Thulani the Travelling Bear: Thulani in Germany Part 3

A new set of photos with Thulani's adventures in Germany: Even though spring seems to be gone again, Thulani did some serious hiking/trekking and climbing today. He climbed the Piesberg (one of the hills in the Osnabrueck area), which is an old mining site and nowadays a huge quarry ... so there's hardly any hill left except the ridge. On the ridge there are oberservation decks and huge wind turbines. Thulani's been looking for fossils in the quarry , but no luck today.

Thulani enjoyed the historic "train" up the hill

On the ridge of the Piesberg (or what's left of it after all the mining activities) there are three massive new wind turbines and a new observation deck which will be opened in late April (but Thulani went up the observation deck anyway, ignoring all the warning signs that the paint/varnish might still be wet)

The train doesn't take you all the way to the top, it's appox 270 steps to get to the observation deck and the wind turbines.

Still a long way to go to the top for a little bear..

Fossils and minerals can quite easily be found in the quarry

The new wind turbines are massive once you're right in front of them. The new observation deck (which is - in theory - not open to the public yet) was build on the foundations of an older wind turbine. 4 old wind turbines were replaced by 3 new and bigger ones in 2010A short rest while grandma Kronenberg keeps on looking for fossils

A short rest while Grandma Kronenberg keeps on looking for fossils

Thulani's looking for fossils. Fossils are quite common here - there are many fossil-bearing carbon layers present in the quarry. But no luck today and we didn't even bring a hammer, so we had to work with a 500.000-year-old stone tool just like to the Neanderthal man did.

It's quite a long way down from the observation deck into the quarry , but Grandma Kronenberg made sure that Thulani won't fall , so don't worry about him ... he was pretty safe up there.

Can you spot Thulani? He's trying some rock climbing.

The quarry is quite impressive, the whole hill is almost gone, except for the ridge the hill is actually a hole these days ...but surely no competition to the big hole in Kimberley, South Africa.

Germany

's really trying hard to start the transition from nuclear power and after Fukushima we try even harder! Each of the three wind turbines on the Piesberg is approx 150m high and the upper parts weigh 120 tons. The three big ones and a smaller wind turbine on that hill generate 13.7 mio kWh which is enough to cover 3900 households in Osnabrück.

That was the most pleasant way to get into a mine, they had a proper elevator/lift that takes you all the way down, but it was hard worked to push the mine cart all the way through the long tunnel

Next to the Piesberg is an old rubbish dump. But since all the rubbish doesn't get dumped any more the area is slowly but surely transformed into something new (not sure what it'll look like in some decades and where it'll get to). The Piesberg and the surrounding area is more or less a brown field, not sure how much longer the quarry will be operated.... the former hill is more or less gone, it's simply a big hole and only the ridge with the wind turbines remained.

More information about the Piesberg is only available in German: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piesberg

A LEGO exhibition in an old mining museum, sounds pretty reasonable to me ... WTF?!?

Well, back in my days we had a thing called metal. Everything was made of it. Lunchboxes, cars, toys, you name it. ... And Wood, we still had wood. Remember wood?