I met Jan when he was studying for a year in Australia and he is truly the nicest person I've ever met, so it behove me to see him whilst in the area. The landing at the nearby Bohmte-Bad Essen - airstrip was fine, but it turned out that my PPR (prior permission request) via email wasn't enough, although the reply I received lead me to expect that I could just fly in and park. The email had surprised me as my (correct) understanding of the German regulations is that someone always has to meet you on the airfield (which they did by hazard anyway), but figured that the person emailing me would know best! The astonished gentleman who watched us land explained to me quite nicely why it absolutely wouldn't do for people to just appear like we had done, although of course since we were overseas visitors it would be ok, but for next time, you understand! In the end they were very kind and worked out that if the wind got up again to the 120km/h of that Monday they would be able to juggle the planes and fit ours in the hangar. I feel very bad that the clubroom was shut when we left and we couldn't leave a contribution for the coffee fund.
While in Bad Essen we had a look at their lovely Fachwerkhaeuser (half timbered houses) and went to the Landesgartenschau, a several month long garden festival being held in the region. We started off with a local park around the swimming pools and nursing home, in which an artist had built a salt extractor: salt water from the sea or from underground salt is trickled down a structure of branches, and it crystallises on the twigs in the sun. Once a large amount of salt has crystallised out, the salt is knocked off the twigs and burnt to remove any remaining wood, to get pure cooking salt. We also went to a castle (Schloss Ippenburg) that we had seen from the air – a few years ago they allowed artists and landscape architects to come and be creative in their gardens as a display of their work, which really was most impressive and a fantastic idea. I wonder if I'll be able to convince some people to do the same on my suburban block???
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| Bad Essen town square |
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| Salt extractor |
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| The now closed indoor swimmingpool refunctioned as a plant exhibition |
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| Schloss Ippenburg from the air, note nice gardens |
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| and from the ground |
In the evening we went for a quick look around Osnabrueck – at the old city walls and some of the Fachwerkhaeuser, it really is a lovely little town.
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