
Hildesheim turned out to be a small city and so we took what appeared to be a ring road to take us west towards Hameln.On the way we spotted a grand looking building on a hill in the near distance and diverted towards it to find it was a schloss or castle.The place wasn’t open to the public so we had to be happy with photographs from the road below.
We found our way to Hameln OK and in time for some lunch once we found a park for RR.
Despite being a tourist town Hameln didn’t have a lot on the streets in English and it was by chance that we managed to find our way to the old walled part of the city and where all the history about the Pied Piper was.
Visiting Hameln enabled us to match up another one of those memories from our childhood years we when we both used to listen to the childrens request session on the radio when the story of the Pied Piper of Hameln used to feature almost every week.
The tale set in 1280 is depicted on several buildings and statues in the old walled area of the city although none of the buildings from that time are still standing.All the same the old walled area of the city still contains from very old building from the mid 1500’s onwards which indicated that the town was not badly affected by the bombings of German during the Second World War.There were a number of souvenir shops selling items relating to the story including rats and rat killer!!!
We took a walk over to the river just outside the walled part of the town to where the Pied Piper was reputed to have lured the children and then headed back to RR ready to drive back to Sehnde.
Our map is extensive but not all the roads are clearly numbered and driving home by another route proved to be a bit of a challenge because of this.
However,despite a tiki tour around one small town on the way home when we became a little disorientated, we found our way along the network of small country roads to successfully reach home.
The supermarket in the town was very well supplied with goods and we also picked up a bottle of Polish vodka at a very good price.We just hope it drinks as well as the price!!!
As we have travelled a good distance further east in the Central European time zone the sun is setting significantly earlier than it did in Zwolle and we only just got home from an after dinner stroll down to the canal to see if any barges were passing through before it got dark.We didn’t want to get lost because of the dark in Sehnde!!!

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Photos

River running through Hameln
This is the river where the Pied Piper led the children to.Note the rat in gold in the middle of the picture.Rats are big money in Hameln!!

Another unusual road sign,Germany
We still can't figure this one out with the picture of what looks like a tank.Is it a relic from the Second World War??

Comments

[Rin]

Road sign....
Perhaps the sign is to direct them to Poland....? I hear it only takes about 3 days to get there in a tank... :-p

[Tim]

hi, the yellow sign is a militariy load class-sign, mostly in the near of military grounds. you'll often find it in front of bridges describing "traffic rules" because of the weight of a tank. and ... no, WW2 is over ..-;-))

[Thomas]

the sign
the sign says that either two tanks with a weight of 30 tons or one tank with a weight of 100 tons can cross the following section (usually a bridge). And if you want to call it relic then it's more a relic of the cold war. At that time west germany was heavily fortified and prepared to fight an invading red army... ..have a nice time here!

[Kenny]

Sign identity
The signs are called Military Load Class MLC. During the Cold War years there was a heavy NATO military presence in Germany. Roads, highways, farm fields towns and such were common training areas. It was not odd to pass a convoy of army tanks, trucks, etc. on the roadways of Germany up until when the wall came down. Sign reflects max weight limits for wheeled or tracked vehicles and directions of travel. These signs are normally in front of bridges.

[Whiskers]

Thanks for that
Thanks for the information.It was interesting to see that the signs had survived so many years.

[Kenny]

Still in use
The MLC signs are still in use. Though military presence has decreased it has not disappeared completely.