Hamelin council’s record on pest control is notorious. In 1284, the story goes, they commissioned a flashily-dressed ratcatcher to remove the town’s plague of said vermin. He did so, with his charmed pipe, but there was a payment dispute. In revenge, the piper similarly bewitched all the town’s children and led them away, never to be seen again.
Well, today (having stayed last night a few kilometres south of the town centre) I rode that exact route that the mythical piper and legendary children never took.
They supposedly went up Bungelosenstrasse, a half-timbered alley in the centre of town. It starts at the Rat Catcher’s House, which is now an Indian restaurant.
A plaque there commemorates the apocryphal event: anno 1284 am dage johannis et pauli war der 26. juni dorch einen piper mit allerley farve bekledet gewesen cxxx kinder verledet binnen hameln geboren to calvarie bi den koppen verloren (‘In the year 1284 on the day of [Saints] John and Paul on 26 June 130 children born in Hamelin were lured by a piper clothed in many colours to Calvary near the Koppen, [and] lost’).
Apparently, the playing of all music in the street is banned to this day. I wish similar regulations could apply to hostel dorms, which these days are full of people gormlessly watching noisy movies on YouTube or listening to music videos with the sound turned up.
The Pied Piper tale – inevitably, taken up by the Brothers Grimm later on – symbolises a real event. Everyone agrees. It’s about the mass desertion of the town’s young people as desperate economic migrants, with the Piper as some sort of dodgy 13th-century Mr Fix It. And they went to Transylvania, definitely. Because there are caves. Or maybe Berlin. Or Poland. Or somewhere else.
Or perhaps, some say, the tale is a sort of reference to the Black Death, with the Piper as Death. Except the dates don’t work. So maybe it’s about some children who drowned in the Weser. Or possibly ones who died in a landslide. Or conceivably a mass psychogenic illness, or military campaign, or something shudderingly darker still.
But most people are agreed: it’s about something. And if not, then something else.
Having cycled the ratcatcher trail, I left Hamelin’s rainy and blustery historic centre, and its ornately decorated housefronts. I carried on along the now-familiar wide, smooth, excellent quality cycle paths alongside the Weser.
At Grossenwieden I had a pleasant surprise. Pluto. Yay! Another Planets Trail, to add to the one I stumbled on a few days ago! This one – the Weser Planetenweg – has rather fetching models of a decent scale, with football-sized major planets a few kilometres apart.
However, there were problems. Saturn was ringless, Earth was moonless, the Sun was an enormous dustbin lid, and Jupiter seemed to have disappeared. How can you lose a gas giant with a big red spot?
Anyway, at Rinteln, where the Sun and inner planets were, I could celebrate my cosmic journey with a coffee, cake and snack lunch in the pleasant old town.
Westfalicā
I avoided a long stretch of riverside path because of headwinds, and was happy to take back lanes and country roads through Porta Westfalica – the Latin name marks its stark hilltop monument. I’ve forgotten all my Latin so I didn’t stop.
(I also did Ancient Greek at school. They were very keen that I did this instead of German, because they said not many people speak German. And indeed it has proved useful. If I go into a kebab shop and the owner is 2,000 years old, and he asks me if I want chilli with that, I can reply confidently ‘Lo! The Spartans are marching on the Pelopponese’.)
You’ll gather there wasn’t much in the way of incident today. It was all a short, easy-going succession of good quiet bike paths, pleasant towns and refreshment opportunities.
I got to Minden in mid-afternoon and celebrated with an ice cream before settling into my rather nice, and very good value, Airbnb right in the centre.
Miles today: 38
Miles from Füssen: 555