Hagen Museum Germany

Travelled:183km from Paderborn to Wuppertal
Visited:Hagen Open-air museum
Stay:Wuppertal/Sonnborn - free parking, no facilities N51.238461 E7.101920

After stopping at the other stellplatz to get some water and have breakfast, we were on our way to the Hagen Open-air museum. We arrived just after 10am and we're lucky to visit on the last Friday of the month as the entrance fee (€7ea) is free! We paid €1.50 for a map in English and proceeded through the village, stopping to visit 51 buildings that displayed many historic workshops and mills. We spent 5 hours looking at how cow bells were made, a bark mill, hairdresser, broom maker, a brass foundry, there were working smithys and hammer mills, also a paper mill and zinc rolling mill. 

The 15 stages of making a pitch fork.

Zinc press...

Wire workshop.

In the main part of the village we saw a tannery and leather workshops along with a gold smith, clock maker and optician workshop. There were distilleries of fruit spirits and a vinegar and beer brewery aswell as a mustard mill. We saw how they made rope and dyed and printed fabrics. There was an Apiary and a tobacco/cigar roller. The general store sold products made on site including smoked sausage and wooden items such as spoons and clogs. As you can see it was quite extensive....

Feeling a little worn out we decided to choose a town not too far away to stay at tonight. Our GPS Camy will always try to get us on a motorway if there is one close by, even if it means a few extra kms or going the opposite direction to get on to it. This was doubly frustrating today as the motorway was at a near standstill. So we got off and over rode her... we stopped in Gevelsberg, but decided to push on a little further..again gridlock on the motorway but we stayed on this time but had enough of driving when we got to Sonnborn/Wuppertal.
After dinner we went for a stroll to have a look at the most interesting thing here...the oldest electrical suspended monorail in the world! It was built in 1901 and has obviously had upgrades since, the last being in 2013. In this part of town it runs down the street which would be very noisy for the residents. We even saw an old fashioned tram car with people having dinner (like in Melbourne).