Well, as I said I am back in Bavaria, in a city with a unique secret. The buildings, many of them, or possibly even all of them with the wall included contains tens of thousands of tons of diamonds – over 70 thousand tons! Many of the buildings that aren’t painted sparkle in the sun light. As you walk you see itty bitty specks in the stones glimmer, as do the stones of the church. Each a piece of actual diamond!

Now, wait? How are there diamonds!? Wouldn’t people steal them all!? Where did they come from? How are there so many diamonds? And once again I say, why would you ask such stupid questions… Let’s move on…

The city I am currently in is the Bavarian city of Nördlingen. It’s barely in Bavaria, right on the border with the state of Baden-Württemberg. Just like the town of Rothenburg ob der Tauber which I visited in my last trip, Nördlingen is a 1,200 year city with a rich history, complete with a fully encircling large stone brick wall, witch burnings, and devastating wars.

Anyways, getting back to your stupid question about diamonds… I’m just kidding! It’s quite interesting actually, yes, there are real diamonds embedded in the buildings. Let’s start with how they got there, back a long time ago, no, longer than that. Even longer. Keep going back. Even farther! Look, we’re talking 15 million years ago. A giant asteroid decided it wanted crash into earth. And crash it did! A huge meteorite approximate 3,300 feet1 (1km) long traveling about about 112,000 miles (72,000km) per hour slammed into the earth with a force and explosive power of 250,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs devastating and wiping out a huge area about 6,500km^2 (2,500mi^2) and blasting a mushroom cloud 19 miles (30km) up in the air. A long time later after the dust settled and the crater became a lake, and all kinds of unexpected animals, such as flamingos took up residence. Well a long time later the lake dried up, leaving a large crater, that humans would eventually find and settle in. Originally for most all the of its existence, people thought it was a volcanic crater, until two American scientist, Dr. Edward Chao, and Dr. Eugene Shoemaker did some sampling and testing of the earth back in the 1960’s. Anyways, the tremendous force, and pressure caused the land to fill with diamonds. The crater to day is about 15 miles (24km) wide,

Now the town is only a small city, one of many within the crater, but you would never know it’s a crater just by walking around, the land around appears mostly flat, though looking out from the cathedral tower you can see a ring of around 150 foot hills in the distance.

Anyways, it’s another pretty old medieval style town in a wall. Unfortunately I was expecting a bit more, as the town has really very little to do – less than I thought. A lot less than I thought. It was still nice to walk around though. There is only one gift shop in the whole town, and it’s a small sucky one. Also it being a Saturday means everything closes early.

I went to the Crater Museum, the Wall Museum (which documents the history of the town wall, and through some old churches, walked along the wall, and up to the top of the 295 foot (90meter) “Daniel Tower”, of St. George’s Church in the middle of town. There is a cat named Wendelstein that lives at the top with the man at the ticket table. It is allllll stairs to the top. And the cat just goes around the top wandering around between visitors, and jumps up on tables and seats. I also met a couple of guys from Australia on the way up who were brothers also just wandering around parts of Germany. We talked about what we were doing, and what we planned to do which was pretty cool. A little while later I made my way outside of town to the nearby Hexenfelsen – Witch’s Cliffs. It’s a large protruding rock – possibly a chunk of the original meteor, though I doubt it, because I’m sure visitors would have chipped off sections until it was all gone. Anyways, it’s in a forested hilly area, where over 30 unlucky women and 1 man were accused of being witches and were burned alive.

Images here!

Also, happy first Day of Oktoberfest!