Altenberg is a nice town located in the Ore Mountains about 30 km from Dresden and close to the border with Czech Republic. The town is a popular health resort in the region, also well known nowadays for hosting different sport championships such as the FIBT Worl Championship in 2008 (bobsleigh and tobogganing). People from Dresden and surroundings  often go to Altenberg on short weekend walk outs and that’s what we also did recently on one of the few sunny winter days.

On our tour we’ve got to walk along the two water bodies west of Altenberg: Großer Galgenteich and Kleiner Galgenteich (Big and Small Galgen ponds). Both of them were previously used in the exploatation of Tin ore (the element described with chemical symbol Sn) but lost their original use due to ceasing of all mining activities in the region. Today the bigger one is used as drinking water reservoir and the small pond for recreational purposes. This includes also the 30 ml sand sample for our World Atlas of Sands collection (sample no 1406). The sampling procedure has been carefully supervised by a couple of ducks