![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The second half of the visit to Stuttgart included a visit to the Maulbronn Cloister, formerly of the Cistercians and now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. With parts 850 years old, the monastery complex is in astoundingly good condition, effectively a preserved medieval village. It is unsurprising the local council now uses one of the buildings as council offices. Naturally enough the pun "from Melbourne to Maulbronn" had to be made as well. Apart from the stunning buildings, three stories of the cloister were charming; firstly, the determination of where the cloister would stand (a thirsty mule, laden with treasure, establishing "Maulbronn" aka Mule Fountain), secondly, the use of Maultasche, a ravioli-like pasta to hide the consumption of meat from God, and thirdly, that Johannes Kepler was a student at the cloister. Felix, our host, mentioned that he was a descendent of Kepler and later showed us his family history book and family crest which affirmed the claim. That night had a dinner at Tina's Trollingerstub of traditional Swabian fare.
The following morning we bid our farewells for another year and journeyed to Darmstadt, which is primarily a university and technical city close to Frankfurt. It also just happens to be the home of the European Space Agency's Space Operations Centre. With an invitation from the director of ground facilities, a magnificent tour was provided, including a visit to the control room and a plentiful discussion of past and present operations of the Agency, along with connection with New Norcia in Western Australia. I was particularly taken by the ESA's involvement in on the landing on Saturn's moon, Titan, along with their landing on a comet. Also of particular note was the small box of remains of Ariane EDIT, a rocket which exploded shortly after launch (a programming error caused a 64-bit float to be shoved into a 16-bit integer), which I have used in a few presentations in the past. Whilst the sheer enormity of relatively deep space (and time) explorations touches deeply into my pantheistic orientations, on a more practical and immediate sense the Copernicus Earth Observation programme has many varied and obvious applications.
From Darmstadt, a fairly long trip was planned by train along the Rhine with quite a few changes. This was quite interrupted by the cancellation of a service at Mainz. Whilst Mainz is a fairly charming city, staying there for an extended period was not planned on this trip and, following some juggling, the timetable was re-arranged with an eventual arrival in Delft at 2100 hours (with short changes in Dusseldorf, Venlo, and Eindhoven). Arriving in Delft, Jett D., was already present to take us from the station to our lodgings on the outskirts of town (relatively so in a country like The Netherlands). The next few hours were spent over drinks discussing where various people of our mutual rock-and-roll youth have ended up and swapping listening tips on older and more contemporary bands. It is true that a few of the visits of the Europe 2019 trip are short, but one can hardly travel from literally the other side of the world without making a detour to see friends old and good.
The following morning we bid our farewells for another year and journeyed to Darmstadt, which is primarily a university and technical city close to Frankfurt. It also just happens to be the home of the European Space Agency's Space Operations Centre. With an invitation from the director of ground facilities, a magnificent tour was provided, including a visit to the control room and a plentiful discussion of past and present operations of the Agency, along with connection with New Norcia in Western Australia. I was particularly taken by the ESA's involvement in on the landing on Saturn's moon, Titan, along with their landing on a comet. Also of particular note was the small box of remains of Ariane EDIT, a rocket which exploded shortly after launch (a programming error caused a 64-bit float to be shoved into a 16-bit integer), which I have used in a few presentations in the past. Whilst the sheer enormity of relatively deep space (and time) explorations touches deeply into my pantheistic orientations, on a more practical and immediate sense the Copernicus Earth Observation programme has many varied and obvious applications.
From Darmstadt, a fairly long trip was planned by train along the Rhine with quite a few changes. This was quite interrupted by the cancellation of a service at Mainz. Whilst Mainz is a fairly charming city, staying there for an extended period was not planned on this trip and, following some juggling, the timetable was re-arranged with an eventual arrival in Delft at 2100 hours (with short changes in Dusseldorf, Venlo, and Eindhoven). Arriving in Delft, Jett D., was already present to take us from the station to our lodgings on the outskirts of town (relatively so in a country like The Netherlands). The next few hours were spent over drinks discussing where various people of our mutual rock-and-roll youth have ended up and swapping listening tips on older and more contemporary bands. It is true that a few of the visits of the Europe 2019 trip are short, but one can hardly travel from literally the other side of the world without making a detour to see friends old and good.