Welcome to the Büchel, and to the most disreputable creature in Aachen folklore. The bronze figure on this fountain is the Bahkauv, which translates roughly to brook calf. It is a deformed, leering calf with fangs, and the legend says it lurks in the streams, the sewers, and the warm springs around the city, waiting for drunken men to stagger out of the taverns. Here is how the story goes. A man drank too much, and then he stumbled out into the night, weaving his way home. The Bahkauv leapt onto his shoulders from a dark corner, wrapped its legs around his neck, and demanded to be carried. The man swore, the Bahkauv gets heavier. He begged to be let down; the Bahkauv gets heavier still. He had to carry it all the way home, sober up, and learn his lesson, while the calf hissed a warm sulphurous breath into his ear. Now think about where this story comes from. We are standing on the Büchel, almost exactly where one of the warmer springs used to bubble up to the surface. The sewers under your feet are warm year-round, fed by the same water you smelled at the Elisenbrunnen. So when a drunken Aachener heard a strange wet sound in the dark, or smelled rotten eggs from a grate, the leap from there to a sulphur-breathing monster was not very far. There is even a folk explanation for why the city's springs smell of eggs, and it goes like this. Before Charlemagne became the great emperor who made Aachen his capital, legend says his father, Pippin the Younger, slew a terrifying Bahkauv at one of the city’s thermal springs, cut off its tail, and threw it back into the steaming water. The springs have bubbled and stunk ever since. In the nineteenth century, women in Aachen reportedly told a more cynical version of the legend. They said the Bahkauv was an excuse their husbands invented to explain why they came home with empty pockets after a night at the tavern. The monster, the women said, had demanded coins as a bribe to let them go. The men found this version less amusing. The original bronze statue here was unveiled in the early twentieth century and was melted down for war material. The current Bahkauv was cast about sixty years ago. The bronze itself is a little battered, because Aachener children are encouraged to climb on it. Click a photograph with the Bahkauv, and when you’re ready, follow the map to the next stop, which is just a few steps away.