Nice little mill wheel.

Nice little Kathrin standing beside the nice little mill wheel.

We decided to follow a tour which was in the brochure the friendly chap in the Tourist Info office gave us. Normally we just wander around little towns and see what we can find, but this time I decided to adopt a more professional approach.

So, above you have the Franziskanerkirche which was built around 1670. The facade is what's known as Roman baroque. See how educational this page is going to be.

The pillar above is the Mariansäule (Virgin Mary's Column) and was built in 1861. Below Mary you have statues of St. Liborius, St. Meinolfus and the Emperors Charlemagne and Henry II.

But much more interesting are the gargoyles around the bottom of the pillar!

On the left above you have the Heisingsches Haus which was a patrician's home from the early 17th century. The gable design was used later on the town hall which can be seen in the middle photo above. On the right you have the Jesuit church which was built by Anton Hülse between 1682 and 1692.

The relief carving of the 3 blokes above is a reminder to the invention of the well known card game '66'. Apparently three Paderborn blokes thought it up in 1652 and called it '66' after the address of the pub they were getting pissed in at the time, Eckkamp 66. Actually I've never heard of the game but allegedly it's played all over the world, so there you go.

This is St. Liborius who is the patron saint of the city.

The photos above show the mediaeval cloister which is part of the Busdorf church. Two of the wings are the originals and date from the 13th century. Actually the bases of the wings appear to be made from recycled tombstones as you can still just about make out the inscriptions on a few of them.

Near the church they have a thing called the Moses Baby Window. Click the link and you can read about it in German. I've never heard of these before but apparently if you don't want your baby anymore you can leave it anonymously in this hidden window and the nuns will look after it for you. You can come back within 2 months if you want your baby back or else they will find a suitable adoption home for it. All very odd, but apparently it's a good thing as it gives people an option rather than other rather nasty possibilities.

At this point we decided that the official tour was becoming a pain in the ass and since all we really wanted to see was the cathedral that we'd skip everything else and just head straight there.

Above you can see the 'famous' Hasenfenster which dates back to the early 16th century. A popular rhyme says:

"Count the ears, there are but three.

But every hare has two you see".

Well, it rhymes anyway. The three hares has basically become a symbol for Paderborn.

This little guy was found sitting terrified in the middle of a path and the bloke holding him just happened to have gardening gloves with him so was able to help the little chap out.

And the little chap above helped me out after a fairly long walk to the Padersee.

Paderborn has about 15,000 British troops station in it and this is the entrance to the HQ of the 1st Battalion Light Infantry. The bloke at the gate to the left gave me a bit of hassle as you're not allowed to photograph these things, but there you go.

And that was basically Paderborn. I'll be up there fairly soon for a much longer period so there'll be plenty more updates to come, including a nightlife guide of sorts. That'll be starting with The Auld Triangle which was where we spent a couple of evenings and got a lot of useful local advice from Ollie.