What information can you collect here? What's mineral collecting really about?
What can the net do for you? What brought you here, and what are your drivers to return?

What's mineralogy all about?
a) finding minerals, crystals, 'treasures'
    and reading about mineral localities
b) going on mineral hunting trips together,
    making fun of eachother because of this stupid hobby
c) drinking cold beer (Guinness of course) after that ;-)
d) learn, acquire knowledge on mineralogy and share it
e) having a collection, nicely labled in plastic boxes,
f) show it to other collectors
g) and tell tough stories about bears almost killing you while collecting the specimens!
h) spend days (sunny and raining...) outside in the wild wild nature, sportive, active
i) the hobby doesn't cost anything if you don't want to !

And... it generates a lot of side-activities like:
- building stupid websites
- macro-photography
- writing articles and getting them published in glossy magazines
What can WE do on the net with that?
a) we can offer information on where to find minerals
    and recent info on mineral-localities
b) build an online community / portal to meet eachother virtually,
    with a forum, e-zine and mailinglist
c) we are glad there's no replacement for Guinness on the net...!!
d) no problem with that on the net, it's all about information/knowledge sharing
e) you can make a list of your collection, publish it on your site,
f) publish pictures of nice specimens in your collection online
g) and those tough stories (also publish pictures of the bear please...)
h) can't compensate that on the net luckily!
i) the internet is free if you're smart enough...





Pssst, just-between-the-two-of-us: what you really want is: to know where you WILL find beautiful minerals! Right?

What current media/sources do you have now?
  - slow mineralogy-magazines only publishing about localities already empty, or beautiful minerals in south-east Tadshikistan...
  - old people in clubs telling stories about the 1970's when minerals were still found and only in really large crystals ;-)
  - books on mineralogy with always outdated locality information

So, the internet might be able to replace those sources but... it can never replace real contact...
This website is especially for that small group of people really wanting to go on excursions and do something!!

What will you not find here

Flashy graphics, a thousand colours on each page. In our humble opinion it's the content that counts, not the jacket...

On the other hand: all scanned content (articles etc.) is pdf-ed in the best quality possible. So full color and in high resolution. Bandwith is getting cheaper everyday; next year everyone will have high-speed cable/Xdsl-connections. No one will care my downloadable files are sometimes over 10 MB...

Feel free to use all the material on www.strahlen.org; just refer to www.strahlen.org, to the photographer, the publisher, our article or Stichting Strahlen.
so, feel free and have fun!

If our info doesn't match your expectations you can do two things:
a) leave and google on
b) mail us and tell us how to improve our site and the information on it...

Click here to go back...