Notes

Oker, a part of Goslar, has a reputation of being dirty, home to ignorant people, and generally a place you wouldn’t want to live in. I think that’s rubbish. Oker is actually very beautiful at every corner.

On the freight tracks you can see a variety of bulk cars. I’m not sure whether they are loaded or not. My guess is that they are used for hauling ballast, since there’s a huge ballast works in Bad Harzburg, very close by. There’s also a lone open car with removable roof, which is either going to or coming from Harz-Metall. I keep calling Harz-Metall the former Oker lead works, but actually they used to do a lot of stuff, and while some of that has ceased, there’s still a lot of non-ferrous metal (and plastic) processing happening there.

In the background you can see Oker’s signal house, and further back the Adenberg mountain and the Adenbergsiedlung. This is Oberoker (upper Oker), which is defined as being to the south of the railroad tracks (and hence further up in the mountains). The other side is called Unteroker (lower Oker). People from Oberoker tend to say that Unteroker is crap and vice-versa. Practically, it does not matter, though it is a lot of fun to annoy people by claiming that their part of the suburb (or, of course, their entire village) is the wrong one.