Jordansprudel
August 30, 2008Bad-Oeynhausen is a small town somewhere in middle-west Germany. Apart from its Jordansprudel, the world’s largest carbonated salt water fountain, the town has little to nothing of interest. In fact, up until Wednesday evening, I didn’t even know it existed. I drove home from Konigs-Wusterhausen (near Berlin) Wednesday.
The Bundesautobahn A30 runs straight through Bad-Oeynhausen. Well - no, that’s not true. At the edge of the town, the A30 just stops. There’s a fence, with a highway exit just in front of it. The highway ends, and you’re guided straight through the middle of the poor town, across a 2x2 lane street, packed with traffic lights and intersections. Technically, it’s still the A30, but such a street of course doesn’t deserve A status.
Apparently, there have been plans to properly build a highway around the town, but politics and indecision prevent these plans from being carried out. For about two decades now, the main traffic line between Amsterdam and Berlin has been thundering straight through the poor little town. Family cars, buses, large trucks.
I really should’ve visited the Jordansprudel. They say it can go as high as 40 metres on a calm day.
World | 
Oddly enough we have the same situation with the M23 motorway in the UK. It never got finished as demolishing the houses that was required to build a true London-Brighton road was a politically explosive issue and thus the project got abandoned.
Comment by Saad — August 31, 2008 @ 6:08 pm