Return to Hamelin, and the Eder and Mohne Dams (Part 1)

As I said in a previous post, while we were in Detmold, Gail and I also visited the some of the destinations I remember from my childhood. Towns like Hamelin, and also the Mohne and Eder dams, were some of the places to go for a day trip.

I remember Hamelin as a small town in the 1960’s, and don’t remember it as the sprawl that we saw on our visit. But certainly now, as then, the centre of the town has some beautiful traditional buildings. 

The town attracts nearly four million tourists a year mainly because of the world famous medieval legend of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. 

We bought a copy of the story in English thinking we could give this to Amelia when she gets older. I don't remember if I thought about it as a child, but reading the story again now, parental guidance is necessary! A story where all the children are led away by a strange man, never to be seen again, and nobody really knows where they went is really the stuff of nightmares. But the bit where the Pied Piper does what he promises, only for the politicians of the town to break their promise, still rings true.

Although the main visitor season had passed there were still a lot of people around, and we had a wander around looking at the traditional buildings, and spotting the brass rats in the pavement, 

and then waited, over a beer, for the twice daily ringing of the glockenspiel bells and the carousel of twirling Pied Piper figures at the Hochzeitshaus.

That was Hamelin – our visit to the Mohne and Eder dams next time.