April 2003
As we are probably all aware, Germans are really into industrial stuff, so...
Here we have what had been the biggest movable machine in the world @ 523m long, in a coal mine in Zwenkau near Leipzig, until they blew it up when the mine recently closed (it was too expensive to keep it as a tourist attraction which surely only Germans would think of doing!)
If you really want to know: these contraptions are called "overburden conveyor bridges", and are used to transport the top layers of earth from one side of open cast coal mines to the other so that "bucket wheel or chain excavators" can dig out the soft brown coal called "lignite". With still enough coal in eastern Germany for them to keep going until 2050, it´s a vital and politically sensitive industry: providing thousands of jobs (unemployment in these areas runs at 25%!), and electricity from the cleanest fossil fuel power plants in the world (a big change from the blacked skies and acid rain of 15 years ago!). Dozens of mines like this exist here, which, when they are exhausted, are recultivated into farmland, parks, forests and lakes. Those mines that are still operating sometimes literally gobble up any villages in their paths (they buy them despite protests and build new "replicas" nearby!)
Anyway I´m full on teaching in a mining company near the Polish border in order to restabilise the finances (again!) so that I can get the current photo projects sorted and exhibited, which is why I feel obliged to mention coal mines this month and to "not mention the war" cos I´m sick of the "experts” and the propaganda.
BREAKING NEWS (at least as well as a postcard can manage): Leipzig has just been named as Germany´s candidate city to host the 2012 Olympic Games - probably got a fat chance though, but helps put a very special city on the map!
Gluck auf,
Dean
PS, don´t believe everything you read, unless I wrote it!