Been to the MĂ€rklineum yesterday. They have a really cool railway installation, heaps of locomotives and rail carriages and all sorts of other old toys that MĂ€rklin manufactured over three floors on display. To noone’s surprise, my camera didn’t like the lighting conditions. These are the least horrible ones:

https://lyse.isobeef.org/maerklineum-2026-08-25/

Certainly worth a visit when you’re in the area.

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In-reply-to » @lyse Huh, didn’t expect that. :-D

@movq@www.uninformativ.de @itsericwoodward@itsericwoodward.com Hahaha, a festival, indeed! :-D There was also “Raupenkrieg” (caterpillar war): jumping against each other in sleeping bags. I reckon that counts as pogo or mosh pit.

And back in the days, we had wonderful deep mud all around us, too! In extreme years we even needed to leave the camp ground for a day and walk to a gym with all the kids. There was just too much rain and the creek dangerously high.

We once had an actual creek running through the dining tent before the kids arrived. Luckily, it didn’t originate from the official creek, but the water came down the hillside. Unimaginable today with all these droughts in summer. Many creeks around here are dried up for several weeks, if not months now.

There you go, enjoy my favorite selection of yummy chocolate on the ground!

It was a question of the mindset. Once we supervisors just made the best out of it and tried to had fun, the kids typically didn’t mind the mess either. Besides building huts, one of the most favorite things ever was actually “Matschschöpfen” (scooping mud). The kids scooped puddles into wheel barrows using giant soup ladles from the kitchen. “Sorry kids, time is up for today. Whoever sits in the closing circle first gets to go first tomorrow.” Unfortunatly, I don’t find any photos from that.

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