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Near Fulda

posted by [personal profile] owlfish at 10:11pm on 10/10/2007 under
Mound near Fulda


We were driving from Heidelberg to a small town in the Thuringian Forest when I noticed that Fulda was en route. Even better, we were going to reach it at a point we'd want a break from driving. We were going to arrive around 5 pm, so I hoped the cathedral would still be open. (Fulda is a name to conjure with in the Middle Ages. It's around where Boniface came from England to convert the Germanic people to Christianity. Rabanus Maurus was one of the abbots of the monastery later founded there.)

We were nearing our destination when this loomed up before us. "No wonder this was a holy site with something like that by it!" was my first reaction, before I realized we still had another five or so miles to drive to get to Fulda. The road brought us closer and I realized that surely this mound-out-of-nowhere is actually an industrial site of some sort - mining? But there was a cross perched up there. Fulda's on the edge of an ex-volcanic zone, which is what I initially attributed to the mound to. Thoughts on what it is?

Like the potatoes, this is a photo taken from a moving car.
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posted by [identity profile] a-d-medievalist.livejournal.com at 10:28pm on 10/10/2007
Could be a hugemongous compost heap. Or manure (although generally, German farms used the liquified stuff, but maybe they make it themselves)?
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posted by [personal profile] owlfish at 08:43pm on 14/10/2007
Silver star! It's a potash mine, as we deduced today. It seemed way too tall (400 feet?) to be a compost heap. In fact, looking at the map, the potash mountain is bigger than the town next to it.
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ext_3375: Banded Tussock (Default)

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posted by [identity profile] hairyears.livejournal.com at 12:24am on 11/10/2007


The Fulda Gap is one of those nearly-places of the Cold War, a space on the map and a gap in the mountains that would've become the anvil of history if a real war had broken out.

Being the main projected invasion route for the Warsaw Pact, it was one of the largest (and longest) stand-offs in history.

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posted by [identity profile] a-d-medievalist.livejournal.com at 12:50am on 11/10/2007
It's been a strategic mappoint for centuries.
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posted by [personal profile] owlfish at 09:29pm on 12/10/2007
Yes, but the Fulda Gap is relatively quite big - the motorway went through it for miles and miles. This is one hill, which a casual glance through online articles about the Fulda Gap ails to account for.
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