Yesterday evening, I was invited to celebrate with Manfred in Schierling. Manfred is an entrepreneur. With his small but exquisite enterprise MS-Duroplast, he dominates parts of the world market – regardless of the fact that the company – quite deliberately – does not have a webpage (!). Once each year, he organizes an in-door festival. We were invited. It started on Saturday afternoon. Consequently, we went to Eggmühl by train, then on to Schierling by bike.
Manfred had booked a room for us at the Gasthaus Haslbeck. We spent an excellent night there after a beautiful midnight-bike trip of a little less than 10 kilometres from Schierling to Semerskirchen.
The night was over at 6 a.m. – then the church bells right opposite the restaurant started making a tremendous noise. On the picture, you cannot see the church. It is to the right of the restaurant – which you cannot see on the picture, either. It sounded like the church bells were aimed directly at us with full power. And I literally stood in my bed. To be sure, it was my own fault – why had I not gone to sleep earlier? But mind you, I was not the last to leave the party.
And here is what came to mind: if you were to control this church bell through a computer that is connected with the internet (after all, we are talking the object internet, aren’t we?) and if I were a hacker who can do this kind of thing, I would hack into these personal computers and switch off those bells whenever in the vicinity.
Incidentally, the same wish of mine came up whenever I rode my bike in North Africa and had to spend the night close to a mosque the tower of which was equipped with those colourful and blinking electric lights. At night, the metallic recorded voice of the Muzzein would be heard through powerful loud speakers.
After thus shortened sleeping time, I rode on to Moosburg today. Driving through the beautiful but not totally comfortable “Lower-Bavarian Hills”, I made my peace with the bells.
As a matter of facts, I can only recommend the Haslbeck Guest House. It is a family enterprise where we were welcomed really warmly. The internet worked perfectly, the rooms and breakfast were just great. And it lies close to a small lake, totally idyllic. Except… the church bells…
RMD
(Translated by EG)