30 July 2005 - Nacht der Vulkane

This is me. Apparently I am like a Mutated Volcano Fish who is angry and ranting all the time, waving my arms around trying desperately to get my point across to people.

All I can say to that is that if people weren't all so fucking stupid they would get my point the first time and I wouldn't have to wave my arms around!

Anyway, some suggestions for better viewing:

1) As is now the norm with these Travelogues of mine: PLEASE CLICK ON EACH PHOTO TO ADVANCE TO THE NEXT PHOTO INSTEAD OF SCROLLING!!!!

2) PLEASE PRESS F11 TO TOGGLE BETWEEN FULL-SCREEN MODE AND NORMAL MODE (so as to see the pictures better)!

Ok. So today's adventure takes us all the way from the North Sea (follow the thin blue line), through Utrecht and Arnhem, Duisburg to Düsseldorf, past Köln and to an area of Germany known as the Eifel.

NOTE: Take a look at the lake on this satellite map to which the pinkish/purplish arrow is pointing. It's a pretty big lake to be visible at this scale and we'll be taking a closer look at it in a second.

Zoomed in now we see the Laacher See, a lake formed in the crater of an ancient volcano. The Eifel region has many such lakes (called "Maar's"). At the top right of this photo you can see the Rhine River, winding its way past vineyards and castles, and at the bottom is the town of Mendig where we shall be attending the festivities for the Nacht de Vulkane (Night of Volcanoes).

Driving through this region, which is full of dormant volcanoes, I wonder which of these hills are former volcanoes and which are just hills.

There's been some nasty rain the past day or so, but just as we arrive in Mendig the skies clear miraculously and a pretty rainbow can been seen overhead.

Everything around here seems to be "volcano". Here we have a beer garden and brewery that specialises in Volcano Beer.

Inside the brewery is a 120 metre deep silo that used to be used for storing beer making stuff. I don't know... hops? What? Anyway, it's really deep, as you can see.

Down in the Volcano party area there is a tiny medieval fair set up, complete with an authentic medieval big muscle guy.

Authentic medieval horse.

Authentic medieval weird guy.

Authentic medieval archery school.

Notice the target they are using... a poor defenceless little deer.

Fortunately for the deer, kids suck at pretty much everything and the arrow doesn't come anywhere near the target.

Now that HAS to be a volcano. Actually it is part of the rim around the Laacher See, I believe.

A fenced off area is set up for Cow Bingo, which consists of entrants putting marked stones in the area and a cow is set loose inside. The winner is the person upon whose stone the cow relieves himself. (Those medieval people knew how to party!)

Some more volcanoes in the distance?

The hired cover band Cooter Brown plays Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd. I am reminded that just a few weeks ago I was standing closer than this to the REAL reunited Pink Floyd in London's Hyde Park watching them perform the same song at Live8.

Wandering around a bit brings us to some carved volcanic stones.

This reminds me of Eskimo soapstone carvings, somehow.

It's like the remnants of an ancient civilisation. All these carved heads and stuff lying around.

The rim of the Laacher See in the distance with a big stone circle in the foreground. Thousands of years from now people will wonder what this stone circle was and what the ancient 20th century culture built it for. Little do they know it was made by 20th century people pretending that it was thousands of years old from some ancient culture.

A Mutated Vulcano Slug!

Here we see some of the original paving stones from Mendig's main street.

The remnants of an old chuch / volcanic quarry / mine. I am not sure what this is about, but it was a nice picture.

The sun sets over the volcanic landscape.

To Germans every event is Oktoberfest. I came here expecting to tour around looking at science and geology... instead it's beer garden and sausages.

Two authentic Mendig sausages: The Layerwürst at top and the Fleischwürst at bottom.

The band continues to play cover songs, most of which I've played in my life in bands that I've been in, ironically.

And finally, after hours of trying to kill time because there wasn't anything to do but drink beer and eat sausages and listen to cover bands, the Nacht der Vulkane begins. I'd figured that the "fire spectacle" would take place on top of one of the volcanoes, but instead it takes place behind some trees on the opposite side of a field.

I managed to extract some of the information in the previous photo so we could have a night-vision version of the previous scene.

There's not a whole lot to say about most of these pictures, so I will just let you work your way through them without excessive commentary from me.

(Another night-vision version I made later)

Look at this fuzzy photo to see all the people lining up to see the Nacht der Vulkane!

Ok. I will shut up now. But please bear in mind that I didn't do a lot of selecting in the following photo series. As such there are some good ones as well as some bad ones. It takes too much work to be selective, you see. But I did, at least, throw in the occasional night-vision version of some of the photos.

PS - Don't forget the thing where you can click on the photos to advance. This makes it like a slideshow, sort of. Oh! But in doing that don't skip the occasional movies I put in of the volcano.

Click here to see the Volcano slowly coming to life!

The volcano erupts a bit and sends a molten piece of lava into the sky. (In other words, they set off a firework.)

Click here to see the Volcano in action! Part 1

The volcano explodes in primative fury!

Every travelogue has its best photo. This is today's. I tried to get some lens flare action going in this photo of the imitation lava flows (which were really bright), but I had no idea how cool it would turn out in the end.