Notes

First of all: The pictures of the Harzer Schmalspurbahnen in snow will come, but as of right now there’s an appalling lack of snow.

A few days ago my sister, my father and I went through Goslar, taking some night pictures. This is the one I like best of them all. To the left, you see Goslar’s museum (not that great actually), to the right one of the multiple mills (nowadays a restaurant) lining the river Abzucht or Gose, the latter of which gave the town its name.

The history of the rivers in Goslar is, considering how tiny they are, surprisingly complex. The Gose starts a little further up the Harz mountains, while the Abzucht comes from the nearby Rammelsberg mountain, the place where Goslar had the mines that secured it’s wealth in medieval times (which in turn led to the dutch of Braunschweig attacking the city so that it lost the mountain, leading to the decline which wasn’t stopped until the 19th century). Traditionally, both rivers did and now do unite shortly before the city walls, and then continue under the name as “Abzucht”. In medieval times, however, the Abzucht was too dirty due to mining work, so the Gose was led into a separate channel and supplied fresh water until 1876.

This meant that for a long time both rivers were present in the town, and today the single-again river is called both names at times (at least before leaving the city wall, after which the label Abzucht is uncontested). That Gose sounds much better than Abzucht may have something to do with it…