Sophienhöhle in Jail
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| Image: the cave entrance is called Ahornloch, and is rather impressive. |
The Sophienhöhle (Sophie’s Cave) in Germany, in the Frankian Jura, is a fine cave, with nice speleothems and an impressive entrance portal. When you walk up to the cave from the parking lot in the valley, you reach a wide spaced, surrounded by typical dolomite knocks. And about a third of this amphitheatre is the wide portal of the cave. The huge and wide entrance hall, with level and dry sandy floor was rather popular with the local youth, who used it to make party.
Some time ago the cave and the nearby castle changed owner, and the new owner emphasized on exploiting the cave. He added coloured light, employed cheap but absolute incompetent guides, and increased entrance fee.
Ok, thats his decision, and the cutomer (visistor) will decide if he is right.
But after some kids again used the cave for a party and left some empty bottles, he decided to close the portal completely by a iron bar gate. So the portal does not look a bit romantic any more, it looks like a jail.
And by the way: it does not make any sense, as its is still possible to make party in the open space, on the green lawn with a fire place in the middle.
More info on 
showcaves.com
July 26th, 2006 at 12:48 am
Well, basically it always depends on who of us you have as a guide when visiting the cave… I admit that some of us are incompetent to the max… but I think meanwhile the niveau has gone up a bit… well, it wasn’t so hard to do that. Still, it always depends on who you are when visiting our cave. I always notice it: Lots of people just don’t like a matter-of-fact/scientific style of tour and prefer the typical old style with just telling the names of the stones, some fake ages and a queer folksong at the end of the tour. I don’t understand why people demand such a style, but I don’t understand most of the visitors’ requests either… Working as a cave guide can be horrible if you overdo it…
…and there is a reason for the caging: the new lightshow was expensive. Yup… I don’t understand the reason why this led to cage the cave (the cage must have been more expensive than anything that possibly could be stolen from in there, but obviously it did…
At least it keeps people from just going in and breaking out stones. You wouldn’t believe how often people just assume a cave is something like an oriental bazaar with souvenirs to take home…
We got rather aggresive the last few times people tried to take a stalactite for themselves…
Oh…and it actually helps the bats in there to survive. They, after all, don’t like people partying all night in THEIR cave…