Minerals in rural France are MIND BLOWING – 3

kenritley

Continuing the series, I’ve warned you that Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines and Sainte-Croix-aus-Mines are places where tourists are advised to keep out.

Keep well out, that is, except for two days every year, during the summer, when they become home to one of the world’s LARGEST and most MIND-BLOWING gem and mineral show on the planet, namely, the Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines International Gem and Mineral Show.

During this time, the villages are visited by literally hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world.  And every square inch of the villages is occupied by the stands of gem and mineral dealers from all over the world (52 countries at last count!) selling their gems and minerals.

The village center is filled with dozens upon dozens of stands:

The church courtyards are all filled with dozens and dozens of stands:

And in fact, during these two days, each and every village office building is open to the public and filled with yet more stands. No space goes unwasted. For example, the local indoor pool is also filled with stands:

The bizzare of old meets new

kenritley

It can be truly bizzare when old things meet new things.

Consider this Shabbat elevator in my hotel in Jerusalem, Israel:

On the outside it looks like a fairly normal elevator – and indeed, for six days of the week it is. You push the button and patiently wait, and soon the elevator will reach your floor and the doors will open.

But on the Sabbath, this elevator does not behave like a normal elevator at all!  For on the Sabbath Days many orthodox Jewish people are prohibited by their religious beliefs from pushing buttons. Therefore, on the Sabbath, this elevator will run continuously for 24 hours, going from the basement to the top floor and then back down again – stopping at each and every floor, where the doors open automatically, regardless of whether anyone gets in or out.

I find it is wonderful that we humans are smart enough to have technology like this. But I also find it amazing and interesting that things like this can be the modern day consequences of ancient religious laws set down thousands of years ago!

By the way, you can find lots of interesting information about Jewish traditions here.

The beans of Umberto Eco

kenritley

This is Umberto Eco,

But these were not his beans:

Umberto Eco, who recently died in 2016, was well-known to many people as the author of some truly mind blowing books, such as Foucault’s Pendulum and the Name of the Rose (which became a movie starring Sean Connery).

Not being his beans, this was also not his bean and sausage soup,

That was my bean and sausage soup, and it turned out rather delicious.

But Umberto said a lot of very interesting things in an essay he wrote about beans, in which he argued that these little easy-to-store, easy-to-grow, easy-to-transport bundles of life saving energy had a revolutionary effect on Europe in the Middle Ages:

So when, in the 10th century, the cultivation of legumes began to spread, it had a profound effect on Europe. Working people were able to eat more protein; as a result, they became more robust, lived longer, created more children and repopulated a continent.

We believe that the inventions and the discoveries that have changed our lives depend on complex machines. But the fact is, we are still here — I mean we Europeans, but also those descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers and the Spanish conquistadors — because of beans. Without beans, the European population would not have doubled within a few centuries, today we would not number in the hundreds of millions and some of us, including even readers of this article, would not exist. Some philosophers say that this would be better, but I am not sure everyone agrees.

Minerals in rural France are MIND BLOWING – 2

kenritley

Continuing the series, I’ve said that Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines and Sainte-Croix-aux-Mines are extremely rural French villages where even tourists are advised to stay well away.

Well, if you do risk life and limb and find yourself here, you won’t be surprised to see vestiges of the Roman mines everywhere.

Here, for example, right in the middle of the downtown area there is an ancient Roman mine shaft that has been turned into a flower garden.

Minerals in rural France are MIND BLOWING – 1

kenritley

Before we talk about the minerals, lets talk about the place.

Nestled deep in the most rural of rural regions in France sit two little villages, Saint-Marie-aux-Mines and Sainte-Croix-aux-Mines.

To visit, you need just two things.

First, you need a damn good GPS navigation system in your car – or you might not arrive. These villages are tiny, and they are remote, and the people who live here do their best to keep visitors away.

And second, you need a damn good measure of courage, because the rural French don’t take too kindly to foreigners – so you might not depart. I am not kidding when I say going here unaccompanied is something the French Gendarmerie do not recommend.

Even with Google maps it’s hard to find these places until you turn the magnification up to the highest levels:

And what of these places?  These were the places where, even long, long before the Middle Ages, the tough, fearless Romans risked their health and their lives to mine silver and precious metals from mines deep underground. And today the tough, fearless inhabitants of these villages are the descendants of those Romans – brutal, not afraid of pain, not afraid of hard work, and not suffering either fools or visitors lightly.

 

The great mystery of the Basel Bahnhof – SOLVED!

kenritley

If you have ever been to the train station in Basel, and if you have a sharp and discerning set of peepers, then this view might drive you crazy:

Why? As you can see, there are train tracks 11, 12 . . . and 14 and 15  – but there is no track 13!

For a long time, I pondered this mystery. Was track 13 removed to avoid bad luck?  Other train stations have track 13, so I don’t think so.  Was track 13 removed for satanic pagan reasons?  Basel has one of the largest pagan celebrations in the free world – so this could be likely – but I never was able to connect this pagan ritual to the number 13. Was track 13 removed because the Swiss are sloppy guys that made a mistake and never bothered to correct it?  Hardly!

So then I got busy: I hit the rails and asked train conductors – lots and lots of them. Sadly, none of them knew the answer. I hit the Basel train station office and asked the counter staff – lots and lots of them. Sadly, none of them knew the answer.

Fast forward about THREE YEARS! Recently, I finally got lucky – while talking to a train conductor a train driver happened to overhear my question, and he jumped in and told me there was in fact a track 13. Turns out, he knew the track very well and drives on it regularly!

You see, the key to the mystery was, there is a track 13, but no platform 13.

And to their great credit, the Swiss Federal Railways did not lie or mislead about this. In German, the term used is “Gleis 13” which – translated – means “Track 13” and not “Platform 13.”

After three years of hard work – the great mystery of the Basel Bahnhof has been solved!

Train Storks

kenritley

Storks. I’ve written about transformer storks, house storks, monument storks, and Bodensee storks. And now to add to my collection of storks, train storks!

This fellow set up shop at the Basel Bahnhof, and as you can see from this snap he looks rather proud of himself:

Technically, he is geolocated in Switzerland – but legally, he is residing in the French area of the Bahnhof.

Black Church – 2

kenritley

Continuing the series, still not what you probably think when you hear the term black church:

My passion is blind exploration – not guided tourism. So for me, the French city of Claremont-Ferrand is one of those truly magnificent, unplanned, unexpected discoveries that keeps me going back to France, time and again, even though there are other countries close by with impressive things to see: it’s an amazing, mind-blowing city that almost no one outside of France has ever heard of, or likely ever will.

Robin Hood’s Bay

kenritley

Robin Hood’s Bay is a fairly small bay containing a fairly small village of the same name, located a fairly small drive south of Whitby, frequented by a fairly small number of tourists but offering a magnificent view of the coast alongside the Yorkshire Moors,

The village itself is remarkable, having been built by smugglers over the centuries. The streets are lined with shops selling fossils (you can find them on the beach!) and a pitch black gemstone called jet, formed from compressed fossilized wood, that you could find on the beach but presumably all the good stuff has long since been scooped up.

Here’s another view:

Two AMAZING ways that old meets new!

kenritley

This is the Münster, a Catholic cathedral in the Middle Age village of Villingen in Southern Germany:

It dates back to  the year 1130.  It is very, very old.

And this is one of the doors of the cathedral:

Created in the late twentieth century out of bronze by the artist Klaus Ringwald, it is very very new.

So you might think: old meets new.  And you’d be right.

But . . . you’d only be half right!

Because the scenes on the massive bronze door (twelve of them, no less) depict historic scenes from the Old Testament (left) and the New Testament (right).

So . . . this is two amazing ways that old meets new!

Dystopian, futuristic Winterthur

kenritley

Continuing the series, this snap somehow reminds me of a dystopian, futuristic landscape:

It’s the year 2042. The outside temperature during the summer in Switzerland can be in excess of 60 C, so it‘s not possible to spend time outdoors unless in a chill-suit. Winterthur is a small industrial outpost with a population of less than 100. Here you can see the sun rising above the nuclear powered carbon extraction plant. In a network of nearly 1000 stations like this circling the globe at strategic points, carbon is extracted directly from the atmosphere, converted to a solid, and transported by computer controlled railways to Spain – a long dead country in the uninhabitable zone of Europe, where the average yearly temperature is above 60 C, and the peak summer temperatures approach the boiling point of water.

Climate scientists are in unanimous agreement that these decarbonification activities must continue unabated for another forty years before the year-over-year rise of the Earth‘s temperature will be stopped, and another century before the pre-2000 temperatures will be restored.  With Earth‘s population currently hovering at a little over 250 Million, it will be a tough challenge to keep this system in operation that long.