Visit to the Pipe Organ Museum

It's either a bug or bird that has got her attention on the balcony in Sevilla

We’d been here a week and hadn’t made it downtown Freiburg until last Monday. We went to the Stadt Theatre district for Japanese food, weird, I know but we did. So much construction of just about everything it seems, jackhammers noisily busy and trucks and tractors dodging the many people and trams, utter chaos! We’ll go to a quieter end of town next time and of course to the market. 

A rainy but not cold Saturday afternoon and Christoph has trouble getting to us due to the above mentioned construction but makes it about 1 pm. So we hurry off to Waldkirch (in the Black Forest, means church in the woods) about a half hour’s drive from Freiburg. There are haunting looking castle ruins above the town. Haunting perhaps since every time we’ve been to Waldkirch (3 times now in 3 years) it’s been raining! 

We dine at a place we'd been to before, good local food. After go to the Organ museum (musical not internal). Unfortunately for me and others no pictures were allowed to be taken inside but here are links to see them. http://elztalmuseum.de Many are for circuses or fairs, meant to be outside and are very loud. They are absolutely beautiful, each in their own way. There was a team of moving “dummies” playing in uniform on a stage, their eyes kept moving which was a bit weird for me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYDfSb6wEq8

Here are google images which show you the ornateness of the organs https://www.google.at/search?q=waldkirch+orgelmuseum&biw=1240&bih=631&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&sqi=2&ved=0ahUKEwiBq5HK9NnMAhVkKMAKHe7xB-0Q_AUIBigB

There was a hand turned one that anyone could do, Christoph got a good tune out of it, I was miserable at it, step on a cat’s tail sounding perhaps? The music is recorded on cardboard cards in connected stacks that go over pins in the machine, if you are old enough remember punch cards for computers? This shows my age and to be truthful that technology had pretty much expired by the time I entered the industry. Bruce does and remembers programming and carrying large boxes around of punched cards for an IBM 360. Make a mistake in one hole and you have to throw out the entire batch, how disappointing is that and a waste of time. There are very large stacks of these cards that re-fold themselves on the other side. They are stored in wooden boxes to keep them pristine and have to be re-loaded manually. Another aspect to think of, how they punched the cards to make the music, and it was top quality music too! 

Two floors of the museum devoted to them; next floor held examples of rich life (including a gramophone record player) and farming life which as expected are quite different. Final floor held church life and it’s accoutrements. So while it continued to rain we were dry inside and learning more about the area and it’s industries. There was also a display of mining for gems and the processing of them. It showed a row of people bent at the stomach over benches which looked extremely uncomfortable to me and I wonder why? Didn't find a reference for this.

One of the more interesting trips for us, not a stuffy museum for sure, and the kids that were there loved it! Having said "stuffy" I'm really not being fair and am beginning to think that most are not anymore. (Large generalization, for a large population of museums that I have never entered, but you get my meaning.) Looking back at the few we've been to, they are creatively interactive with the guest using multi-media techniques and displays. 

Cheers, Bx2 and Lexi Cat