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Comment by gambiting | Hacker News Reader

>>Maastricht uses to be the only traffic lights on route from Amsterdam to Paris. Yes. Traffic lights on a highway, in the middle of a city

Sounds like the beautiful little town of Bad Oeynhausen, which I came to loathe(a bit) - I used to drive several times a year from Amsterdam to Krakow(~1300km) and literally the moment you got off the ferry in Amsterdam you were on the motorway literally all the way to Krakow.....except for having to drive through the very city centre of Bad Oeynhausen, every single time. I think last time I did that trip last year there were some intensive roadworks in that area, maybe nowadays there is a way to drive around the town without getting off the autobahn.

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After decades the road work has been finished and the missing link between Autobahn 2 and Autobahn 30 is finally in place.

It leads you around the town and it saves at least 20 minutes.

Yeah, I'm looking at google maps now and it looks like you can just stay on the A30, drive around the entire town, and just take the exit to A2 - amazing. Almost a shame I'm not planning a trip anytime soon to experience it hahaha

Reminds me of Luik/Liege in Belgium just across the border form Maastricht. It's far worse there especially when you look at how poor the construction is there and how high the pollution seems to be. You can see that city has suffered immensely economically.

The journey through Maastricht over the highway generally wasn't all that bad, traffic would generally flow remarkably well. I think the primary concerns to put a tunnel in was pollution, noise and congestation.

Yeah as someone who travels through all three, Luik / Liège definitely eats the cake. Not only is it slow, it’s also difficult to navigate if you’re not familiar with the area.

Maastricht was always mostly pleasant, and Bad Oeyenhaus I typically use as an excuse to take a break at one of the McDonalds there.

>" It's far worse there especially when you look at how poor the construction is there and how high the pollution seems to be. You can see that city has suffered immensely economically."

Interesting. I found Liege to be a charming little city. The Calatrava train station is one of the most interesting stations in Europe in my opinion. The bike path along the river is quite nice as well. I didn't perceive the town was suffering economically. Would you mind elaborating? Genuinely curious.

Oh, I was so happy this year that the highway around was finally opened. I thought I'd forever have to go through that town and pass Hans Wurst.

Wow, that brings back memories. I travelled that road twice a week, most weeks, for about 2 years. I had almost blocked this from my memory!

That said, I think there was a KFC and a McDonalds there pretty much just off the road that you can stop at which was just about the right time when my bladder ran out of mileage.

It was nice to slow down and stop somewhere other than a motorway service station!

>Bad Oeynhausen

Town name checks out?

Bad means spa.

Isn't it more literally 'bath'? I thought the English word came from it.

Yes, but as a town prefix it means that they've got medicinal springs. I think that's called spa, isn't it?

Yes, that's indeed true. The English city of Bath, home of the famous Roman baths, is also known as "Bath Spa". Glad we've cleared this up :|

Yes, more precisely the town needs to have a medical spa ("Heilbad" in German) [1].

Which can be a medicinal spring, but also other potentially beneficial effects [2], there are towns on the sea, which have the prefix "Seeheilbad" [3], which is purely based on the positive climatic effect of the nearby sea.

And then, this is Germany after all, there is a long list of other boxes that need to be ticked, see [4].

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_(Kurort)

[2] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heilbad

[3] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heiligendamm

[4] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeheilbad

Not a German speaker, but is baden the plural form then? I feel sometimes spa towns have baden in the name and others are just "bad."

The plural would be "Bäder", but I'm not aware of any town using that plural form. It would be very strange, too, because a town is a single entity.

Baden-Baden is the only one I know that comes close, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baden-Baden#Name explains how it got that name. It's not the spa prefix, but part of the name proper.

Also, "Baden" is a region in the south-western state of Baden-Württemberg that probably has lent its name to other towns.

It is home to one of the two big dialect families in Baden-Würrtemberg: Badisch, the other being Schwäbisch/Swabian.

Well there's also Wiesbaden in Germany, which is pretty well known. There are some others as well closer to the Czech republic.

From your link:

"In modern German, Baden is a noun meaning "bathing"[4] but Baden, the original name of the town, derives from an earlier plural form of Bad ("bath")"

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